Rupi Kaur

In short

Podcast Notes: Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

Episode Title

Rupi Kaur Podcast Description: In-depth interviews that may blow your mind.

Guest Introduction Rupi Kaur is a celebrated poet, performer, and artist, known for her impactful works like *Milk and Honey*, *The Sun and Her Flowers*, and *Home Body*. Her journey began with self-publishing at age 21, and she has since become a best-selling author, with a massive following and international tours.

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Key Discussion Points

Writing and Creative Process

Initial Writing Experience:
Kaur describes writing her first book as a magical experience where she was immersed in creativity without concern for the outcome.
Despite discouragement from her professor regarding poetry's marketability, she chose to self-publish *Milk and Honey*.

Unexpected Success:
The book became immensely popular, spending over 100 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, leading to both positive and traumatic experiences.

Challenges of Subsequent Writing:
The pressure of a two-book deal led to a stressful writing process for her second book, marked by health issues and a punitive approach to writing.
Acknowledged that creative work can sometimes feel unnatural, especially when driven by external expectations.

Sabbatical and Rediscovery:
To reconnect with her passion and creativity, Kaur took a sabbatical, allowing herself space to re-evaluate her artistic journey and regain control over her life.

Evolution of Performance and Audience Connection

Transition to Social Media:
Kaur initially performed on stage and then moved to share her work online, particularly on Tumblr and later Instagram.
She expresses reluctance to be labeled an "Instagram poet," as her roots lie in performance poetry.

Audience Dynamics:
Kaur emphasizes the importance of audience engagement during live performances, likening the experience to a celebratory event where laughter and connection thrive.
She notes that her audience varies greatly across different cultures but shares a common emotional resonance with her work.

Challenges of Performance:
Initially, Kaur battled anxiety before performances but has grown into her confidence and enjoys the interactive nature of live readings.

Artistic Identity and Social Media

Identity Beyond Social Media:
Kaur discusses the tension between her identity as an artist and the expectation to remain active on social media, particularly during her sabbatical.
She grapples with the pressure of public perception while seeking to redefine her relationship with social media.

Creative Freedom:
The realization that she needs to create in a way that inspires her rather than adhere to past success or external expectations.

Personal Insights and Relationships

Family Dynamics:
Kaur shares her complex relationship with her father, shaped by his traumatic past and how it influenced her growth as an artist.
She discusses her mother's struggles with identity in a patriarchal culture and the evolving roles within her family.

Cultural Heritage:
Kaur reflects on her Sikh heritage and how it influences her work, drawing connections between personal experiences and broader societal themes.

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Key Takeaways

Creative Process is Fluid: Kaur emphasizes the importance of creative exploration without the confines of expectations or strict structures.
Audience Engagement is Vital: The relationship between performer and audience is central to the power of poetry and performance.
Redefining Success: Kaur is navigating her understanding of success, recognizing that fulfillment comes from personal expression rather than societal validation.
Cultural Context Matters: Her experiences as a South Asian woman inform her work and artistic identity, enriching her poetry.

Closing Thoughts

Kaur's conversation with Rick Rubin highlights the ongoing journey of an artist in balancing creativity, performance, and personal identity, revealing the complexities behind the success of her poetry.

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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:01Tetragrammaton.

0:25Writing the first book, and I mean, I think so many artists will say this, it was probably the most creative, fulfilling experience because you're not really thinking about the outcome or the result. You're like totally swept up in the magic and lost in the moment. And like, you know, that source is just like working through you. And then even when my professor said like, your book is not going to get published. Like nobody publishes poetry. Nobody reads it. I was of unbothered because I really, I guess, wasn't interested or didn't really care for it to be read because it was something larger working through me that was like, well, I just want to say it.

1:06So then I just self-published it and I said it. And then what happened afterward was just so beyond my control. This book became like a machine and got so noisy. You know, it was like on the New York Times bestseller list for a hundred weeks from selling like millions of copies and I was like 22 23 years old and it was amazing and then equally traumatizing yeah and then it was like all of the outside voices come in and you're like there was just no I guess space and I was still graduating from university and I don't know when or how it happened And I think it's always like not maybe one big thing, but a lot of small things.

1:52But yeah, it became about sustaining whatever it was being at the top of that. And, you know, I remember signing my second book deal was like a two book deal. And I signed it like November 2016. And they said, OK, we'll need the draft of your second book by January 28th. 2017 and I was like that's not even six months wow and you know I like locked myself in the room and I started to create in a way that was not organic to me because I remember arriving at my you know the blank piece of paper for the first time with an intention to write the book and having no idea how I even did it the first time yeah and you know I'm like reading about other authors and Stephen King says, you know, you need to like put these many hours in and these many words.

2:48And it was like writing became such a punishing act. And like my body became so sick and I would go through these like 72 hour migraine spells. I couldn't digest food. It was just like pain all the time. But the book eventually came out and I read a lot of it and I'm like, oh it's like a little rusty I wish I got like more time to edit it but at the same time I'm like well if I had unlimited time maybe it would have never come out and then this last fall I kind of celebrated the 10-year anniversary of my first book and I knew I was like okay we're kind of done with this chapter and so I decided to take a sabbatical and it's been amazing and it's been so humanizing and I've been definitely getting back into the driver's seat of my life again, feeling good about it and feeling that spark come back and that magic.

3:48Yes. And it's exciting and terrifying. Are you still an Instagram poet? See, for me, I never saw myself as that. I see. Because I started performing, for me, it started on the stage. Tell me about that. When's the first time you ever read poetry on stage? I first performed in high school. It was 2009. I think I was like 12th grade. And it was something, I see it like a poster for an open mic night. Didn't really know what that meant. I just signed up. I wrote something, didn't know it was a poem. And I was like, okay, I want to share this. And so I got up and, you know, it went against my entire personality to want to share something like this.

4:31It's a very bad poem, but I recited it anyway. And it was so electrifying. It felt like the first time that people were listening. Wow. And so I just kept going back. And my sort of journey in performance comes so much from my political activism work within my Sikh community. And so that's kind of where it started. And, you know, I would perform at all these local events and open mics. For years, I did that until my friends were like, you know, you write one poem for one event and then you never share that poem again. You know, you could like put it online where millions of people live and they would love that.

