Book Review: Rupi Kaur's 'the sun and her flowers'

For my birthday, I received from my friend Gemma the fairly-recently-released sequel to 'milk and honey' by Rupi Kaur, Instagram poet to the masses. She's one of the most instantly recognisable poets to millennials, partly due to her spliced, free form style, also due to her affinity with capital letters, partly because some of her love poems from 2am are so *goddamn* relatable.

This doesn't mean she hasn't endured criticism:

it
doesn't seem
all that hard
for one
to chop
poetry
like you chopped
my heart (for example lol)

However, there is no denying that Rupi Kaur, et al,  has done wonders for modern poetry, for explorations of identity and intersectionality, whilst remaining non-preachy and relevant. Overall, I do actually really enjoy a lot of her poetry, and only some of it makes me groan in a 'how is this really deemed art' way, so I was excited to read her latest offering.

I think the thing about Kaur is that she manages to concisely and accurately represent feelings which can sometimes feel like they're unexplainable: love, loss, confusion. Her second book shows her having grown into herself and her style even more than in 'milk and honey'. It is less, and at once more, superficial. She still dabbles in cliche - one example being the *revolutionary* 'you're everywhere/ except right here/ and it hurts', but one of my absolute favourite parts was the section 'rooting' which explored her parents' emigration from India to Canada.

It also happened to come at a very important time for me, where I needed to read some strongly willed poetry for motivation. I've accidentally started this academic year single (again lol, having basically wasted the last year) and with a huuuuuge workload, which was getting me down a tad. Despite seeming like it's trying too hard in some places, Rupi Kaur's newest collection is uplifting and interesting, with a hugely powerful voice.