Q&A: INSTAGRAM POET RUPI KAUR

Rupi Kaur, “rockstar” poet on Instagram, on speaking to a generation, and satisfying the critics

Q. Everybody says poetry is dead. But your books are bestsellers. How’d that happen?

I ask myself that all the time. Never in a million years when I started 10 years ago did I think this is going to become what it has. But what everybody says to me is: “You put words to feelings I did not have the words to describe.”

Q. Why do young people love you?

My peers are probably going through the same things and we are growing together, so it makes sense that would be my readership.

Q. You’ve been called an “Instagram poet”. Did the internet boost your career?

My parents were immigrants, my mum didn’t work and my dad sacrificed himself just to put food on the table. I turned to social media because I did not have the money or the resources. But the internet was free...you start...and that’s so empowering.

Q. How do you respond to critics who say what you are doing is not literature?

Many think it is too popular and mainstream to be literary. But don’t you want your work to be popular and read by a hundred thousand people?

Q. How did your Indian parents influence your writing?

They say when immigrants move, they preserve their culture so much more intensely. We’d sit around in the living room, take a quote from Gurbani and then talk about it for hours and it blew my mind.