Unpopular Opinion: I Hate Rupi Kaur And Here’s Why

Rupi Kaur is an Indian-Canadian poet, known for her illustrations, her short, easy to understand poems posted on her Instagram page, and her poetry books- Milke and Honey, and The Sun and Her Flowers. Following her success, Rupi Kaur has brought poetry into the mainstream, developing a new audience and market for the literary genre. It goes without saying that she has largely impacted the poetry community, and has encouraged more and more people to start reading poetry.

To put it simply, fans love her for her bravery and courage to talk about difficult themes so openly, and they relate to the struggles and emotions she conveys through her work. The average person is able to read her poems and understand what she’s trying to say without much thought, and most people enjoy this. And while I admire the messages she conveys, and the difficult topics she tackles and explores, I hate Rupi Kaur, and here’s why.

Her work isn’t poetry

If you ask a crowd of people what they think poetry is, you’re going to hear echoes of “anything that makes you feel emotion, is poetry” in some way, shape or form. Here’s why I have a problem with this definition: it’s too vague. Going by this logic, the fortune I got from a fortune cookie is poetry, because it made me feel happy or indifferent. Or that the text message I got from my mom is poetry, because it made me feel annoyed. In my opinion, it is not the emotions a piece of writing makes you feel that makes it poetry, but the art of how they made you feel it in the first place.

Rupi Kaur’s work completely defeats this core aspect of poetry, conveying its messages and emotions in a very direct and straightforward manner. She opts to write her poems very matter-of-factly, as if someone could be saying this to you in real life. Because they could, and it STILL wouldn’t be poetry either way. The beauty of poetry is in the way the poet crafts their work, and conveys their messages through creative use of language, form and structure. Simply put, Rupi Kaur completely shits on the core foundation that constitutes literature as a whole, and thus her work isn’t poetry no matter how much popularity she may gain.

She’s unoriginal and overly simplistic

Her overuse of cliches are rampant throughout all her poetry, and really showcases her lack of originality and talent as a writer. Not to mention that her poems are so straightforward to the point of explaining her messages and metaphors word for word, completely stripping her work of any creative substance and thought whatsoever. Rupi Kaur takes away the fun of deciphering literature, and the beauty in admiring new ideas come to life in poetry. It goes without saying that her work is complete garbage, and lackluster at best.

Her work is just lazy

Don’t get me wrong- I’m not saying this just because her poems are short. Poetry can be well crafted and good regardless of length. I mean, take haikus for example. But Rupi’s work feels like something you would’ve scribbled into your diary at age 12, and then posted on Tumblr or Instagram for some likes and to seem “deep and relatable”. You can write a poem like her’s in 2 seconds or less, and honestly, I’d be surprised if she didn’t. In all of her work, Rupi writes about themes such as pain and heartbreak in such vague terms, they can basically be about anything you want them to be. It’s clear from her poetry that Rupi Kaur barely puts any thought or effort into her work, and I’m sorry but I can’t respect her as a writer for that.

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Her work is over pretentious and “fake deep”

You can tell that Rupi Kaur is trying to appeal to as large a demographic with her work, considering how vague and “fake deep” she is with what she writes. She writes about the most basic of things, in the most basic of ways, but presents it as if she’s Shakespeare and has just written literary genius.