# Talk:Rupi Kaur

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Dakotarose777. Peer reviewers: Dakotarose777.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:14, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

This page should not be speedily deleted because... Rupi Kaur is perhaps the most famous contemporary Canadian poet. She has been featured in countless publications including the Huffington Post, the Montreal Gazette, The Guardian, CBC, The Toronto Star, and many more. Her critically acclaimed book, Milk and Honey, has stayed in the top three most purchased poetry books on amazon.com for several months. Kaur has gone on to be invited to talk at several universities throughout Canada. This page should not be deleted as Ms. Kaur is an important figure not only in Canadian literature, but also in contemporary poetry world wide. --Cooperrr1986 (talk) 02:35, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Upon conducting a good faith web search, I rescind my nomination for the speedy deletion of this article. I now believe that the subject does meet Wikipedia's criteria for notability and have added several improvements of my own to the page. --Erick Shepherd (talk) 04:51, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

This page seems factually sound, although there are a few problems with it. The main issue is that it is very bare bones and lacks much information. I think more in depth sections about her book and her spoken word and art work needs to be made, among other things. There also might be some close paraphrasing on the page. I plan to edit this page and address these issues in the near future. 
Dakotarose777 (talk) 21:16, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Most discussions of allegations of plagiarism in Kaur's poetry that I've seen, including the discussion in this Wikipedia entry, use poor-quality sources as well as overly broad definitions of plagiarism. This Wikipedia entry even cites a user comment on an Amazon.com page, which I am sure doesn't come close to qualifying as a reliable source. Jk180 (talk) 23:27, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree. That whole section should be removed. "... has drawn significant attention, with 127 likes" is not worth including in the article. sikander (talk) 23:45, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
I removed the paragraph about the Amazon comment. --Apoc2400 (talk) 10:39, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I would work on adding more details like the Talk page says is necessary, as well as ensuring that there is no plagiarism and reliable sources are being used as the Talk page mentions a need for  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deena.husami (talk • contribs) 19:28, 5 November 2018 (UTC) 

Many wiki pages of celebrities with English-unconventional names will show, in parentheses, an IPA transcription of said name. Is there any place where Kaur has audibly pronounced her last name that we could add one to this page?
73.169.192.71 (talk) 20:17, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

discussing her? ∯WBGconverse 16:52, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Faust, Gretchen (2017). Frömming, Urte Undine; Köhn, Steffen; Fox, Samantha; Terry, Mike (eds.). Hair, Blood and the Nipple: Instagram Censorship and the Female Body. Ethnographic Perspectives Across Global Online and Offline Spaces. Transcript Verlag. pp. 159–170. ISBN 9783837634976. Retrieved 2019-09-13. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
Bivens, Kristin Marie; Cole, Kirsti (2018-01-01). "The Grotesque Protest in Social Media as Embodied, Political Rhetoric". Journal of Communication Inquiry. 42 (1): 5–25. doi:10.1177/0196859917735650. ISSN 0196-8599.
Quint, Chella (2019-07-01). "From embodied shame to reclaiming the stain: Reflections on a career in menstrual activism". The Sociological Review. 67 (4): 927–942. doi:10.1177/0038026119854275. ISSN 0038-0261.
Nijhawan, Michael; Arora, Kamal (2013-12-01). "'Lullabies for Broken Children': Diasporic Citizenship and the Dissenting Voices of Young Sikhs in Canada". Sikh Formations. 9 (3): 299–321. doi:10.1080/17448727.2013.861696. ISSN 1744-8727.
Lyons, Sara (2015-10-02). "On Heroines, Heroine Worship and the Heroine in Feminism". Women: A Cultural Review. 26 (4): 462–471. doi:10.1080/09574042.2015.1106257. ISSN 0957-4042.
VanderBeek, Conner Singh (2019-01-11). "To be a child of diaspora: The irreconcilable outsider in Sikh discourse". Sikh Formations. 0 (0): 1–13. doi:10.1080/17448727.2018.1545192. ISSN 1744-8727.
Leeder, Karen (2018-07-03). "'I am a Double-voiced […] Bird': Identity and Voice in Ulrike Almut Sandig's Poetry". Oxford German Studies. 47 (3): 329–350. doi:10.1080/00787191.2018.1503471. ISSN 0078-7191. - Important
Watts, Rebecca (January 2018). "The Cult of the Noble Amateur". P. N. Review. 44 (3). - Important
"The Problem With Rupi Kaur's Poetry". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved 2019-09-13. - Important

How is people finding some TikTok cringey notable enough to include here? Oscar666kta420swag (talk) 07:51, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

The entire reason that Kaur is known is because her poetry is laughably bad.  We don't say "her poetry is bad" on Wikipedia, we say "these critics have said that her poetry is bad [1][2][3]" but without saying either it becomes yet another "random collection of arbitrary facts" article where a person could read and memorize the entire page and still come away with no understanding of why the subject is notable.  Predestiprestidigitation (talk) 09:20, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

