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Rupi Kaur is a contemporary Canadian feminist poet, writer and spoken word artist based in Toronto. She is popularly known as an Instapoet for the traction she gains online on her poems on Instagram.
She published a book of poetry and prose entitled "milk and honey" in 2015. The book deals with themes of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. Among her more notable works is her photo-essay on menstruation, described as a piece of visual poetry intended to challenge societal menstrual taboos.
“Milk and honey” is a new york times bestseller. it is Rupi Kaur’s debut collection of poetry and prose. it was first self published in november 2014; the self published edition quickly became a bestseller as it topped north american charts.
the book is divided into four chapters. each chapter serves a different purpose. deals with a different pain. heals a different heartache. milk and honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.
About her project, titled “Period”, Kaur wrote: “I bleed each month to help make humankind a possibility. My womb is home to the divine,a source of life for our species, whether I choose to create or not but very few times it is seen that way. In older civilisation this blood was considered holy, in some it still is. But a majority of people. societies. and communities shun this natural process, some are more comfortable with the pornification of women, the sexualization of women, the violence and degradation of women than this. They cannot be bothered to express their disgust about all that, but will be angered and bothered by this. We menstruate and they see it as dirty, attention seeking, sick, a burden, as if this process is less natural than breathing, as if it is not a bridge between this universe and the last, as if this process is not love, labour, life, selfless and strikingly beautiful.”
Like many artist and fetishists, she worked with the association of female genitals with fruit. “Anatomy” is a photographic project that is clearly influenced by Georgia O’Keeffe and perhaps Edward Weston Cabbage Leaf, 1931 and Shell, 1927.
