With all the poetry we read in our English classes, it can be hard to find one that relates to us. We may find ones we like, some that even stir our souls a little bit. But they hardly capture our experiences as women in our modern world, a world in which poetry seemed to be dying anyway. Those classroom poems usually feature the experiences of people from a time we never lived, worrying about concerns we’ve already evolved past. It’s beautiful, it’s art. But is it relatable to us?
Rupi Kaur is one poet that is capturing the modern woman experience in her collection of poems. Kaur takes us through four chapters— four sequences of life that every woman has gone through in some form or fashion: the hurting, the loving, the breaking, the healing. She captures the pain that each woman bears, that same pain that just comes with being a woman, guaranteed life experiences that we all must go through. Kaur breaks down our complicated experiences into tiny poems with simplistic drawings as if to say that our experiences are not so complicated and that we are not as disconnected as we appear. Kaur brings out that pang in our hearts and forces us to look at it and heal just like her speaker by the time we’ve finished reading. She not only heals us through her poetry, but also breaks down the walls that separate women.
Here’s one of her powerful poems here:
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur (30)
Kaur makes it so that we can look at the woman next to us and say, “Hey, we’re the same. You’ve suffered the same as I’ve suffered.” There is nothing more powerful than poetry and art that hit you in your gut and forces you to make a change.
With that being said, Kaur also has another collection of poetry published called The Sun and Her Flowers. Hopefully, she will continue to inspire us and make our hearts pang in excitement for new poetry. Keep ‘em coming, Kaur!