Heather Reisman:
Hi, I’m Heather Reisman, and this is Well Said, a podcast on the art and science of
living well.
This podcast is brought to you by Indigo. Today’s episode is hosted by Shivani Persad, a wonderfully
curious journalist and a fellow booklover.
Rupi Kaur:
For me, the personal is always political, and the poetry and activism go hand-in-hand.
Shivani Persad:
That’s Rupi Kaur, a Punjabi-Canadian poet, artist, and performer. Her first two books, milk
and honey and the sun and
her flowers, have sold more than eight million copies and have been translated into over
40 languages. Her latest book,
home body, was released in November of 2020. Rupi's poems are breathtakingly honest and
raw.
These are poems that grab you and pull you in immediately. Many are bite-sized, perfect for sharing
across Instagram,
where she's built up a fanbase of over four million followers. But their impact is anything but
small. She writes about
trauma and loss, but also about healing, growth, love, activism, and the beauty and resilience of
relationships between
women.
We are delighted to have the wonderful Rupi Kaur with us today. Rupi, welcome to Well
Said.
Rupi Kaur:
Thank you so much. That's such a warm introduction.
Shivani Persad:
Good. I'm glad you feel good.
Rupi Kaur:
I do. I feel really good. And it's an honour to be here chatting with you.
Shivani Persad:
We're so happy to have you. So we just kind of want to start with a simple question. Where does a
poem start for you?
Rupi Kaur:
It starts with a feeling within an experience. My poetry is a reflection of conversations and
experiences of life. And
they always start to write themselves inside of me first. And I feel that one of the last stages of
writing is actually
me approaching my desk, approaching my journal, and writing it down. That’s where it starts. It's so
much about being
present and being connected to the body, so that I can feel when it's time to write it down.
Shivani Persad:
One way I would describe your writing is that your writing is very vulnerable. How did you develop
your voice?
Rupi Kaur:
I agree with you. I'm very vulnerable, and I do lay myself bare, and I do put it all out there. And
I think the reason
that it's so easy for me to do that is because for years, before I ever released or shared anything
online, I was
already doing that in my private life. I've always written this type of very raw and vulnerable work
throughout my
childhood and throughout my teenage years.
So when it came time to sharing that work, I was sharing it first under a pseudonym during my Tumblr
days. There was
nothing really different about it. It was kind of like, oh, I'm just doing what I've always been
doing. And even if I
wasn't an author now and I wasn't sharing my work publicly, I would be just as vulnerable and raw.
And actually I have
to for my published work, I feel like I need to hold it back. And there's lots of things I wrote
while writing home body
that I'm like, “No, I'm not ready to give that away yet. So I'm just going to keep it.”
I think that I'm able to do that because I never intended to become an author. Poetry as a career,
like who does that?
And so because I had no intention of performing and doing all those things and writing—which is
something that I loved
and it was a tool for my self-healing—it was easy to be vulnerable. And I think that now that I do
publish and do share
with so many people, my mind is in denial that so many people read it. Because it's too much to
digest the fact that
they do.
Shivani Persad:
And you say that it was easy for you to be vulnerable, but for a lot of people that can be really
difficult. So I was
wondering, what advice would you give to a young person struggling to find their own voice?
Rupi Kaur:
I would say for artists who are trying to find their voice, I mean, your voice is there. It's inside
of you. You're not
going to find it by running around out there. You have to go inward. And if it helps, write what you
are most afraid of
writing, and write like nobody else is going to read it. And that's when I feel that your inner self
will really be
vulnerable. And it’s a practice, you know. I go through months where it's hard to be vulnerable and
it's hard to tell
the truth, but then you sort of work through it and you do get to that place. And so the voice is
there. It's about
pausing. It's about sitting still and really allowing it to come out—and not getting in the way, not
editing, not
deleting, not revising yourself, not censoring your innermost thoughts.
Shivani Persad:
You briefly said before that it's about you really feel so connected to your body. Can you tell me,
what do you do to
feel present and connected to your body?
