To not understand the hype around Rupi Kaur poems? (examples attached)

[instagrampoets]

Sorry couldn't find a poetry board (though if there is one please redirect me!)

I just don't understand the hype around these poems? Her book collection "Milk and Honey" was huge, especially amongst young people and I'm wondering if this is a niche of poetry I'm missing the depth of. Most of it just sounds like a passing thought, or an Instagram caption.

Sorry, don't want to sound like a snob or portray myself as a poetry aficionado but I'm interested to see if anyone else can ascribe any deeper meaning to her work or if I'm just thinking too hard about it all!

[quote drivingmisspotty]@Muckish oh that was me in my Cambridge interview many years ago. I loved reading but thought what I read wouldn’t sound fancy enough and the set texts/other books by those writers were a safer bet.

Oh well, I ended up having a great time at Manchester.[/quote]
But you must have had something to say or you wouldn't have got the interview in the first place, if you'd just bleated 'Animal Farm is good. So is 1984.'

Though the interviewers should have pushed you out of your comfort zone and got you to talk about what you actually loved reading -- at mine, I was a gibbering wreck who managed to also be sullen, but the panel apparently saw something.

They do interview an awful lot of candidates - you actually don't need to have said something spellbinding to get an interview, it's more that you need not to have disqualified yourself from consideration already.

@SarahAndQuack

YY, but *@Muckish*, she's saying we should dismiss Kaur because young women like her on instagram. That shouldn't be our reason for it. And there's a few posts that do shade into that territory, aren't there?

I'm now trying to imagine scrolling through Instagram photo of puppy, duckface selfie, ad for Etsy, another photo of a puppy, Next ad then 'Lazy Lazarus' or 'Ariel'!

I would be totally up for that TBH.

You get an interview from your personal statement & application form - for many people it’s easier to have something to say on paper!

Agreed. Not a single one stood out to me.

@SarahAndQuack

They do interview an awful lot of candidates - you actually don't need to have said something spellbinding to get an interview, it's more that you need not to have disqualified yourself from consideration already.

I genuinely remain surprised that a panel, who were clearly psychic, saw something in me that suggested I would thrive, rather than stare out at tutors from under my hair and scowl while uttering monosyllables.

No, I agree that the method by which we encounter poetry should not matter, and I'd like to think Rupi Kaur was playing with the idea of the meme and traditionally vacuous/apolitical online spaces in order to do something interesting with it, only I don't think she does. I have actually read a fair bit of her, after she started to come up often on personal statements along with Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet so I'm not dismissing her on the grounds of a few poems.

@borageforager

You get an interview from your personal statement & application form - for many people it’s easier to have something to say on paper!

Yes, but in practice, Cambridge interviews a large proportion of all applicants for English Lit.

I think in recent years it's been around 80-85% interviewed, and the candidates who are ruled out are often ruled out simply because they don't qualify - things like not having the required GCSE grades to matriculate.

Utterly bland.

I was introduced to her work through my colleagues daughter, who is a young sikh woman and was just so happy to see a woman who looked like her and had similar life experience making a career in the arts.

South Asian women are so underrepresented in the art world/poetry etc. I like Rupi Kaur. She appeals to the insta generation. I am in my 40s, like many mums netters I am not her target audience - but good on her. She is very prolific - butin the main I like what she has to say

I'm no fan but I can see the value. I suspect that a lot of people will have read one of these at exactly the right time and it's brought a little comfort. If they manage to make a non-reader pick up a book then I'm all for it!

YY, but @Muckish, she's saying we should dismiss Kaur because young women like her on instagram. That shouldn't be our reason for it. And there's a few posts that do shade into that territory, aren't there?

Sorry, I don't know if you mean me when you say "she" @SarahAndQuack (if not, consider this ego and ignore!). I don't dismiss Kaur because young women like her on Instagram - I'm probably exactly the generation she's trying to appeal to with these poems. I "dismiss" her - used very loosely - because I think these poems are overrated for the sheer scale they've amassed vs the quality of the writing. There are many poets and writers who appeal to a young demographic that I love!

Endless line breaks are for people who cant do a proper iambic pentameter/tetrameter sentence. There I said it. Rhythm is actually important.

I can’t get on with these at all

I hadn’t heard of her though

Loads of people dont like to put the effort in and to work to appreciate something that might be hard. Thats why hoards of people from instagram like this. they can spend 10 seconds on it.

Oh, no, sorry, my 'she' was @LittleGwyneth, and I miswrote 'should' for 'shouldn't'.

LittleGwyneth is saying we shouldn't dismiss Kaur because she appeals to young women/instagrammers.

I agree. I didn't think you were particularly but I thought some of the posts about Athena posters and teenage girls were a bit close to doing that, and I think it's a good point that as a society we're often encouraged to sneer at things women(esp young women) enjoy, when we give men's tastes much more leeway (Bret Easton Ellis would be a case in point there, IMO).

I definitely don’t want female views on this poetry to be dismissed because young females mostly enjoy it.

The audience doesn’t matter to me. I find the work weirdly uninteresting, almost to the point of irony.

I tend to think the average young female reader is a bit more discerning, tbh.

Billie Eilish's and Lorde's lyrics have far more depth than this.