Rupi Kaur is a person with a serious presence. The Canadian-Punjabi poet, writer and spoken-word performer has worn a lot of hats in her time, but she is best known for being the trailblazing queen of "Instapoets", a glittering voice for the secret intricacies of the female, South Asian and migrant experience, and for being a patron saint for everyone out there with a tender heart. She’s written three international poetry bestsellers, with her self-published debut Milk and Honey hitting number 1 on the New York Times Bestseller List in 2014, performed spoken word poetry to thousands of people, and had her words translated into a whopping 43 languages (plus, she’s even read to Jimmy Fallon). Now, she’s bringing it all Down Under for a wild few nights of lights, sound and stunning spoken-word poetry as part of her hefty Rupi Kaur: World Tour.
Time Out chatted with the artist ahead of her upcoming show at QPAC – and if her stage presence and voice is as powerful, melodious and all-encompassing as what she sounds like on Zoom, we’re pretty excited.
If there's one thing we know for sure, it's that if Rupi Kaur is in town, we don't want to miss her.
As a woman who also straddles multiple cultures, I am curious about what home means to you?
Phew. “I don’t know”, is the real answer. I feel like it's so weird, you know. Is home the Motherland? No, it's not, because that was a place that tried to kill us. Growing up in Canada, it never reflected me. And so it felt like maybe home is not a physical place – home is a sort of mental space. And especially with this job – it’s so weird to call it a job [laughs] – but I'm in a new city every other day, and so home has really become the people that I love. And those are like family and friends. Home is trying to figure out how to be present no matter where I am, which is quite a challenge.
What advice would you give to young girls living in diasporas who feel caught between different binary worlds and cultures?
I feel very lucky because I grew up with my community around me. And that's not the case for every one, but the Greater Toronto area is full of immigrants from all corners of the world. And so it was nice, because I was exposed to that. But regardless, I hated the colour of my skin. I just wished that I could just be one of those beautiful white girls with blonde hair who were wearing Abercrombie and Fitch – but you know, that wasn't me.
And so there was definitely a shame in my culture, but that started to shift when I started to really explore the culture more deeply, and learn not to just face it, but embrace it, which I hadn't done before. And so I would tell young girls, there's definitely a deep power in that.
Where we come from, our heritage, is the thing that can help us keep going during our most difficult moments
And we need to dip into that. So actually, I feel like it makes you even more powerful.
How has your art shifted through the years? What excites you the most about where you’re currently at?
I'm really excited about where I am, but more excited about where I'm going. It's been so amazing. I've grown so much over the past 10 years. You can tell from my books and what I write in all of them that they reflect my current emotional state at the time and what I've been going through. I'm really excited about translating my work into new mediums. And I've been recently expanding into film and television, I just worked on a short film that I wrote an original poem for and narrated. And so I'm really excited for the future, really excited to expand and find other ways to connect.
If you could pinpoint the craziest point of the last ten years of writing for you, does anything come to mind?
Oh, my God, the whole thing is crazy. Like, it's just insane. Maybe it would be less insane to me if I had imagined this for myself, but you know, this doesn't happen to – Oh, my God, I sound like Harry Styles – “this doesn’t happen to people like me”. But it doesn't happen to people like me, you know! [Laughs] I grew up in a working class, immigrant community and for so much of our lives we were poor and I was just focused on survival. I remember being ten years old, my dad was really, really sick, and he was the breadwinner of the family. He was going to all these doctors, going to the States, trying to get a diagnosis, trying to get help. He couldn't even get up. And I thought as a child, oh, my God, we're losing him, and I'm the eldest of four.
And I remember thinking at ten years old, what am I going to do when my dad dies? How am I going to feed everybody?
And so that was the constant. And that's what I thought about. I think that's really what drove me to work really, really, really hard. Now, this whole journey is just insane. When I think about how Milk and Honey is going to be ten years old, it blows my mind, and going on this world tour, meeting people in Brazil and Mexico saying they've been following along for longer than a decade – that blows my mind. I'm feeling really grateful. And I'm just channelling that emotion into more of my work.
Has writing poetry lost any of its magic for you, or does it still feel the same way for you as it did at the beginning?
I feel like there's nothing as magical as the first book. So many artists say that, when you're creating something without knowing you're creating it, there's a specific magic in that, because you're not even thinking about the outcome and result, you're just so lost in the present moment, and you're so lost in the journey that it's so magical – versus you know, when I was writing the Sun and Her Flowers or Homebody, I was very, very aware of what the result needed to be, and what I wanted the outcome to be, and that is what adds the pressure and maybe takes some magic away, but poetry itself hasn't lost its magic. I've lost my innocence and my naivety, and realise that the process of each book is going to be so different. And for so long, all I wanted was to chase the process of Milk and Honey. But I'm not that girl anymore. I left her. I love her, and she delivered me to this place, but I can't use that process anymore. And I'm realising that every book is going to have a new process. And I'm learning to just be more fluid about it and be more chill with it, and that's been really helpful recently with my writing.
How are you feeling about your upcoming world tour? What are you most looking forward to?
I’m really excited to perform at the Sydney Opera House! I feel like that's so cool. I've been to Sydney, and I've done little things and book festivals. But, this will be the first time where I do a full on, 90-minute show. And so I'm really, really excited to go to other cities as well.
My readers in Australia have been so patient, honestly. And the gift that they're gonna get is that they're gonna get the best show
Because back when I was performing this show in May, I was just starting out, and now I feel like I've really honed in on it and perfected it – so I'm gonna give them the best show possible. And I'm really excited to meet them as well! I feel like Australia is geographically so far away, but I also feel like it's gonna be great to actually be with readers, and hear from them on what they connect with.
Rupi Kaur will perform at Melbourne's Hamer Hall on Sunday, April 26, Brisbane's QPAC Concert Hall on Wednesday, March 29 and Sydney Opera House on Saturday, April 1.