Rupi Kaur:
I feel like there is a version of me before milk and honey and then there's a version
of me after,
because after milk
and honey I experienced a very dark period of depression and anxiety where I felt
completely
disconnected. That’s when
writing became difficult, because I felt that in order to survive, in order to continue touring in
the schedule that I
was touring at, I had to disassociate. I had to cut off my connection to my body in order to sustain
what I felt like I
needed to give the world. And writing was so hard. I thought that I would never be able to write
the
sun and her
flowers.
I was convinced, in 2019 November, I had given up writing home body and I was, “All
right. Who's
going to point me to
the nearest private desert island where I can hide in a cave for the rest of my life? Because I
genuinely, every cell in
my body feels like I cannot do this.” And that's when I was like, “Okay. We need to take it slowly.
And I really need to
start to tackle the depression and tackle the anxiety, and work on this connection with myself.” And
actually, I was
seeing therapists. I was doing all the things.
But the one good thing the pandemic brought me was that it forced me to sit still, because I don't
think I would have
ever stayed at home for a couple of months. I was meditating every day. I was writing, I had
rituals, I had routines,
and they were really working for me. Of course, there were lots of tough moments in quarantine as
well. But something
happened in the shower. It was like this feeling where I could feel my physical body and my mind
sort of merge together
and come together like this again. And it was the wildest feeling.
Right now I'm experiencing so much quarantine fatigue because, oh my God, it's the same thing every
single day. But it
really does force you to be present and find joy within the hard stuff.
[music]
Shivani Persad:
You mentioned activism. And again that's something you don't shy away from in any of the
books—especially with what's
happening right now in India. So I wanted to ask you, what role does activism play in your life?
Rupi Kaur:
It’s always played such a huge role, I think.
My dad has been taking me to protests since I was five years old. I couldn't even read and this
man—we were standing in
front of the Indian Consulate—he's forcing me to hold these signs. I can't even read it. And I'm
just there. So a
five-year-old, like, “Yeah, human rights abuses are bad!” And I don’t even know.
And then he would write speeches for me and put me in speech competitions. I think it all just goes
back to the fact
that so much of the Punjabi-Sikh community in southern Ontario are here in Canada because of a
direct result of the
human rights abuses we faced back home, the 1984 Sikh genocide and the decade of state-sponsored
violence that followed.
And my dad had to flee India because of that violence. He was targeted for being a Sikh man, and he
was able to escape
before they were able to hurt him. And we then joined him three-and-a-half years later. And so
because it sort of just
then goes down, we grew up hearing these stories. We know people who are still locked away in jails
back home without
any due process. We are still under attack by the Indian state.
And so activism has always played a huge role in my art because actually my poetry came from my
activism. So in high
school, I became a community organizer within the Sikh and Punjabi spaces. And during my community
work, that's when I
was introduced to spoken-word poetry. And that's where I was first given a stage to perform. And so
while we were
talking about female infanticide or farmer suicide, that was 10 years ago, I would organize the
events but then also
write a poem to express my ideas. So both of those things really went hand-in-hand.
I think that for me, the personal is always political, and the poetry and activism go hand-in-hand.
Shivani Persad:
When you first wrote milk and honey, you were still a student at the University of
Waterloo. So what
was the creative
process like at that time?
Rupi Kaur:
I feel like when you're like 17, 18, 19, 20, I felt like I could take the world on. I was like,
“Who's going to get in
my way? Let me show you.” And it was maybe it's that environment where you're surrounded, you're at
university, you're
living the life. Like as a brown girl, you're finally away from your parents and your community.
Nobody's there to judge
you. It's great, you know? And it's like this amazing—adulthood still hasn't hit you in the face
yet. And I thrived off
that energy. I was full course load, part-time jobs. I was a part of so many club committees, execs
here or there. And
then I was performing on the weekends, traveling. And I lived off of that.
And I think that just being around that energy, being around so many students was a huge
inspiration, because you're
constantly surrounded by fresh ideas. And I lived with my best friends. So every night, nobody
slept. We would spend
hours talking about everything. Talking about boys. Talking about the guys who cheated on us and the
guys who played us.