I think it's pretty odd that a large portion of the Reception section is dedicated to people responding and dismissing criticism of her writing, yet we don't have a single source leading back to that criticism. Seems odd and unbalanced to have a section full of people responding to criticism, without any of the actual criticism being presented, especially when the response to the criticism is based in large part around accusing people of bigotry - it seems like an instance in which you'd want to make it easy for people to actually see the criticism.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Centrist marxist (talk • contribs) 14:52, 29 June 2021 (UTC) 

Based on the lengths of their respective Wikipedia pages, it seems like this site thinks she is. This article has really gotten out of hand.
Let's start with the elephant in the room: Rupi Kaur is an Internet meme. She's famous because she's an incredibly bad self-proclaimed "poet" whom the dumbest people online like, and is known to most people who have heard of her solely through parody and mockery of her work. You can dress that up in Wikipedia neutral language and citations as much as you want, but it's still the case. It's ludicrous that she's getting more coverage than people who are actually important to the history of poetry as opposed to the history of Instagram and online humor.
Second fact: Wikipedia has a recency bias that stems mainly from the tendency to add a sentence to an article for every news article that comes out about its subject. People who are actively generating news in the present day when it's easy to find thousands of outlets online get huge pages that are just accumulations of often unhelpful sentences piled on each other. Most of the information in this page is totally pointless to understand Rupi Kaur at the level of an encyclopedia entry and is somewhere between the level of detail one would expect from a book-length biography and meaningless public relations speak. For example, right now the article contains the sentence "After meeting her business partner, she became more calculated." This assertion has nothing to do with understanding why Rupi Kaur is notable and adds nothing to the article.
I think this page needs a full rewrite that just focuses, in about three paragaphs, on the important facts about Kaur's biography, citations to critics who have explained why her poetry is terrible, and a reasonable (2-3 sentence) rebuttal from her defenders. Predestiprestidigitation (talk) 17:29, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Predestiprestidigitation: Wikipedia doesn't invent the coverage we merely coalescence it; if you resent the popular discussion of her then write to Rolling Stone and The New York Times and The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal and the BBC and Rebecca Watts and P.N. Review and the National Poetry Library.
Again, we don't dress up anything; we report that she's a notable poet, as does the citations we whole-heartily parrot. Lastly, why would we butcher the article? Kaur's notability has been secured, we're thus working to creating a comprehensive biography. To put your request in context: three paragraphs don't even cover the entirety of Emily Dickenson's teenage years. I don't imagine you're requesting something similar happen to her, featured, article. Mind you, on the flip side, we do already have three paragraphs summarising Kaur's biography. It's the lead. Wikipedia doesn't bend to our enjoyment of the subjects - I don't even like Kaur's poetry.
But, as you say, Marianne Moore and Gwendolyn Brooks are important to poetry, why don't you work on their articles? DMT Biscuit (talk) 20:09, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
"Coalescing" an ever-growing list of trivia based on how much coverage a subject gets in online media in 2021 is neither the correct standard for weight and depth on Wikipedia, nor the standard it purports to follow.   Predestiprestidigitation (talk) 21:27, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
@Predestiprestidigitation: Your definition of trivia is bizarre. How is a discussion of her career, style and reception trivial? It appears more worthy of inclusion than Dickenson's final letter: "Little Cousins, Called Back. Emily". DMT Biscuit (talk) 09:52, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
Here are the first four things I noticed scrolling to random parts of the article:
The number of people who attended a specific poetry reading the Kaur did in 2009.
The fact that Kaur participated on the middle school speech team in seventh grade.
Quotes about the exact number of pens she used when writing poetry in college.
An entire paragraph with multiple quotes describing a period of a few days in which some photos were not available on Kaur's Instagram.
This is all trivial, especially for someone who is only notable for the exact same reasons as Pepe the Frog or the Harlem Shake. To compare it to writings of Emily Dickinson (presumably who you meant in referring to this "Dickenson" person), which are studied in order to understand one of the most important poets of all time, is ludicrous.  Predestiprestidigitation (talk) 10:03, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Rupi Kaur/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: MSG17 (talk · contribs) 01:49, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Hello! I will be reviewing this article for GA-worthiness as part of the Jan 2022 backlog drive. I was really surprised to see that no one had taken up this review until now. I have read the article previously and found it to be rather interesting and informative, but now I will check it against the good article criteria. I don't forsee many major issues, but let's get started!


### Prose and MOS
I find most of the notes a bit strange, as they contain information that can be integrated into prose and is relevant to each section (and wouldn't just be "sidetracking"). In particular, the last two notes (feminist critics on the period images and other poets on Watt) strike me as details that would be better in the main text as they talk about relevant reactions and reception.
Also, it should be "Watts'", not ""Watt's".
Both resolved. DMT Biscuit (talk) 11:46, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
their similar themes and use of honey is "by-product of our times" add '[a]' or 'the' to the start of the quote
that in the Renaissance or Victorian periods - Kaur attributing their namesakes replace " - " with emdash
– although her father refused her to pursue it in education that's kinda awkward, maybe something like ;however, her father prohibited her from studying the subject in university. Another approach would be to split it from the line about her music studies and merge it with her other aspirations.
Both resolved. DMT Biscuit (talk) 21:52, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
– that Kaur later inferred as a result of wishing to preserve their orginal culture don't think the dash is needed, since inferred is used right after I think "realized/interpreted was a result" would be better, "orginal" -> "original"
Carl Wilson and Khaira-Hanks, argued that her mainstream success and personal identity contributed towards people disregarding her work. no need for comma
Both resolved. DMT Biscuit (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
literature scholar, Lili Pâquet no comma needed
Resolved. DMT Biscuit (talk) 04:19, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
One last lookover...