5:10And so that's when I turned to Tumblr and I began to share my work there. So they all started as performance pieces. Yes. and they would do those longer poems that were four or five minutes long, like the performative ones would come to life on stage. And when I first started sharing them on Tumblr, it just wasn't landing. Like I could get such a visceral response on stage, but it felt like nobody was reading it online. And that's when I began to experiment. And I realized, wait, there's a difference here. There's like performance poetry and then there's paper poetry and I need to yeah I got really obsessed with this idea of redesigning what a poem how a poem could look like visually and how it could come to life on paper and that's when I began to kind of create these I call them peach pits so I'll like write a first draft and then it's about like peeling back the skin and the flesh and just presenting the core of the idea so that it's like the most concentrated form and it hits you hard and fast, you know, like a shot of vodka or something.

6:22And I started noticing that people's response to that was so visceral and powerful. And so that's when I was like, oh, this is interesting. I'm getting two very different formats, same sort of response. The response is important because that's a dance with the audience as a performer. And so then it went from Tumblr and then years later I went to Instagram And then years of being on Instagram, this audience sort of grew. And then the term Instagram poet was sort of slapped on me. And I was like, well, what the hell is that? But were you the first one? You're the first one I've heard of. That's why I'm asking.

6:58I'm the first one that I know who was sharing on Instagram. There were probably other people who were doing it. We think of Instagram as mainly images. Exactly. So the idea of text on Instagram already is like a disconnect. It was so weird. But it worked. Yeah. And maybe that's part of its strength is that it wasn't what everyone was doing. Yeah. So it was novel. Yes, exactly. Like it was like 2012 on Instagram. And I remember thinking, this is really weird because all my friends are using Instagram to share like vacation photos and really ugly photos of their food. Did you ever use Instagram for anything other than posting?

7:36Never. Pieces? Yeah. I was like one of those people. I was like, oh my God, I'm never going to get Instagram. I'm like, I don't post photos of that. Why would I be interested in that? And then I started using it to share first my paintings and my visual work. And then I remember I lived with my best friends in college and I had written this poem about alcoholism and like domestic violence. And I said to her, I don't know why I decided I wanted to share it there, but I was like, do you think this is super weird? There's no words on Instagram. Should I share it? And I mean, she was like, yeah, go ahead.

8:05Let's see how it goes. And so, yeah, I remember sharing it and reading responses from women saying, wow, this piece makes me feel like such a woman. And I was like, wow, why is that? And really investigating that. Yeah. From the beginning, what was the rhythm of how often you would post something? I would probably post like two new poems a week. Yeah. And would you write them and post them or would they be things that you wrote over time and then posted? Write and post. Write and post. Yeah. Yeah. And were you always doing either open mic nights or some version of getting on stage and reading them the whole time?

8:47Yes. Never stopped? Never stopped. From then till now? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about that. What's it like? First of all, at an open mic night when you're doing poetry, how long do you go up for? So at an open mic you're up for five minutes. Yeah. But then when eventually different organizations were like, hey, we want to fly you to Vancouver and do this and do that. And then suddenly I was like, shoot, well, if you're flying me out, I can't get away with doing five minutes. So then it became like half an hour. And then the more it grew, I was like, OK, what is the format of this look like now?

9:21And it sort of became like a 90 minute, sometimes 120. Wow. Wow. Theatrical experience of poetry that sits on top of like original music that we were producing. But then there was a narrative weave through with storytelling and almost like a form of stand-up comedy, which I would kind of use as a self-defense mechanism, you know, and had no really idea what it was, but it just worked. and my audiences would come and, you know, we'd sell out. But nobody really knew what was going to happen. What kind of places did you play? Any type of performance venue to like opera houses, like Sydney Opera House or, yeah, those kind of, anywhere kind of a musician would perform.

10:08Yeah. Yeah, and then people, you know, at the end would be like. Typically people would be sitting in the audience. They would, yeah, yeah. So more like a theater than a club. Yes, exactly, exactly. And they would come and they'd be like, we really didn't know what you were going to do. We thought maybe you'd design a book or you'd give a talk. But yeah, it's more like theater. How would you describe the audience? It depends on where in the world we are. But what would surprise people is it's really fun, loud, and engaging. It's like half of it feels like a party. And then the other half feels like a sleepover on Friday night with your best girlfriends.

10:49friends and it's a dance. I mean, they're screaming and yelling things out to me and we're having a conversation and I'm responding. And so the frequency is just like building and building and building. I always start to show off from a place of like a tougher place in the same way the books are organized. The trauma or the difficult moments and the suffering come right in the beginning. So we work through that and then we always end up in a place of like celebration. and then you know the frequency sort of builds and it's like feels very magical do you think of the work as optimistic yes you know because people will tell you their how they experience it but you yourself will never be able to experience it so i don't know what it is but describe the differences between the audience in different parts of the world?

11:43Like in America, it's probably 60, 40 women to men or 70, 30. And age? I'd say like 21 to 35. And then you go to a place like India and the age just widens. You get a lot of young girls, middle school, 10, 12. And then you get a lot of like older couples. and then in Australia what surprised me compared to other places was like men coming by themselves maybe in their like 60s interesting yeah and for that was particularly they're coming and holding my third book so it all depends on the themes and what people relate to but at the same time every audience feels the same in a sense because what we're exploring together is like human emotion and that's all universal.

12:37Have you seen anyone else do anything like what you're doing? Cause when you're describing it to me, it feels outside of all of the genres and formats that I'm used to seeing. Yeah. Yeah. I, I haven't. And that's been the challenge, but there are other poets, like there's a poet, incredible poet named Alok, who they tour the world with their poetry. We have a different type of show for sure, but they are probably the only poet I know who are touring globally. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there's a poet I know named Kay Tempest. Oh, yes. Kay is incredible. Yes, yes, yes. And there's poets like, I think, the ones who've inspired me, Andrea Gibson.

13:23And when you're doing a poetry reading, are you reading or are you performing it? I'm performing it. Are you holding a book or no? So for the big poems, like the ones that are like the performance, those are all memorized. They're like six, seven minutes long. And then the smaller ones in between, I have like my book that I'll sort of refer to just as like a backup. Cool. The live performance is the most fun part? Yeah. They're actually, it's so different. It's like, I don't know which one I like more, but the best moments are, yeah, when I'm performing live or when I'm in the flow of writing something that's making my stomach turn.

14:01They're so different because one is so outward because you're connecting with other people's hearts. And then one is so inward because you're connecting with your own heart.

