IT’S VERY EASY TO BE DERIVATIVE, BUT VERY HARD TO PROVE YOU’RE NOT

straddling those two worlds, holding a mic to what the South Asian community typically sweeps under the rug, whether it be abuse, rape, gender roles or body image. But that is also a community that has found safety on the nameless, faceless internet, a market Kaur has essentially created thanks to her ceaselessly rebloggable content.

The numbers speak to this claim, certainly, but what about those artists who came before her?

Like Waheed and others, Kaur’s writing follows a very simple structure that easily fits a cellphone screen, right down to her handdrawn illustrations. Lines sound like those scribbled in the back of an elementary school notebook, whether accented with the heartbreak of a high schooler or the inequality felt by an adult woman. The layers of her poetry are not too difficult to peel back thanks to common cultural metaphors and motifs (e.g. honey, fruit, water). They’re all quirks reminiscent of the social network they inhabit, right down to the aesthetically appealing use of repeated lower case and line breaks. While that simplicity can belie its own complexity, it’s also easy to imitate, which is why it’s become synonymous with social media poets.

For them, this calls Kaur’s artistic integrity into question. In her August Buzzfeed story, The Problem With Rupi Kaur’s Poetry, Chiara Giovanni writes, “there is something deeply uncomfortable about the self-appointed spokesperson of South Asian womanhood being a privileged young woman from the West.” She goes on to suggest Kaur’s work is exploiting and commodifying female trauma, and that her interpretation feels “disingenuous.”

And earlier this summer, Waheed accused Kaur of “plagiarism, paraphrasing and hyper similarity” on her Tumblr. While the two overlap in style and theme, along with countless other social media poets, some suggested the praise of Kaur’s work over Waheed’s is rooted in anti-blackness. Meanwhile, this movement of poetry itself seems inspired by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi, Sikh scripture and East Asian poetry.

In the social media world, where sharing is everything, it’s very easy to be derivative, but very hard to prove you’re not. But in the realm of digital poetry, shouldn’t the question be, not where did it come from first, but rather, how is it evolving?

While Kaur is undeniably a woman of certain privilege, that doesn’t negate the fact that she is still a marginalized woman who, simply by creating, has given a voice to an otherwise largely invisible community. Social media breeds trends and, five years ago, the thoughts of a 20-something woman of colour were nowhere near as trendy as they are now, thanks in part to Kaur. While that commercial tendency is indeed insidious, it’s also the first step to a larger platform for more minority artists.

While it’s certainly important to call disingenuous literature into question – particularly if it is choosing to speak for a lived experience it does not know – it’s also true that writing about her own trauma and her own experience with being a woman of colour doesn’t inherently qualify Kaur’s work as more than superficial. Often opting for a “we” over an “i”, Kaur positions herself as a voice for all, even if she doesn’t directly claim to be one.

But poetry is a form that, by its very nature, invites healthy discourse. And while critique is important, so is recognizing the consequences of art in the age of social media, which will be fighting to be considered more than just vapid musings of a teenager for years to come. Despite that, Kaur has managed to strike a chord with countless young brown women who don’t or can’t share their voices outside the internet. In her work, they’ve found themselves, and if that isn’t the job of poetry – online or offline – I’m not sure what is.