And it all went into milk and honey. And so I think it was so effortless to write that.
And then I lost all that community upon graduation. You step out into the real world. Everybody goes
their separate
ways. I was suddenly traveling all the time. I went from being surrounded by my friends 12 hours a
day, every single day
for years, to not seeing my friends for months. And that loneliness, really I thought that I'd never
be able to write
again. It was to the point where I was like, “Oh my god, should I enroll in my Masters so I can be
surrounded by
students again and maybe that'll help?” And I didn't do that, but I realized, “Oh, community is a
big inspiration to
me.”
Shivani Persad:
How have your relationships with women shaped who you are today?
Rupi Kaur:
They've saved my life in so many ways. I’d always had a very, very small group of friends, but
they're like they're my
sisters.
When we were in middle school, we would talk about the sexual violence we experience and the
domestic violence that the
women, the aunts, and moms in our life were experiencing from their husbands. And those are
conversations we were having
in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. And those conversations used to be whispers to each other at
recess, until we went
on to high school and we continued to talk about those.
And then it turned into, as the girls started dating, the conversations turned to now the violence
that we were
experiencing from brothers and cousins and boyfriends, and that sort of thing.
And so the conversations, or the poems and the themes that I discuss in my poetry, those have been
the topics that I've
discussed since I was a little girl.
And then the women I met in my activism circles, who get in and believe(??), those were the women
who saw this version
of me before I ever did. So they were the women who were putting me on, saying, “You need to
perform, here. It's not
enough that the people at this event saw you. Now we need to record a video and put it on the
Internet.” They forced me
to make Facebook pages and Instagram pages. And I was like, “Eww, that's so weird,” because I was
always the
behind-the-scenes person and suddenly they were pushing me to the forefront. And I would say that
without their support,
I would not be here, because they were my guiding light. And so I really owe those women everything.
Shivani Persad:
When you talk about your community, especially in, I would say, all three of these books, you do a
brilliant job of
talking about how your community has hurt you but also about all the wonderful positive aspects of
it. So how do you
balance all that your community has given you with everything that it's taken away?
Rupi Kaur:
Right. Well, I think that, well, there's always this fear, right, that you don't want to talk about
the bad bits because
you never want to throw your community under the rug. Especially when there's such little
representation of your
community that you're like, “Okay. If I have a platform, I can't say a negative thing because I
don't want to paint them
in this way.” But I think I've tried to do it in a way where I've never said all of them are like
this or all of us are
like that. Because you could never make that statement about any community, and every community has
their positives and
negatives. And so I sort of explore that. And I think it all goes back to those negatives really are
rooted in misogyny
and rooted in patriarchy. And that's what we're trying to, at the end of the day, dismantle.
I think it's really important to also write down and document especially our parents’ stories. My
dad's a refugee; my
mom and me are immigrants. I think I feel the pressure to document their stories and my experience
as a first-generation
immigrant, because if we don't do it, we're the only generation that can do that. After us, those
first-generation
stories, those immigrant stories, not that they're gone but the sources will be gone. I often think
about I'm from here
but I also don't fully feel like I'm from here; I'm from there but I'm also not fully from there.
And what does that
mean? I feel at home everywhere and nowhere. And so I think that's very specific to immigrant
stories. And I love
exploring that.
Shivani Persad:
Your poetry also speaks to the immigrant experience. There are so many anecdotes. The one about your
father working as a
truck driver, that felt so vivid. Can you expand a bit on why it's important for you to include
those stories of
migration in your work?
Rupi Kaur:
I felt the need to include those stories because I saw the way that so many essential workers were
so ignored during the
beginning of the pandemic. And I was thinking about whose bodies were on the line to feed people who
had the resources
to afford getting delivery and takeout every single day, and pay for private doctors, et cetera, et
cetera. There was
one particular article, I believe in The New York Times, about folks who were working
with Uber Eats
and just delivering
food. And all of them were immigrants. So many of them were people of colour.