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15:42Would you say everything you write is biographical? No. Tell me about that. I'm most inspired by conversations with people. So a lot of my work is biographical, but then it also becomes about what the people around me, the community around me is going through and what the world is going through. So if someone tells you a story of a difficulty in life that is emotionally charged for you, you might write a poem from that perspective telling that story? I might, but in most cases, it can't just emotionally move me. I have to have some, my life has to have a little bit of that to begin with for me to, I think, like confidently, like dive into that perspective and give my viewpoint on it.

16:34Do you still post two poems a week? No. When did you stop? I stopped posting two new poems a week, probably in like 2017. and then I would post two poems, but poems I'd already written and I was reposting published words for many years. And then in the last year, I kind of stopped. And in this year, I've stopped posting altogether. Tell me about that decision. Was it a decision or did you just stop? It was a decision. Tell me about that. Because it was a weird, it was a hard decision. So much of how I define myself doesn't include social media at all. Yes. But so much of how people define me or why they find me valuable is my social media platform because of like the followers I have.

17:21And so there is always that pressure to engage with it. For example, like when I decided to go on the sabbatical, you know, I let go of my team. I sort of shut down all operations and somebody who has a vested interest in me working. Great person said. OK, like all of that's fine, but just tell her don't stop posting online. And I just feel like I had nothing left to say. I've been sharing and engaging with the online space since 2011. And I was probably, I don't know, like 18, 19 at the time. I just turned 33. I just can't keep engaging in the same way because I'm not the same person. And it was scary because it's so much of the sabbatical has been about letting go of that identity so I can make room for wherever I am and what I need to grow into.

18:15But it's been really freeing. It's been so freeing. But now I'm coming up against this tension that's like, I know I'm ready to create again because I can feel the book baking in here and I know what it feels like and what I want it to say. And so as I'm opening myself up to that, yeah, I'm wrestling with the idea of how to redefine that relationship with social media. because it has to be in a way that inspires me because that's how it worked the first time. And the reality is it's not been inspiring for the last few years. But then there's another part of me that doesn't want to engage at all.

18:52So I'm trying to figure out which one to invest in more. I'm not sure. It also sounds like what you described the first time going on stage, the need to be seen was important then. And now I imagine you feel like you're seen. So maybe your relationship to that has changed. Yeah. And I just don't know if it's a place where I want to be seen on a stage because I feel like I can express what I want to express fully. But the platform has changed so much. If we're just talking specifically Instagram, I feel like I can only throw out a little nugget of what I want to say. And even that will be vastly misunderstood.

19:36Yeah. And so I'm finding myself leaning toward something more long form, whether that's a newsletter or a podcast, while also trying not to create more work for myself. Yeah, I understood. How has performance changed from the time you started doing them to now for you? I think confidence is probably the biggest thing. because when I was first on stage, my knees would be shaking, my hands would be trembling because I'm naturally like a shy, you know, growing up insecure person because that was a voice that was ingrained to me was like, you're not enough and you're always wrong and you're always making mistakes.

20:14But it's been amazing. I mean, I started performing in 2009 and I think only in 2022 did I come to the realization or accept that I'm good at this. Yeah. And I'm really enjoying it and I don't need to be nervous. And so I started getting on stage without feeling anxiety or like the nerves really. First time you go to a new country to perform, is that different feeling? Any sense of anxiety? Or does it feel like I can do this anywhere? Yeah, it feels like I can. That's great. Yeah, yeah. Because it's weird. It's like different, different races, different languages, different customs. yet majority of it the audience energetically feels the same yeah yeah maybe because that's just the type of energy that's attracted to the work yeah tell me about your relationship with the audience what do you think they come to you for i mean i can only try to make sense of it based on like the things that they say and they'll often come to me and you know they'll open one of my books and be like this one how did you know and i was like i'm like what are you talking about and they're like well you wrote about my life how did you know this and so i think they come to me in a way it's to connect with themselves really because it's a very people have a very intensely emotional bond with the poetry because i think a lot of it is about deeply personal things and so it becomes like a place of healing and connection and a place of letting go.

21:47And yeah, I haven't really figured it out yet, but I've stopped trying. Since you write words and you perform on stage, the jump from poetry to lyrics is not so far. Have you ever considered doing music? I have. I've been sort of pseudo sort of working on an album for the last eight years, but it's never been in the top three priorities because like a book or a tour always takes precedence. How's working on music different for you? It's so much easier because you don't have to do it all on your own. It's nice to be in the studio with someone else because I'm not singing and it's not traditional.

22:31Navigating that is kind of complicated. And in a way, it's kind of the same as navigating the poetry space for the first time way back when. But when you're doing it for the first time, you're not really thinking about it. So now the album actually is a priority for me because, yeah, I've been thinking about what do I want this next era to look like? And I want to keep performing. That's, you know, my big love and the things that brings me joy. But then I need people to understand, you know, what it is I do at shows. So I think being in people's ears is important. Yes, I'm thinking about how to put this together.

23:14But I also don't think it could be an album where it's like, let's just say 12 tracks of like spoken word pieces. It has to be some form of experimental. Like I know that which poem should be its full six minutes. And then the rest of it, we need to like play around with it more. So now I'm, again, I guess it's like, well, I don't really need to know what the end result is. I just need to go in and start. Yeah, spend time. Yeah, yeah. Tell me about your family. I'm the oldest of four kids. Oldest of four brothers, sisters? Two sisters. And brother is the youngest. He's nine years younger than me.

23:54And then we grew up with both parents. I was born in Punjab and immigrated with my mom to Montreal first when I was three and a half and my dad was already here because he had left. Did you remember anything about your old life when you came? Three and a half is early so. No I'm gonna say no because I think the only things I remember are the things that you were told that I was told and then you create the visuals you know Yeah, yeah. But I think the feeling is the two lives feeling very different in temperature. Yeah. Do you remember the first time you went back to India? Ten years after I came.

24:37Did you feel like it was foreign or did you feel like this is home or something else? Something in the middle. Yeah. At first it was terrifying because I remember I was in eighth grade. and we pull up to my dad's village into a house that has no electricity and proper plumbing and it's a concrete like concrete wall still and i was like what the hell is going on and where am i power is out most of the day so it's just like a very different reality but then you know by the end of it you adapt and it becomes like a deeply connective place and and then i had a 10-year gap And then I went back in 2016.