When studying poetry she'd "agonize over each and every word", "I would have to pull out... replace comma with colon
Brampton, Instagram, COVID-19 pandemic are linked multiple times in the body (found using User:Evad37/duplinks-alt)
In general, I do find your use of dashes a bit different form what I am accustomed to - there would be a lot of instances I would use commas and semicolons instead. Looking at your previous work, this seems like a style that I don't know about rather than something that is "wrong". It's nice to learn new things! Anyway, these comments should be the last on prose and MOS.

Both resolved. For what it's worth, I like to use dashes as denoting an aside of sorts. DMT Biscuit (talk) 18:22, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
Great! Passed.


### Paraphrasing and images
Earwig's tool saw mostly false positives. There are a few words that could be consindered close, but I think they'll be fine. Passed.
The images are all properly licensed and used appropriately. The one fair-use image is essential for depicting the illustrations that Kaur uses in her poetry and art. Passed.


### Stability
No edit warring or drastic daily changes, just minor additions. Passed.


### Neutrality
Given how polarized reception is for Kaur's work and the amount of discussion about why that is so, covering her neutrally is no small feat. SO far, it looks like it offers a good look into the different perspectives of audiences and critics on Kaur, but I will look more at this aspect later.
After looking at this again, I think the article has done a fantastic job showing the difference between critical and audience reception and the different views of her work. Passed. MSG17 (talk) 02:30, 4 January 2022 (UTC)


### Scope
Scope wise, I think this covers as many relevant details and aspects of Kaur and her work as possible without becoming too minute or unnecessarily focused on certain aspects. Passed.


### References
All the works cited are reliable. Additionally, it looks like there are a good mix of sources (popular news and journals as well as sources from across the Anglosphere). Passed.
Every statement is backed up by a source (in fact, often multiple sources). No original research here.
Layout-wise, I noticed that most references have wikilinks for the works they come from, but there are quite a few exceptions. Please standardize this (I would recommend linking all occurrences). MSG17 (talk) 03:34, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
Resolved. DMT Biscuit (talk) 11:46, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
There are quite a few places where there are four or five refs next to each other. Usually three should be the max, although given the themes expressed by (and, dare I say, bias against) Kaur, it is understandable that some statements need more. Nevertheless, I would recommend looking at removing a couple or bundling citations.
This is a slight problem. The reason for the various citation clumping is because Kaur's received little in-depth attention - monographs and whatnot. To be properly comprehensive, I've essentially had to glue together ephemera. For obvious reasons, I don't want to, if avoidable, remove info for aestheticism. Bundling citations - as far as I can tell - isn't very viable, per the templates listed and structure of the article. I have altered articles for reasons of bundling citations twice before but that's a duly process. I could do it again now but that would require placing this review on hold for a significant portion of time, real life permitting. I do intend to do it in the foreseeable future. Ultimately, your discretion is key. What do you think is the right order? Or do you have specific means of implementation? DMT Biscuit (talk) 21:45, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
Hmm... yeah, citation bundling has been messy. While I do like sfn, I wouldn't really recommend it here due to the large number of website refs used once (as opposed to books and other paged publications being used multiple times, which is more of sfn's specialty). I think the refs can be managed by a couple changes:
Move the content in notes c and d to mainspace: four refs followed by two notes is too much, and IMO this info is better there anyway (previous notes comment)
Try to find a way to shorten the five-ref cluster, either by some form of sentence restructuring or deleting a ref.
Resolved both, four-plus ref clusters have been reduced via sentence restructure and ref deletion. If there's further examples you take umbrage with, feel free to flag them up. DMT Biscuit (talk) 17:14, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
This has resolved the issue quite well. In fact, I feel that this has developed your writing style more in the article, particularly through the use of dashes. No more objections here.


### Final notes
Well, I gotta hand it to you, this was great work as a comprehensive and encyclopediac dive into a rather popular and divisive poet. I have no skill with the art, unfornuately; if I did, I would come up with a clever end to this review. But it still speaks to the accessibility the article had to laypeople, much like Kaur's work. Now, I deem this article promoted to GA, congrats! MSG17 (talk) 03:10, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

At present the 'Early Life' section is poorly written and needs to be edited for clarity and concision. I think the descriptive detail is too much and goes beyond what we would usually expect from a Wikipedia article. Can we try to focus on 'just the facts' and avoid straying into an overly developed chronicle of every minor facet of her life? Boredintheevening (talk) 17:16, 29 September 2023 (UTC)