4 Poems Written in Rupi Kaur’s Writing Workshops
By: Leigh Fisher
Tags: Creative Writing, Essay, Poem, Rupi Kaur, Writing

4 Poems Written in Rupi Kaur’s Writing Workshops

Rupi Kaur recently held two writing workshops on Instagram—here’s what I wrote and learned.

Photo & Poem by Author

I had the excellent luck to tune into both of Rupi Kaur’s writing workshops on Instagram. I’m always eager to learn from other poets, especially poets who have the eminence of being a New York Times bestseller. For the first workshop, I found it very serendipitously. I picked up my phone to see what was new on the gram during my lunch break, saw she was live, and jumped “write” in.

If you aren’t familiar with Rupi Kaur, she is arguably the most successful poet of our generation. Her two books, Milk and Honey and The Sun and Her Flowers, are some of the bestselling poetry books on the market. She is a poet, illustrator, and author. Kaur became incredibly popular on Instagram and Tumblr by sharing short visual poetry with strong emotions and messages. Her debut book, Milk and Honey, has been an NYT bestseller for over three years.

The long and short of that is that if you’re a poet and you want to publish a book someday, you probably want to pay attention to Rupi Kaur. Even if publishing isn’t on your agenda just yet, it’s still fun and enriching to write alongside an experienced poet.

One of the writing activities was to write a list poem and list 10 positive things you can share with the world. I got a little set on one track of thinking and kept each item on the list somewhat related. I also couldn’t resist linking together some lines and word choices. It felt so great just to do some free writing and not get too lost in doubt and revision.

For me, the most enriching and educational part of this prompt was trying something different. A study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology did a lab study on how writing before bed helped participants fall asleep significantly faster. Some wrote to-do lists for the next day and others wrote a simple summary of what they accomplished that day. Interestingly, those who did the to-do list were the ones who reaped the most benefits and fell asleep fastest.

While that study was focused on lists and how they can help you sleep, list poems feel like a fun, creative extension of that idea. Writing lists about things like positive things you can contribute to the world, things you're grateful for, or things that make you happy can be delightfully enriching.

The prompt here was to write a poem from the perspective of a non-living object. The goal was to answer specific questions from the object’s point of view in each line. It’s something of a sonnet, but with pentameter thrown out the window since we were free writing. (Sorry, Shakespeare! I still love you, Willy.)

A lot of people chose a book as their topic; it’s only natural, we’re writers, so books are usually close at hand. I wanted to take a different approach with the book object in this poem. I didn’t want to immediately give away that this was from the perspective of a book; I wanted to present the emotions with enough human authenticity that the reality of the perspective being a book comes as a surprise of sorts.

Thus, we have a poem by a very insecure, damaged book on the shelf at a bookstore, hoping to be bought, but knowing they probably won’t be due to those imperfections. I took this poem in a dark direction, but it felt great to write.

Let’s fast forward to Rupi Kaur’s second poetry writing workshop. Freewriting is something I don’t indulge myself in nearly often enough, so when she announced she was doing a second workshop, I put it on my calendar and made sure I was going to attend.

This is my response to the first prompt, which was to give your life story a title and explain why you gave it that title. There are a lot of things I can appreciate about the tiny, isolated town I grew up in, but when I was growing up and trying to establish myself, it was very much a prison.

I can tell you this much — it’s not easy to go from a place with almost no opportunities for writers to work in NYC. “Ambition” often comes off sounding like a bad word or having a negative connotation, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It can just refer to your determination to live the life you want to and do good things in your own way.

This prompt was enjoyable since it really makes you think about yourself and your life. It does it a specific, controlled way that lets you take the narrative in any direction you wish to. It encourages introspection, which we can all benefit from doing a bit of in a time of quarantine.

This is by far the longest poem I’ve ever posted on Instagram — scroll through and read all three parts. I wanted to split it up both to make it more readable and to add a little thematic build-up to really highlight the concluding stanza. This is my first ever attempt at performance poetry. It’s a rough first attempt and I kept my stanzas uniform because I can’t shake my papery ways completely, but it was still fun to try something different that I’m usually much too afraid to try.

The prompt was to write down something you’re struggling with and tell a story of how it started, what it’s like, what it is, and how you conquer it. For me, I chose the problem of “not being heard.” It made for a fun challenge since personifying it was with the guided opening line made things tricky. I love working with personification though, so this was a great activity for me.

As poets, it’s important for us to venture outside of our comfort zones. It’s very easy just to keep writing more and more poems about topics you’re familiar with in poetic forms you’re comfortable with, but that’s not how a person grows as a writer. Experimenting with new prompts, different forms, and learning from other poets is an incredible way to stimulate your growth as a writer.