the sun and her flowers

the sun and her flowers (2017) is Rupi Kaur’s second poetry collection. According to her publisher Andrews McMeel, this and her previous collection milk and honey (2014) have together sold eight million copies and been translated into over 40 languages. the sun and her flowers appeals mainly to a young audience who may have first become acquainted with Kaur’s work on Instagram, the social media site where many of her poems, including those in the sun and her flowers, were first published. (Kaur has nearly four and a half million followers on Instagram, and many of her poems receive hundreds of thousands of “likes.”) Themes of the collection include love, relationships, heartbreak, trauma and abuse, immigration, family, and community.

Kaur styles the collection entirely in lower-case letters, including proper nouns. With the exception of apostrophes to indicate possessives and contractions, there is scant punctuation. The exceptions are in the occasional prose paragraphs, which Kaur punctuates with periods (one also utilizes em dashes). Kaur illustrates many of the poems with simple line drawings that appear on the same page as the poem. Admirers of Kaur’s work praise it for its emotional honesty and accessibility and for creating interest in poetry among a younger generation. Some people are more skeptical, however. Critics point to what they see as Kaur’s lack of attention to poetic technique. Others claim that her work is superficial and more performative than genuine.

Poet Biography

Rupi Kaur was born on October 4, 1992, in Punjab, India. A month before she was born, her father emigrated to Canada to escape persecution of the Sikhs. When Kaur was four years old, she and her mother joined him in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The family eventually settled in Brompton, part of the greater Toronto area. Kaur began drawing and writing poems when she was a young child, encouraged by her mother. She was also a voracious reader, although she did not learn English until the age of 10. In an interview with Ryan B. Patrick for CBC in November 2021, Kaur said that as a child, her favorite books included the Harry Potter series, Ender’s Game (by Orson Scott Card), and The Chrysalids (by John Wyndham).

Kaur studied rhetoric and professional writing at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. In 2013, she began posting her poems to social media sites such as Tumblr and Instagram and soon built up a large following. She was known as an “instapoet,” a term used to designate those who share their work on social media. She also became known as a performer of poetry. Initially, she self-published her first collection of poems, milk and honey, in 2014; it was so successful that it was republished in 2015 by independent US publisher Andrews McMeel. milk and honey reached number one on the New York Times best-seller list and by 2017 had sold three million copies, making Kaur one of the best-selling poets in the world. The book has been translated into 25 languages. Kaur’s huge success surprised her. In the CBC interview, she said, “Truthfully, when I self-published it for the very few readers I had while I was still in university, I didn’t think it was going to go anywhere. In fact, I was thinking about doing a master‘s or applying for law school after graduating, but the universe had other plans.”

Kaur’s second book, the sun and her flowers, was published in 2017 and was equally successful. In 2018, she undertook a tour of North America, performing her work. In November 2020, Kaur’s third poetry collection, home body, was published. Kaur told Patrick that the book was influenced by the social isolation that was forced on her and her family (and millions of other people) by the COVID-19 pandemic. The isolation gave her “more time for introspection.” She was able to allow her “thoughts to speak freely because the rest of our lives became quiet.” In that same year, New Republic magazine named Kaur “writer of the decade.” In 2021, she had four million followers on Instagram. As of 2022, her website stated that milk and honey and the sun and her flowers have been translated into 42 languages. With her popularity still on the rise, Kaur undertook a World Tour in 2022, beginning in the United States and Canada with additional stops in Mexico, the United Kingdom, and other European countries.

Poem Text

Kaur, Rupi. the sun and her flowers. 2017. Andrew McMeel Publishing.