And it just really broke my heart. I've seen how my father has really given his body and his entire
life to feeding us,
in a job that wasn't kind to him. Him and I, because he was also not working for quite some time
during quarantine, he
shared so many stories with me. I really wanted to write about those stories in the book. When he
first came here, he
had to work for free for so many truck companies, and how he was abused by bosses, and how there was
nowhere for these
new immigrants to go to have their voices heard.
Shivani Persad:
I would love to talk about the fact that you have a whole section of this book on rest. I would love
to know, how has
your relationship to rest and productivity changed over the last year?
Rupi Kaur:
I used to be such a productivity junkie. I feel that's always been me. Maybe it comes from—and I
write about that—I
don't know where I get it from. I think it's seeing my parents work nonstop, like never take a day
off, mixed with the
capitalistic nature of the society we live in.
Also, I think there's a lot of trauma that I experienced and didn't have access to therapy or
resources. So working,
working, working became my way of like running away from all that. And I hated having a minute to
relax because that's
when the bad thoughts would come up. And I was like, “No, no, no, no, no. Stuff them away. Okay,
work, work, work.” And
then I think it started to become a problem in the last couple of years, because it became really
hard to work at that
pace because of the depression. There would be weeks where I couldn’t get out of bed. And then when
that happened, I
would punish myself even more.
Then I realized, “Oh my god, I'm addicted to being productive. But that's not necessarily a good
thing because it's a
rat race that nobody wins. This issue has nothing to do with what I'm trying to create on the
outside, and I really need
to tackle what it is that I'm running from and how I want to function as a human being.” So I think
that the pandemic,
and the pause and the stillness of the pandemic, really forced me to find the language for it.
It's been language that I've been trying to find for a very long time. But within the stillness, I
was finally, finally
able to find it. I think what really helped was realizing that play is just as productive as work,
and balance is the
most productive thing that you can do for yourself.
Shivani Persad:
It's all about the balance.
And so before we wrap up, can I ask you to read something in honour of International Women's Day?
Rupi Kaur:
Can you hear the women who came before me?
Five hundred thousand voices ringing through my neck as if this were all a stage built for
them.
I can't tell which parts of me are me and which parts are them.
Can you see them taking over my spirit, shaking out of my limbs to do everything they couldn't
do
when they were alive?
[music]
Shivani Persad:
So we just have a few fun questions we like to ask people at the end of every episode. What book
changed your life?
Rupi Kaur:
That's so hard. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. It's a collection of 20 poems that I feel
I've been
obsessed with since I
was young and will continue to be obsessed with forever. It’s so good.
Shivani Persad:
What are you reading right now?
Rupi Kaur:
I am reading this book called Heavy by Kiese Laymon. I might be pronouncing his name
wrong. It's an
amazing memoir. I'm
almost done. He's such a brilliant writer.
Shivani Persad:
What brings you joy?
Rupi Kaur:
Laughing.
Shivani Persad:
Are you laughing a lot lately?
Rupi Kaur:
I am. But I wish I was laughing more. Being around my friends makes me laugh, but I haven't seen
them in so long.
Shivani Persad:
What does purposeful living mean to you?
Rupi Kaur:
Listening to your inner voice and giving yourself whatever it is you need without feeling any sort
of guilt.
Shivani Persad:
That's such a good answer. Rupi, thank you so much for being here with us today. It was such a
privilege.
Rupi Kaur:
Thank you, Shivani, for having me. It was so lovely talking to you.
[music]
Shivani Persad:
Thank you for tuning in to our conversation with the wonderful Rupi Kaur.
For more ideas to help you live well, including Rupi’s books, milk and honey, the
sun and her
flowers, and home body,
visit indigo.ca/podcast.
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts.
You can subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Well Said was produced for Indigo Inc. by Vocal Fry Studios and is co-hosted by me,
Shivani Persad.
[music]
Shivani Persad:
The information provided in this podcast should not be relied upon by our listeners as medical
advice, even where it has
been presented by physicians or medical practitioners. Any information presented in this podcast is
not, nor is it
intended to be, a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The views
expressed throughout
this podcast represent the views of the guests and do not necessarily represent the views of Indigo.