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.

 

 

How is an homage to language even possible to do, unless you're about two hundred years dead, probably? Both Klar and I like to read, we send letters to each other, and I write poetry while she writes the most amazing insightful mini-journals. However, this post is solely about why I love to write.

I like to send letters to a couple of my friends, for different reasons. I send ones to one of my friends because of distance, and also because it's sometimes difficult to have a conversation where we are both there at the same time. Then Klara and I send letters, just because we're cute, there's something inherently uplifting about receiving post that isn't a bank statement or subscription, and because you put more thought into a letter. There's no delete key, so it seems more thoughtful. That and the fact that it's tactile; I keep letters in a box under my bed, whereas Facebook messenger messages and snapchats are there one minute, gone or replaced the next.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on a poem that is one of my favourites, because it's special between me and one of my friends. I also mentioned that I *dabble* in writing a wee bit myself, in that I take it very seriously but present it to hardly anyone ever (strangers on my Tumblr that nobody from my life knows exists), and when I do, it's in the light-hearted 'take a look at this bit of crap I was working on in my spare time' sort of fashion, and I wait about six months before posting anything. That's all that it is: I know a lot is superficial, and older stuff has depth forsaken in favour of rhyme or the correct number of syllables. I especially like haikus because you have 17 syllables to speak, so words are a scarcity.

Also while we are on the subject: a homage or an homage? :)

Probably my favourite ever poem was introduced to me by one of my closest friends, who I had the privilege to love, which only made our friendship stronger when that ended. He read this to me, in every cliche way (I remember Klara throwing up metaphorically when I told her), showed off and asked me what I thought, how I understood it. I am a lover of poetry, and amateur at writing, and I like to mull metaphors over for a while, like how someone may take a second before swallowing the first mouthful of wine, to allow every layer to seep out.

Dublin was painted with a broad stroke paintbrush, and I immediately loved it. So much so, that I have a 5-second recording of it being read, on my phone, and while I lost many other things from there, I managed to recover this the other day.

I love it because it's romantic but subtle. It's contemporary, but the only thing new is the dusty old taxi cab, so does that even qualify? It's sexual, I mean who says 'she dropped me in her well', but it's not inappropriate. Every time I hear or read this, I think of a man so overwhelmed by his beautiful Nessa, that he's drowning, obsessed with her name and wanting to spend his life with her. There was a time when I couldn't hear this poem, and thankfully no readings seem to exist on the internet.

But now it's the letter finisher, always the PS in what we send across the Irish Sea. Yes, I do send romantic poetry to people I used to have romantic relationships with, but no it's not messy. It would be messy if it were different, but it's not. It will most definitely be in the Christmas card I send to my best friend in Ireland.

PS- you were a whirlpool, and I very nearly drowned