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.

Klara

Recently we were contacted by OGECHI's press team and asked to review her new music video (out 22nd October 2017) called BLVCK + WOMVN. If I'm honest I hadn't heard of her before but the information the company sent to me she is a poet, author, recording artist and dancer. She made her debut at only 17 years old in 2015 and I'm all for supporting young artists, and Amber and Ana agreed so we decided to go ahead with the review. The lyrics are a poem so they're very deep and explore race and femininity which I personally liked, I think these are important topics which are often avoided due to perceived taboos. The video also depicts a woman dancing while onlookers ignore or glance over her which I think represents the struggle for women, particularly those of colour, to be noticed for their work. Overall I would definitely recommend watching this music video.

Amber

I listened to the video first out of us, and really, really enjoyed it, in terms of aesthetic, music, and substance. I loved the strength of Ogechi, even showing through the bare-bones title, and shows intersectionalism from her perspective of a woman, who is also black. We all picked out the symbolism of the solitary dancer: rejected by her peers and still dancing on. In terms of musical content, I thought the opening was Beyonce-during-Formation-reminiscent but then she really came into her own. She directly addressed issues such as misogyny and other struggles she has experienced, and obviously, with her album entitled 'Intersectional Blvckness' she is highly aware of the importance of intersectionalism, which was fab. Not only is the content very personal and informed, but the music is great too, and it works so well as a song, rather than just as poetry.

Ana

Having not heard of the artist before I was curious as to what the video will be like and was pleasantly surprised. Being quite interested in the issues surrounding gender and race, I found the video to be an insightful and powerful take on the intersection between the two. The portrayal of a woman as a lone dancer voiced several messages to me; it was both a depiction of the struggle women go through and the strength they have to keep going. Another element which I found interesting is that at the end of the music video the performer is silenced by a man, which illustrates the ignorance and lack of engagement with the art produced by women of colour, and therefore the lack of attention the messages those powerful lyrics send to the listener. I would definitely recommend watching this video as it forces the audience to engage with the struggles of women, and more specifically women of colour and further comment on the ignorance exhibited towards the said issues by society.

What is an inspirational woman?
What is a strong woman?
How do these differ from strong and inspirational men?
What is a feminist?

Inspiration lies around us wherever we are in the world: in order to live a fulfilling life, I believe it is necessary to be inspired and watch others be inspired and thus inspiring.

We live in an age where inspiration and feminist and strength and all these other descriptors, when applied to women, take on a rather arbitrary meaning. Beyoncé and Rosa Parks and Emma Watson, Marie Curie, Kim Kardashian and Caitlin Moran, Christiane Amanpour, Amal Clooney, Emmeline Pankhurst and Malala Yousafzai. All described, by varying media sources, as all of these adjectives. I won't get into the convoluted back-and-forth of 'are they - aren't they' for some of these women, as I think it rather undermines the whole process, yet it is undeniable that without more of a clear cut idea, these words are lazily thrown around.

Celebrity culture is, therefore, partly to blame for the bastardisation of a word, that, even when applied to men, connotes a wholly less vacuous meaning. 'inspirational male celebrities' brings up Muhammad Ali, a sportsperson and Richard Branson, an entrepreneur, as opposed to 'inspirational female celebrities' which suggests that Guiliana Rancic from Fashion Police (who was racist about a red carpet look by Zendaya) and Taylor Swift (arguably one of the least feminist feminists around). Even these simple searches show that the parameters for the key words I highlighted are just different, based on gender.

For a woman to be strong, as has been said many times, she has to act more like the perpetuated view of an ideal man. Yet in practice when a women acts in this way (assertive, dominant, confident etc) she is labelled a bitch, bossy and that almost certainly she is on her period.

I disagree with this perception of what a strong woman looks like: it's another attempt to pigeon-hole women and shame them into one certain model. It's like when members of the feminist community dictate what a feminist is: no, that is equally harmful and oppressive as a patriarchal society telling the population what a man and a woman should look like. It isn't difficult to be strong, in fact you almost have to disprove yourself to become 'not strong': cowardice isn't borne through action, but rather inaction. Take myself: I am strong, in certain ways yes, yet am I inspirational? Most certainly not. Therefore there must be some difference.

In a roundabout way, I am trying to show that 'empowering' labels such as strong will never be empowering until they mean the same for all genders.

'Inspirational' is an easier word to define. Young people are naturally less likely to be inspirations, as they have done less in their shorter lifetimes, but surely if we take the idea that oppressed groups within society 'work' harder just to exist (i.e. each day been more of a struggle, due to prejudice, institutionalised discrimination etc) it is easy to see why when someone from an oppressed group within society does something amazing, they are lauded even more highly. Let's apply this model to women: a female, ethnic minority CEO is thus surely more inspirational than a white, male counterpart, as the struggle within society to reach that point is harder. It's like when you run on a treadmill, but there's someone next to you in the gym running on an incline: when they're doing equally well, this is a result of greater effort.

This is why the words 'inspirational woman' or 'strong woman' are used regularly and interchangeably. I think it's also important to remember that 'celebrity' and 'inspiration' are also not equivalents: an inspiration can be anyone, and you may be inspired by one tiny part of a person. I think that wanting women to be strong and recognised as strong can never be a bad thing, so long as those that aren't strong aren't looked down upon for not fitting this new female ideal.

Essentially the crux of this column piece has been the simple line of: 'you do you', and to try and separate out some of the messy descriptors given to women. For it is better to be strong and not to have lived a hugely inspiring life, than it is to be inspirational for celebrity or something like that, and weak.