25:21But when I went back to perform for the first time was 2018. And it was so magical. It felt like the first time I was performing and I didn't feel the need to explain myself. Yeah. Because they just understood it. That was really powerful. That's amazing. Yeah. Tell me about your relationship with your mom and your relationship with your dad. my relationship with my dad yeah him and i are i feel like we've been beefing since i came out of the womb poor guy i would say i get a lot of my like rebellious spirit from him he is he's a refugee and he fled before i was born you know he's the survivor of the six genocide that happened in 1984 and so much of what I've learned about revolution and art and politics comes from him and I can romanticize all of that but the thing is when somebody goes through that it it breaks them yeah in a way that's not very romantic at all and so everybody says my dad I don't actually know the version of my dad that they know like the one that used to laugh and the one that was light and warm and all those lovely things.

26:44The man that I met at the Montreal airport in the mid-90s when we got here was cold and distant and mean because I think he was probably depressed. God knows a whole bunch of other things. And probably walled off to protect himself from his situation. Yeah. Has it gotten better over time or no? Yeah, it has. I think I think after I started publishing. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't understand the performing thing. He never came to any of my performances. He hated that I did it. He was like, anytime you're not spending studying, it's a waste of time and you're just going to fail. It all turned when my book first came out, so I didn't tell them that I was publishing a book.

27:26But I did. When I got my first copy, I came home and I sort of dropped it off in front of him. And books is something he can understand. You know, it's something that he respects in his culture. And then the table sort of turned And he was like, oh, how can we support you? Wow, that's beautiful. Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. And so it's been nice. And, you know, at some point you're like, well, this is my dad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have one dad. And so let's work on this relationship. Yeah. And your mom? My mom is, you know, it's like house is very patriarchal. But my mom is like this, like, young 16-year-old energy who never got to really always explore her life.

28:06I mean, when you come from a South Asian home, especially from such a rural place, as a woman, your life is really defined by your children and your husband and how you can serve them. And so we've had a good relationship. And now that her four kids have left the nest, it's interesting and sad. And there's a lot of guilt involved in watching her make sense of her world because she feels very purposeless. but has never been allowed to ask or wonder what is her purpose outside of all of this. You know, I'm the first woman in my lineage who gets to have that privilege. Did you feel like a second mom to your siblings?

28:51Yes. I'm like the translator between that generation and then translating what the siblings say because these two forces do not understand each other. And I'm like trying to be the glue and like the bridge. And so I still am that, but also sometimes I'm like, hey, I'm too tired. You guys fight. I'm going to go. But you probably understand both sides better than anyone else in the picture. Because sometimes you're like, oh, you guys are saying the same thing. It's just a different language. And then my dad is speaking a very intense language that comes off very aggressive. Yes, yes. But inside he's just a big baby.

29:30Yes. And then my brother is like me sensitive and emotional and, you know, very impassioned. And he's saying something else and it's rubbing him the wrong way. And I'm just like, oh, my goodness. So, yeah, that happens a lot. Yeah. Would you say your parents are happy together? I don't know. They say that. What do you think? You know, now I've started to just accept what they say. Okay. You know, I think before that, I'd be like, you guys don't even love each other. All you guys do is fight. And then, you know, they bicker so much. And then every time they're bickering, you know, my mom, she's a soft speaker.

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30:10So she'll say things that really annoy my dad, but nobody will say anything to her because nobody hears her be annoying. And then my dad will raise his voice. And then everyone like, dad, why are you talking like that to mom? And he's like, I'm always like the bad guy. and then we'll just get involved. The moment the kids get involved, they're like, you guys stay out of it. You guys don't understand. And now I'm just like, oh, this is like some weird way that you guys like flirt and express love. So we're just going to let you do that because sometimes my experience of their lives is like very depressing.

30:44And so then I give their lives a very sad outlook and then I'm just like, you know what? that might not even be the case so they say they're happy together they say they can't live without each other so i let it be it's an arranged marriage it wasn't right yeah they like never met before they got married wow yeah yeah interesting in the culture that's standard yes for their generation for sure yeah yeah yeah nobody i mean people did get married for love but that was like you know some guy in the village and he runs away with the love of his life and then you never hear of them again. Yeah. Yeah.

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33:05Do you write all the time? No. Do you write when some things do or does something else get you to write? So I stopped writing when something's due because I just stopped writing, stopped signing contracts because I was like, oh, my God, these deadlines are killing my creativity. And now I think, you know, I don't think I've ever, and I used to be insecure about it. I don't think I've ever had a single process that I know just works. So I'm still trying to figure it out. Great. But I think it's seasons. Yeah, because 90 % of the book, and I just use the book as like kind of a stand-in, but it happens in here, like in the gut.

33:46Yeah. That's where it's written. And so it tells you when it's ready. It kind of feels like butterflies in your stomach, I think. Yeah. So the first book essentially was written before you knew you were writing a book because you were writing pieces to do live. Yes. And then posting them eventually. And then the second book was on a deadline and it was a very different experience. Stressful. Yeah. And then how was the third book different from the second book? With the third book, my goal was just from like a creation sort of perspective. I was, I will never have the milk and honey experience.

34:24Yeah. Because that was what it was. Yeah. But I do not want to have the sun and her flowers experience because I will jump out of a window. And so can I have something in the middle? And so homebody was for me that something in the middle. I started, you know, I was working on getting more in touch with my spirituality. I was healing from depression, anxiety, and, you know, bringing meditation into my life. And so I feel like I was able to have that sort of in the middle sort of experience. And with my fourth book, it's not a book of poetry. It's writing exercises. And that was really fun because it was the first time I was doing such a book.

35:07But with this next book, which will be poetry, oddly enough, it is feeling closer to the first book. Do you think the fact that the fourth book was a different kind of book was like a reset? Yeah, I think so. You're playing. Yeah. How did that one come about? During COVID, I started doing these online writing workshops, which were a lot of fun. I don't know. I was in the shower one day, and I was like, can I do something? How can I contribute to the online space, which is really the only place we can go at the moment? And then I used to facilitate them in person. And then when I started doing them on Instagram, sometimes I'd have 10 ,000 people join.

35:44And they would stay for the full hour, and then sometimes two hours. And then they'd be like, so same time next week? and then I did it a few more weeks and at some point I was like oh my god I can't do this all the time like I need to figure out how to give you guys something and then also go do my thing and so then that book was my thing to give people because actually before that point I didn't know so many of my readers were writers yeah so that was like something new I learned and I thought wouldn't it be cool to create something like a tool that I can give them that might help them develop the first draft of their first book or their album or their song.

