“All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise… The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.”
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
When we talk about supporting local artists, we don't generally expect them to have been named one of BBC's 100 women of the year, to have books camping out for 77 weeks at a time on The New York Times bestseller list, or to have authored the number one selling book in Canada in 2017, but Rupi Kaur is all of these things. Born in India, Kaur's family moved to Canada when she was three years old, eventually settling in Brampton, just a one-hour car ride from where I sit writing this now. And while Brampton is not absolutely as local as it could possibly be, in a world where (increasingly) everything from books to movies to hair products are going global, it’s fairly close.
Kaur's first and probably most famous poetry collection, milk and honey, was originally self-published on Createspace in 2014, and later re-released by Andrews McMeel Publishing. For a while, Kaur had tried submitting individual poems to magazines and such, but all were rejected. She had been told by a writing teacher that poetry books basically never get published and had been heavily discouraged from self-publishing. Despite all this, Kaur eventually realized that it was doing a disservice to the body of her work to parse it up the way that she was and she designed the complete book—cover, drawings, and all—in under two months for self-publication. The result was beautiful, and the book soared to success (with a little help from her social media followers and a lot of hustling on Kaur's part).
"The hustle and bustle of those years has been one of my favorite memories till date."
—Rupi Kaur
My first real introduction to Kaur's poetry was via a borrowed library copy of her second body of work, the sun and her flowers. They call some books ‘page-turners’ because they are breakneck-paced, keep you guessing, and have you powering through even though it’s 3:00 am and your eyes are prickling with tiredness because you just have to see what happens next. Kaur’s books are page-turners, but in a radically different way. When I was reading the sun and her flowers, I turned those pages slowly, I savoured many of them and then, with peaceful curiosity, quietly entered the next. I remember it felt like I hadn't read like that in a hundred years—like time was not an issue. I was compelled to turn pages, not because there was an annoying mystery to root out, but because I wanted to. Not every poem was a slam-dunk, not every page was awe-inspiring, but those poems were in there: the ones that made me want to stop turning pages for a while and just linger momentarily. The simplicity, sparsity, and humility of the style made the whole experience a distinctive pleasure.
Over time, I have been both delighted and disappointed by poetry. Poetry can be thought-provoking and reviving, but it can also be incredibly dull and gormless. The range is wide, my friends, not unlike eating experiences: there is this perfect edamame noodle plate at the restaurant near my house, and then there are things like micro-zapped pizza pockets and canned bread (I looked it up; it's a real thing). Poetry is the same. And it doesn't have to be complicated to be good—at times, it is the simplest things that are the most blissful. I was once watching an episode of Iron Chef America (it's a contest where two chefs duke it out using a secret ingredient that is revealed to them at the last minute) and the secret ingredient was cherries. At one point, the host went over to the judges' table to ask how they thought the contestants were doing. I'll have to paraphrase, but one of the judges had his doubts about how they were going to improve on something that was already so wonderful; "it's hard to beat a mouthful of bing cherries," he said. However fancy those dishes turned out to be, in other words, the simplest and purest version of the ingredient was ultimately the most desirable. Definitely true with the poetry of Rupi Kaur.
This past year, I read Baby: a children's novel by Sarah MacLachlan (winner of the 1986 Newbery Medal for her novel, Sarah Plain and Tall). In Baby, MacLachlan quotes several poems, but one, in particular, stands out: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Dirge Without Music. It was almost startling to find it there, so unguardedly repeated in a children's book. Some ideas are already inside of us, merely lost in the vastness of ourselves, and it takes a true poet to shine the light on them this way. All at once, an unexpected treasure is plucked from the ocean, carried home, and set upon a table:
Dirge Without Music
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay
While very different stylistically, Kaur and St. Vincent Millay each seem able to use poetry to give effective expression to meaningful ideas, without coming across as sappy, cluttered, or pedantic. Kaur's poems, especially, are spacious and inviting and are often able to summon a lot in one mouthful.
