This month in Brighton, tickets to her performance sold out in less than 45 minutes, her London show in less than 10. She is in Sydney this weekend, as part of a tour that has seen her take in Britain, Spain, New Zealand and, next month, Canada. One of the poems in Milk and Honey goes like this: Rather like a rapper, she tells it how it is. “People aren’t used to poetry that’s so easy and simple,” she says.Īnd that is key to why Kaur has connected so strongly with millions of young people worldwide. Milk and Honey is a collection of poems that tackles tough themes – rape, violence, alcoholism, trauma – but it’s written in Kaur’s trademark short, simple verse – with her own illustrations acting as visual punctuations. I was posting stuff online just because it made me feel relieved – as a way of getting things off my chest.” “I wasn’t trying to write a book, it wasn’t even in my vision. “My book would never have been published without social media,” she says.

Followers came in their droves – 1.3 million of them at the last count (though notably she follows no one). She took a stand against Instagram, pointing out the hypocrisy of a platform that hosted sexual images of women yet censored a typical female experience. She was catapulted into the limelight after Instagram banned a self-portrait photograph, in which she is seen lying on a bed with menstrual bloodstained sheets. Kaur is one of a burgeoning group of young “Instapoets”, so called because they have shot to fame after building up huge followings on social media.

Books like rupi kaur