36:25So that was really cool. Cool. So the book is like the curriculum for the online classes you were doing. Yes, exactly. And tell me about the in-person classes. What were those like? How many people would come and what was the feeling of it? My favorite is probably when it's like 20-ish people it's a small intimate group I do two or three exercises and then you know in the beginning everyone's like well I'm not really creative and like I don't really know and by the end of it and everybody goes around I mean you can pass if you want to but I ask everyone to share and you'll hear such amazing work from people who say they're not creative at all yeah because I mean we're all creative for sure you know they're like thank you so much for doing this and they don't know that seriously i'm getting so much out of it myself yeah tell me about your spiritual life i grew up in a very religious home so my parents are sick and indian sikh is different than american sikh there's a whole sikh community in los angeles but i don't know how related they are I don't think they would be divided by geographics because it's more so just I guess belief system yeah philosophies and that can sort of exist in pockets anywhere in the world but at the end of the day it's the belief in this idea that all of this is just a play and it's just an acting out in front of us and the play starts now and it ends now and you know i think there's a belief that we're a monolithic religion but we're not because we don't really even sort of believe in a god it's this we believe in this oneness that we are all connected and so you know we are everything and we are nothing all at once and And I think the reason I rejected so much of Sikhi, because Sikhi means learning.

38:31And so it was actually anti-religion for the time because there was lots of things going on in the 1400s in South Asia. Where, for example, women, when their husbands died, widows were expected to jump in the fire. and there was a man named Guru Nanak who was like looking around and he was like well that feels a little weird and this doesn't feel right and so there's this idea of well we should question everything and we should always be students of life and so that's what Sikhi means but I think what happens is then human beings come in and then they take something that might be really beautiful and make it maybe not feel so beautiful and I think South Asian culture can sometimes be very patriarchal.

39:21And so the version of Sikhi that sometimes my parents enforced on me was a lot of about, oh, you can't do this and you can't do that. But then the Sikhi that I learned as a teenager, when I was sort of in the community with people, maybe a little bit older than me, but really experiencing my exploring the artistic side of Sikhi was when I began to fall in love with it. And so I've been on this journey ever since, but also experiencing different modalities. I mean, you know, with different forms of meditation and I think it all for me, it just comes back to love and oneness. And so, yeah, I would say the sabbatical has given me a lot of space to connect with that.

40:05And my entire world is changing because of it, which is really exciting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you were to read just the Guru Nanak writings as opposed to everything that came after, do you like those words? The original idea. So in Sikhi, we have 10 teachers. I think all of them are deeply powerful. One of them writes so much about mental health and how to engage with the mind and the mind being a prison and how to separate and detach. And all of our texts are actually written in poetic verse and they're musical compositions. And I think it's other people's interpretation of it. It's easier to remember because it's like a song you can repeat it.

40:55Exactly. And they're very much like my, I've actually been so inspired by it, short and concise and tight verses that, you know, you could sit around with your friends and you could take four words and then you could discuss them for four hours. Is there a piece of music in that tradition that we can listen to that's true to the beautiful part of it? So all of the six scriptures are then performed as kirtan on harmonium and tabla or any sort of classical Indian string instrument. Could we find a version to listen to? Yeah, we can. Play me something. It was Diwali the other day. And I was in Ottawa with my parents and we went to the Gordwara.

41:42So we celebrate Diwali, but we refer to it as Bandi Chort Devas. and the ragi, ragi is the person who is performing the Gita. I had a beautiful shabad. Let me see if I can play. And then the whole audience was singing.

42:40Beautiful. And all the words are devotional? Yeah, this one was about just love. loving the world and like the one true creation and source and energy what I love about the rogs is there are certain rogs that you only sing in that composition in the morning and there are different rogs for the evening and it's like creatively and energetically you know when you're in tune with that you can really it's so powerful and so exciting and inspiring. And when you go to some place where that is being performed, you would sing along. Yeah. Everybody sings along. Yeah, you can. Sometimes I go to the Gordwara and no one is singing.

43:24And then sometimes I think it's depending on who's performing. They very much invite it. So that was like one of the days where I was like, oh, wow. He was, you know, bringing the audience into that play and you could feel the frequency sort of rise and it was beautiful. So it's essentially gospel music yeah it is yeah gospel music and meditation at once and then you do it together because there's a belief like in many many cultures and faiths that when you meditate together the energy of all of the people together just moves the frequency in a way that not a single person can the whole thing is amplified yeah for sure that happens yeah exactly tell me about your media diet.

44:10So I started feeling this a few years ago that I can't feel my imagination the way that I used to because spending so much of my time on my phone, especially social media, it just takes up so much space. And so, well, I was already not posting. And so I kind of blocked off all of my apps. And since then, I feel like my brain has changed and my life has changed in a way that I just have my time and my brain back, which feels really exciting and good for the creativity. And so I've been reading a lot more than I have in past years, which is a lot of fun because, you know, even when I'm reading something that's like inspiring on the, on social media, I always leave feeling like I'm functioning at a lower frequency.

45:03The dopamine hit that it gives me never really fully lasts. It's always fleeting. But the dopamine hit that I get from reading a book sustains. And so I've been doing a lot of just like reading. I'm like in a little bit, I'm also a little bit addicted now, actually. So it was in the Maldives. I was performing somewhere. And then right after the performance, everyone's going to the party. I'm like, I got to go finish that book. It was this amazing book on, what's it called? Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. Yeah, getting lost in the childlike wonder of those stories is really fun. So that's kind of just what I'm taking in.

45:38Do you tend to read more fiction? I used to read more fiction all the time as a kid, as a young girl. And then I probably stopped in university. And then most of what I've read in my adult life has been business books and self-help and a lot of memoirs. And I totally forgot fiction altogether. And then I struggled to get back into it. But now I'm getting back into it. And so that's mostly what I'm reading right now. Would you say you're as fearless in life as you are in your words? Oh my God, no. Tell me about that relationship. I'm trying to be. I always describe to my therapist, I say, because people are like, what is it like to be on stage?