One of my favorite elements of Kaur’s poetry—and what really sets Kaur’s style apart—is her exclusive use of lower case letters and exclusive use of the period for punctuation. As Kaur explains:
“When I began writing poetry, I could read and understand my mother tongue (Punjabi), but I hadn’t yet developed the skill set to write poetry in it. Punjabi is written in either Shahmukhi or Gurmukhi script. Within the Gurmukhi script, there are no uppercase or lowercase letters. The letters are treated the same. I enjoy this symplicity… The only punctuation that exists within Gurmukhi script is a period… So in order to symbolize and preserve these small details of my mother language, I ascribe them within my work… It is less about breaking the rules of English (although that’s pretty fun) but more about tying in my own history and heritage within my work."
—Rupi Kaur, from her website: rupikaur.com
Another distinctive element of Kaur's work are the evocative line drawings that accompany many of her poems. Rupi was first introduced to the visual arts by an elderly couple who babysat her when she was five, but it was ultimately her mother who continued to encourage her artistic exploits as a child. I immediately noticed this common thread in the lives of many of the people whose biographies I have delved into at one time or another: the support of a loving adult in their lives, often a mother. Another Canadian artist, Maud Lewis, was encouraged in the arts by her mother, who taught her to paint and sell Christmas cards in her hometown of Yarmouth County (though hers is a much longer story, perhaps for another time).
Although not to do with the visual arts, I also can't resist sharing the story of Jane Goodall's mother, and the patience she showed on a day when four-year-old Jane had been missing for many hours:
Jane Goodall loved to watch spiders scramble, beetles scatter, and worms slither. At age five, she was used to hearing her mother call, "Jane! Where are you?" But the panic in her mother's eyes when she found her one day was unusual. "I was in the hen house," Jane said. She liked to sift through the straw for the warm, smooth eggs, then carry them home as carefully as if she held treasures. But that afternoon she hadn't been collecting eggs.
"I was about to call the police!" her mother said. "What on earth were you doing?"
"I wanted to see the hen lay an egg," Jane confessed.
"But you were gone all afternoon!"
Jane nodded. She knew chickens rushed off if followed, so she had hidden hours before and sat so quietly that she hadn't been spotted.
"And you saw a hen lay an egg?" When Jane smiled, her mother smiled, too. She didn't scold Jane for making her worry. Instead, she pulled her close and said, "Tell me about it."
—Jeannine Atkins, Girls Who Looked Under Rocks
Jane grew up to be one of the world's foremost primatologists and much of her success came from her ability to observe chimpanzees up close, with the sort of stillness and masterful patience that she exhibited as a child. Imagine if her mother had thrown a fit and quashed one of Jane's earliest discoveries? What a monumental effort it must have been for Vanna Morris-Goodall to swallow her own anxiety and to simply share in her daughter's triumph in that moment.
Sometimes it is an aunt or a father, rather than a mother, as was the case with Florence Nightingale, whose mother adamantly opposed her daughter's interest in nursing. It was Florence's Aunt Mai (her father's sister) who pulled through for her at every stage of her journey, beginning with private lessons in advanced mathematics and extending to traveling across the world to support her niece's mission to improve the conditions of the war hospital in Scutari (Jane Goodall's mother did similarly when Jane was in Gombe Park studying chimps, literally traveling thousands of miles to support her daughter's efforts there).
If you look at any story—any biography wherein some great person has left an indelible mark on the world—there is almost always someone who has lifted them up and urged them toward those remarkable futures: someone far less famous, to be sure, but someone nonetheless.
All of this is to say that I wasn't surprised to come across Rupi's mother's early support of her daughter's artistic exploits in my research. She is clearly an important figure in Kaur's life as evidenced, perhaps, by the recurring theme of motherhood in Kaur's poetry:
But let us not dwell too long in the past; most of this article has been leading up to the really exciting part—that Rupi Kaur’s newest book, home body, was released on November 17th, 2020 and will be available soon at the Essa Public Library. You can already place a hold if you would like to be one of the first to read it when it comes in. home body is separated into four parts: mind, heart, rest, and awake. Like her previous book, there were some poems that sang for me more than others, and overall it was a satisfying book!
Here are some of my favourites from home body:
If you're interested, please enjoy this video of Emma Watson interviewing Kaur back in 2018. It's really well put-together:
"I loved it as a shorthand for ideas that I found really difficult to express myself—you're giving people more words: more language. It's incredible."
—Emma Watson, interview with Rupi Kaur
You can also learn more on Rupi's website: https://rupikaur.com/
Peace and Love,
Victoria Murgante
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