Rupi Kaur is a Punjabi Canadian poet and artist. She is best known for her poetry collections Milk and Honey and The Sun and Her Flowers.
Rupi Kaur Biography: Age, Early Life, Family, Education
Rupi Kaur was born on October 4, 1992 (Rupi Kaur: age 29) in Punjab, India. Her father, a Sikh truck driver, had to flee the country when Kaur was a toddler due to the persecution of Sikh men. Kaur’s mother practiced painting. Kaur has three younger siblings. She made the decision to adopt the name “Kaur” for her stage name as it is the traditional surname of Sikh women.
At three years old, Kaur immigrated to Canada alongside her parents in order to escape the persecution of Sikhs. Kaur was raised in Brampton, Ontario.
Kaur pursued her education in writing at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. During this time she also taught writing to both high school and college-level students, while she was still a student herself.
Rupi Kaur Biography: Career in Poetry, ‘Milk And Honey’
Kaur spoke exclusively to uInterview in May 2022 about her start in poetry. “If I look through my grade nine sketchbooks, I’ve always been drawing up ways to use art as a tool to express and funnel my emotions into,” she said. “I never thought that poetry would be the medium that I’m most known for. If I go through my sketchbooks, they’re filled with illustrations by hand and in the corner words. And it’s such a foreshadowing of what would have come fifteen years later.”
Kaur says she was influenced to explore poetry by the community of Sikh poets in her hometown. These poets used original poems and songs in order to spread awareness of the Sikh genocide in India. This combination of art and political activism inspired Kaur’s own writing style. Kaur said to uInterview about this time in her life, “I started off in high school performing mostly pieces about women’s rights, [and] writing a lot about my parents, my experience, us as immigrants, as a group of people who had survived persecution and genocide, sexual assault and abuse.”
Kaur began her career in 2009 by performing spoken-word pieces across her community of Brampton, Ontario. She later performed these poems in Vancouver after being encouraged to do so by other poets. After being rejected by publishers when attempting to submit pieces to magazines and journals, Kaur self-published her first poetry anthology, Milk and Honey, on November 4, 2014. This collection sold more than 10,000 copies on Createspace.
In March 2015, Kaur uploaded a series of photos to Instagram for a college course in photography. The photos, which were a commentary on the taboos associated with menstruation, depicted menstrual blood stains over her clothes and bed sheets. The photos garnered hate online, and Instagram itself took the pictures down twice for violating community standards. Kaur posted a response to Instagram’s removal of the photos, in which she called the photos’ removal and Instagram’s handling of the situation misogynistic. This response went viral, leading both to Instagram reuploading the images, and Kaur rising in popularity on the site. To this day, Kaur is known as an “Instapoet.” Though she has received some of her biggest support through the community she has created by posting her pieces to Instagram, Kaur has expressed skepticism of social media and how it affects young people online. Kaur herself has talked about the anxiety and depression she has had to deal with as a result of her online celebrity. In an interview with uInterview founder Erik Meers, Kaur said, “I feel no ways toward [Instagram]. I never want to tie myself to [a social media platform]. Social media became such a big part of my work, and I’ve seen how it swallowed people around me growing up. I see how it affects young people today, and I always try to remind myself and the people around me that we need to be having such a healthy relationship to ourselves and the people around us that if Instagram or social media disappears tomorrow, we’re ok. If that gives us anxiety, then we have work to do. I love that Instagram has given me a place to build this community of people who are so respectful and want to connect about heavy topics and I really love that I can use that to inspire real-life connections—invite them to the shows, meet in real life. I think that’s truly where the magic happens.”
After a sharp rise in popularity, Milk and Honey was re-released by Andrew McMell Publishing, and, as of 2017, 2.5 million copies worldwide, as well as being translated into 25 languages. On October 3, 2017, Kaur published her second poetry collection, The Sun and Her Flowers. Though Kaur was initially nervous about whether or not she would be able to create a follow-up to as successful a collection as Milk and Honey, as of 2020, The Sun and Her Flowers has sold over a million copies. On November 17, 2020, Kaur published her most recent anthology of poetry, Home Body. The book is in part a response to her experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. In April of 2021, Kaur self-released a poetry special, which has since been released on Amazon. Kaur is currently on a world tour, whose dates extend to the end of 2022. Tour information and tickets for sale can be found on her website.
Rupi Kaur Biography: Personal Life
Kaur is from the state of Punjab in northern India. She was raised in the Sikh religion. Kaur’s main influences for her work are her experiences as a South Asian woman and an immigrant. Her pieces deal with generational trauma along with personal trauma and contain themes of identity, womanhood, domestic violence, sexual abuse and healing. Her style of written poetry consists of short lines in the first person. Her poems also include components of visual art, with Kaur herself drawing the illustrations which go along with her poetry. Kaur has spoken publicly about her own experiences as a survivor of sexual abuse in childhood and of domestic violence. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kaur moved back into her parents’ house in Brampton, Ontario.
Check out the full interview at the top of the page.
Fact Sheet:
Full name: Rupi Kaur
Date of birth: October 4, 1992
Zodiac sign: Libra
Birthplace: Punjab, India
Height: 5’3”
Education: University of Waterloo
Instagram: @rupikaur_
Twitter Handle: @rupikaur_
Published Collections: Milk and Honey, The Sun and Her Flowers, Home Body