46:22And I always say, well, when I'm on stage, I'm like the woman of my dreams. yeah she's so powerful and she's so confident and she's so funny because when i get up there i don't even know what happens and you know my two younger younger siblings my brother and my sister they're so funny and they're the funniest people i know and they'll come up to me and they'll be like holy shit i mean something just happens to you up there and you just become the person like good for you but then i get off stage and i don't feel that person anymore and so i'm working on bridging the gap and narrowing that gap between these two people because i think that's also a story i tell myself that that woman exists up there yeah when there's nobody on the stage to get in her way and in her space but as i've been doing this work through my sabbatical that gap is definitely narrowing and the story is changing and the way that i speak of myself and to myself which is very exciting because for a long time i was like well this is just who i am and It's never going to change.

47:22How much of it when you're on stage is decided in advance and you know what you're going to do methodical versus in the moment and spontaneous? I would say most of it because I kind of have the poems I've picked out and is mental. But I leave a lot of room for the channeling. So I'll change things and I'll respond to the audience. I'll throw in poems. If I don't have the poem, I'll ask somebody to throw up a book and I'll get into that. And yeah, over the years through, I guess, practicing that surrender, it's the moments where you're just letting go and channeling that like the greatness sort of like comes through you and you're like, well, that was so cool.

48:10Like, I wish I got to like record that. Like, how did that happen? Yeah. And when you're writing, is it thought out or is it more of a download? It's more of a download. And I was actually going to ask you a question about this. Because there are some times when, you know, and it doesn't happen all the time. And Elizabeth Gilbert describes this as big magic. And sometimes, and it's very few times, but you're writing a poem and it feels like that, you know, the conveyor belt that You could just stand on it. It just transports you to the other end of the hallway, the long hallway at the airport.

48:48Some of the poems feel like that. Like there's this one poem, Timeless. I don't know where that poem came from. I just know I had a conversation with a friend. And she was talking about she was in a room with women in their 70s and 80s. And they were so happy. And she's like, I've never been around women who were that age. and allowed to see that there could be joy and life in that. And I was like, wow, same. And I remember we had this conversation and I was writing book number two and feeling really, really stuck. But anyways, we connected over that conversation. And then I remember Hanga, and then it just came in this poem.

49:32I'd love to read it. Please. It kind of just, yeah, dropped from somewhere. And I must have changed maybe two or three words, but it was done. Yeah. Yeah. And it came all at once? Yeah. Like as fast as you could write it? Yeah. And then you're almost like scared it's going to run off. Yeah, it's terrifying. Terrifying. Yeah. It goes, let's see, timeless. They convince me I only had a few good years left Before I was replaced by a girl younger than me As though men yield power with age But women grow into irrelevance They can keep their lives For I have just gotten started I feel as though I just left the womb My 20s are the warm-up for what I'm really about to do Now wait till you see me in my 30s That will be a proper introduction to the nasty, wild woman in me How can I leave before the party started?

50:52Rehearsals begin at age 40 I ripen with age I do not come with an expiration date. And now for the main event, curtains up at age 50. Let's begin the show. Beautiful. And it's certainly optimistic. Like it's very empowering. Yeah. It's like one of those, I mean, I'll take the credit for it, but I don't think I wrote it. Yeah. It just happened. It just happened. Yeah. Such a great feeling when it happens. Yeah. And as we said, it is scary because when you realize you're not in control of it, it can go away. So it's scary. That's what's so scary. Because what I'm feeling right now is this readiness of like this book is baking.

51:46Yeah. And oh my God, it's so exciting. Like the fluttering excitement is in my hands. Like, you know when you meditate and you can feel the electricity? that's how I feel this book it's just like right there and then sometimes I'll go to write and then the feeling just goes away yeah and then I'm like was that a lie or what is that gap is that a lack of skill or yeah I'm trying to I guess make sense of it I don't think there's any rule about it And the two different approaches would be keep doing the same thing until that doesn't happen and it just comes out. And the other one is to just start writing even if the feeling isn't there yet.

52:39To kind of get through whatever is in the way. Like write what's in the way out of the way. Right. Yeah. to get to what you want to get to. Bad ideas are helpful because you have to get through those to get to the good ideas. Exactly. And just allow them. Don't judge them. Move through them. Right. Yeah. And you can allow yourself. I'm going to write some things that maybe are not so good and let's just see what comes out. Low expectation. Oh my God, I know. I mean, the majority of it is just not good, you know? And I just feel like the more that I think you describe it very well, But the more I'm learning, it's almost like it's like creativity is like trying to have faith in God or like religion.

53:26It's like I can't exactly put my finger on it and I can't point at it. And there's absolutely no proof. Yeah. But I just have to have faith. Yes. I've always struggled with faith. That's not something I've often really connected with because I'm always like, well, up here, like, well, does it exist? And trying to intellectualize it and make sense of it. It's not intellectual. That's the thing. It's like the intellect gets in the way of it. There's nothing to figure out. Yeah. It's so true. Yeah. You just start doing it and it reveals itself in time. And you'll surprise yourself at some point, just like you did with Timeless.

54:10Like at some point you'll be working on something and you think it's not very good, but you're forcing yourself to do something. And then at some point it's like, hmm, you didn't even know it happened and something really good came out. And then you're just on a roll. But it doesn't happen in the head. The head just gets in the way. And that's the thing. It's like, I know that. Yes. And I know that I will always think, well, hopefully not always, but. Yeah. okay I'll never write another book again that's it and I clearly have thought it and then still done it four times then the head always just brings you back to that like I can't or I won't and then I'm like okay here we are again but then yeah I guess it's a dance of okay I'm gonna let you say that I'm gonna let you be you head and then I'm realizing so much of it is in the heart Yes.

55:05That's what milk and honey was. It was, it just happened. It was in the heart. Then I got all of this external success. And then I became all head because it was like. I'm guessing heart and gut. It's in the body. Yeah. It's in the body. It's not in the head. Then the head's like, oh, now we've got to hold on to this. And now we've got to talk strategy. And when I started doing that, the results were not great. No. And then let's see, we're back in the heart again. so i would just say really be kind to yourself yeah and make things and without any expectation no fear just have fun doing it and it won't be a book until you decide it's a book so everything that happens up until then is just free play lower the stakes yeah exactly that is something I definitely highlighted because I think my stakes were always, well, if it's not doing all of these things and meeting these external things, then it's a failure.

