Tuesday April 19, 2016: When Rupi Kaur went to her first community open mic event she says it felt "like a damn hug." Kaur had always been artistic, partaking in photography and illustration, but it was being on a stage and actively connecting to people with her words that piqued her interest in poetry.
But Kaur isn't your average poet. After a string of performances left her yearning to reach an even larger audience, Kaur started experimenting online. Her work flourished in social media circles, particularly among young women who say her her poems are a cathartic experience for them. The way her work appears, on sites like Instagram and Tumblr, is what Kaur refers to as "design poetry."
"So much of it is in how it looks visually to the reader, so I use only lower case," Kaur tells Shad, "I want to basically get rid of as many distractions as I can so that the reader can just pour themselves into the word — kind of like, the equality of the letters."
Kaur's online poems are so popular that when she self-published a book of poetry called Milk and Honey in 2014, it garnered enough attention that it was picked up by an American publisher.
WEB EXTRA | Kaur will be appearing at the Toronto Reference Library on April 28 to discuss Milk and Honey.