Rupi Kaur

Rupi Kaur (born 1992) is a Canadian poet, artist, performer, illustrator, and photographer. Born in Punjab, India, she moved with her family to Toronto in early childhood and later studied rhetoric and professional writing at the University of Waterloo. Her concise poems and accompanying line drawings address love, grief, trauma, healing, femininity, migration, and the experience of the Punjabi diaspora.

Kaur wrote, illustrated, and self-published her debut collection, milk and honey, in November 2014; Andrews McMeel Publishing subsequently issued it in 2015. Structured around violence, love, loss, and recovery, the collection became a long-running bestseller and was translated widely. Her use of lowercase letters and periods is an intentional visual connection to Gurmukhi, a script used for Punjabi that does not distinguish upper- and lowercase letters. She later published the sun and her flowers, home body, and Healing Through Words.

Her work has reached readers internationally in print, online, and through live performance. Kaur produced the 2021 Prime Video poetry special Rupi Kaur Live and executive produced the 2022 film This Place. In 2017, she was included in BBC 100 Women; that year, the sun and her flowers won the Goodreads Choice Award for Poetry. Her official site records that she completed her third world tour in 2023.