56:09I think that early success can freeze you sort of in a way. And I am experiencing that. I mean, I think from having that early success, I immediately spent a lot of my 20s kind of trying to run away from this idea of becoming irrelevant. And the fear of irrelevance was like always there. And then now I've entered this quieter space, especially over the last year, you know. And when you're not, I'm not active. I'm not doing anything. I'm not performing. I'm not posting. so like book sales are you know they drop and so and it's such an interesting thing because actually every single day i'm getting my magic back i'm connecting with it but what's terrifying me is what the well-meaning people around me are saying which is you know it's okay rupi like we just have to change what our idea of success looks like now like it's just we're not going to sell these many things and you're not going to be able to do this and you're not going to be able to do that.

57:17And I know that they're saying it to free me of whatever they think is holding me down. But it's not helpful. But it's not helpful because you're just like, oh no, you don't even believe in me either. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, their intentions are good and they're probably wrong and it's okay. Exactly. It's so funny because it all just goes back to the beginning because I'm like, oh, I did all these things that I thought were going to prove that I can do this, but now I'm feeling like my 19 year old self when I was publishing this thing. And then everybody was like, yeah, yeah, it's not going to work.

57:48Yeah. Yeah. Which is great. You've experienced people telling you it's not going to work and it worked. Yeah. So why would you question that? You know, like you got to experience that. You know that can happen. I think what I'm afraid of is knowing very well the next thing. I know I have to just express the thing I'm meant to express. But it might not work in the commercial sense. And even as I'm saying this, I'm like, well, then I just go on to the next thing. You just keep going. I just keep going. You just keep going. That's it. That's all you can do. And it's the right thing to do. Like, that's what being an artist is.

58:32You know, you create stuff. You make it to the best of your ability. You share it with the world. And then you start the next one. And they'll like some of them more than others. On occasion, one will break through. You had the experience of having that on the first one. Blessing and a curse. You got to see what it can be. But then the expectation is that's what they're all going to be. Can't be. No. But that's fine because it's a long game. If you want to do it forever, just know there'll be ups and downs along the way. And it's fine. The key is staying true to that inner voice. Whatever it is, that gut feeling.

59:11What you say is churning in you now. Yeah, yeah. That's the truest thing you can follow. There's no strategy in that. No, it's not. You can't apply logic and rationale. No. Yeah. No, because really, logic and rationale is too small. This is something much bigger. Right. Do you believe that when you're inspired by something, that inspiration always lives in you even if you don't feel it anymore or if you don't catch it at the moment it's like an idea that's gone and you can't tap it can't be gone i would say it's helpful to act on inspiration as quickly as possible i think so yeah it doesn't always go away.

1:00:02And maybe sometimes it goes away in your best interest. Like sometimes not every signal is a home run signal. You know, we get interested in a lot of things. Right. If you find something that holds your attention for a long time, it's a good sign. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But sometimes little ideas, insignificant, a moment. Yes. You overhear a conversation, you hear a few words, think that's interesting. That could turn into something really important. Whereas there's the great work that you put all this time and energy into and that you think is the great work. And sometimes it's the casual work. You know, Mary Oliver, the poet, her most famous poem, someone asked her, how do you write a poem?

1:00:51And she wrote that as an example. This is how I would do it. no plan of anything. It just fell out of her. Right, right, right. Showing you how to do it. Yeah. And that is her most well-known of all of the poems she's written over the course of her life. Right, right. It's so funny how that happens. Yeah. Yeah. It's like it can completely catch you by surprise. There's this idea that, and I think I would deeply subscribe to it, especially in my 20s and seeing my immigrant parents sort of, you know, work seven days a week non-stop like we glamorize work ethic and you always hear I think I read something this morning I think Nicki Minaj was saying something about Ariana Grande like oh her work ethic and the time she puts in is it the hours and the quantity or is it the quality or a little bit of both because I'm in a place where first I was so obsessed with I work work all the time.

1:01:52And now I've loosened the grip and I'm sort of just observing and experiencing, and that feels right to me. But then this other part of my brain says, well, you're not really putting the hours in, but maybe just by existing and being present, those aren't the hours. Yes and no. I would say it's a different phase of the work. So there's a phase of just the growth phase which is what you're in now seems like in a garden yeah you know in the growth phase you're not picking all the fruit off the trees yeah yeah you know you're you're letting the growth happen you're letting life happen right you're seeing things you're getting inspired if the growth cycle doesn't do what it needs to do the dedicated putting the hours in won't mean the same.

1:02:50Right. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. I don't know that there's any version where you're not putting the hours in, even on the first book when you didn't know you were putting them in, you were still putting them in. You just didn't know it because you were just coming up with the thing to say on stage and then posting it. Yeah. And the work felt... Yeah, I guess it's like when the growth happens. Yeah. I mean, I was writing and working day in and day out, but it's like a devotional love. Yeah. I could be putting in 12 hours a day, seven days a week, but it's so effortless in that it's the only thing you can do.

1:03:31But I guess when you think that you can do that all the time. Yeah. stops feeling. And you're not in control. That's the other part of it. It's like when it's about the work, you think you're in control of the situation. I could put these hours in and this many hours equals this. It is not true. Yeah. Yeah. The other side of it is if you're not putting in the hours, it won't happen. So it's like where that balance is. If we were working together, I would give you a homework assignment to write a poem a day for 50 days with the idea of they're not good poems. You just have to write a poem a day.

1:04:07I would have you send me the poem every day. I don't care what it says. And knowing no one will ever read these. They serve no purpose other than practice in turning on the machinery of I'm doing the poet job now. I'm doing my poet workout. I'm not making art. I'm not sharing it with the world. This is something else. I'm just doing my reps. Yeah, yeah. No expectation other than I did my reps today. I succeeded. And something happens when you use the machinery and get that feeling of every day I'm doing it and I'm succeeding. At some point, the poems start turning good without you doing anything.

1:04:59It just has to.

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1:06:39Do you keep a journal? I do. Tell me about that. Oof, probably like... 12 years ago? 15 years ago? Pre-poetry? Yeah, around the same time. I have my daily journal. Not good at writing in it daily, but I bring it everywhere with me. So that's a process I'm still working on. And then I have my poetry journal much larger so that it sort of, I could just do a little scribble here and there and there, and then it just catches all of it. But now we're doing a lot of voice notes. Because when I edit, I edit out loud because it's almost like song-like. Yeah. And it doesn't traditionally rhyme, But when you hear the performance, you're like, oh, but it kind of does rhyme.

1:07:21So now I'm really enjoying the voice notes as I'm driving. And, you know, now they can be transcribed and everything. So during the course of the day, you're driving and you have an idea. You speak it into the phone. Yeah. And you collect those. Yeah. And at some point, you'll look through those and see if they're pieces. Yeah. Usually if I'm doing like a writing day, it starts at a coffee shop or something. I'll open my large journal are you by yourself yes and then it's all stream of consciousness and you know writing without judgment and they're either so so long or they're just little verses here and there and I keep going until I can't go anymore and then I circle the few if any that I'm like, oh, this is something.

1:08:12Let's see what it can be. Then I transfer that over and then I start working on it digitally. And I like to keep a draft of every single version. So lots of copy and pasting because then you can over edit and then it's like, let's go back. For sure. That's great that you recognize sometimes the first one with its imperfections is actually the best one. And you can over edit it and then the soul of it is gone. Tell me something you believe now that you didn't believe when you were young. that great things can happen to me. Isn't that great? Yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. How would you say that success has impacted your life and how has it been different than you thought it would be?

1:08:56Oh my God, it's completely different than what I thought it would be. Because I feel like I went through like a midlife crisis at 22 because it was suddenly like I had all the things, you know, the things that every author would want, whether it was like coming from a home where we didn't have much financial security at all, moments you were going to lose our home. And then you get financial security and then become super financially insecure in the brain, right? And suddenly I was like, oh, wait, you can have all of this and the popularity and it all still feels empty. Nobody told me that. So what the hell was the point then?

1:09:36So that I wasn't expecting. But I think my favorite part has been able to share with my parents, actually, like things they would have never seen or had or experienced. I think just giving them comfort has been really nice. Beautiful. I remember the first family trip we went on. It was 2017. And I just finished writing the second book. And so I was like, oh, I think we should go on a family trip. So we went to Jamaica. And my mom said to me, we were in this house, kind of in the mountains and looking out. And she said to me, thank you for bringing me here. I didn't even know that a place like this existed.

1:10:15Wow. And it was a bittersweet moment. Yeah. Because you're just like, oh, like, I know how most places in the world look. And so I think being able to give and share them. You've expanded their experience of what they can see in life. That's beautiful. When you start a poem, what happens first? Is it an idea or is it specific words? I think what forms inside is a feeling. And the feeling is the feeling I want to have when I read the thing and how I think writing that thing is going to free me. and how it'll feel in my body. And so that is kind of the thing that happens first. And sometimes a poem, like one of my most popular pieces was a poem that was on repeat in my head, like an annoying song for months, like three months.

1:11:20And I thought it was so dumb. I was like, I'm not gonna write this down. It's preachy, it's weird. Like, I don't care. So I ignored it and I ignored it until one day I was like, I just got to write it down. I got to get it out of the way so I can go do the thing I want to do. And so then I wrote it down and I see it the next day. I'm like, oh, it's not so bad. And then, and it's probably my most recognized piece, but sometimes it happens like that. Like right now I'm working on one about leaving a relationship, but the relationship is an island I want to. break away from. And so it's such a frustrating poem because in my body, it feels so beautiful and painful and lovely.

1:12:11And I can't crack it for months. So would you say you can picture the scene, but you don't yet have the way to say it? I have the beginning of a woman. She wakes up with this feeling of her lover next to her. And he's still asleep and he has no idea that she's awake. And she wakes up with this feeling that says, I'm ready to leave the island of this relationship. And then she slips out the front door, past the porch, through the garden with this confidence to finally choose herself. and so she's running and running and this time she says she's gonna do it she's gonna have the courage but the moment she sees the shore the courage slips away and then the fear steps in and the fear sounds like his voice And his voice says, you can't live without me.

1:13:18And then his voice sounds so confident that she's never been that confident about anything. And so then she confuses that confidence for truth. And she suddenly doesn't know when, but as she gets into the doubting herself and his voice gets louder, she doesn't know at what moment her body turns around and suddenly she's walking back home again you know past the porch through the front door and then she touches him hoping that this time she'll feel like this is it and what i can't crack is so she does this again and again every morning it's like this but there comes one morning where something happens where she doesn't wait and she just dives in and there's no fear of uncertainty and she just swims and has no idea what's on the other end and i'm having trouble finding the words for what that thing that happens is yeah it also feels related to the story of writing yeah the fear the fear of coming back to writing and it feels related to the broader conversation it does it does yeah there's a gap of what I want it to be like.

1:14:39Yeah. And my ability to do it. Can you tell me the one that was in your head that you didn't love and that nagged you and eventually... Yeah, I can. I wish I knew it by heart. I should really give my poems names so that they're easier to look up. How do you do it now? Do they have numbers or nothing? They have nothing. They have like... It's just words on page. Sometimes they have footnotes. Right. Yeah. For me, it was like titles kind of get in the way. And it also can tell you more than you want it to say. Yeah. It can be too leading. Yeah, and it puts it in a box. Yeah. I want to apologize to all the women I've called pretty before I've called them intelligent or brave.

1:15:24I'm sorry I made it sound as though something as simple as what you're born with is the most you have to be proud of when your spirit has crushed mountains. From now on, I'll say things like, you are resilient. Or you are extraordinary. Not because I don't think you're pretty, but because I realize that you are so much more than that. So I just kept playing and playing. And I was like, this is so annoying. and it came from this idea that I I realized that was a compliment that I valued the most and maybe one that I never got often I got the oh my god that's you're so smart and you're so this yeah but I very much valued oh you're so beautiful you're so pretty and then the older I got I was like that's weird why that why this thing that I've never worked on that why the surface yes Yes, exactly.

1:16:24And it landed and I had no idea why. Yeah. And I love the fact that it insisted on you paying attention. And almost against your will. Yes. It won. Yes. And the audience was happy. The audience was happy. Interesting, right? Yeah. So much of it. It's like the practice and the work is getting out of your own way. It really is. Yeah. That's it. That's the key to the whole thing. that's the key to the whole thing would you say you're hard on yourself oh my god so much but learning to change that narrative and the voice my inner narrator is my dad and so we're learning to let that go it's like an everyday practice but getting better now because that i'm doing the practice every day of catching myself and i'm like you're so stupid then the Other voice says, you're actually not stupid at all.

1:17:21You're great. You're fine. So now that's changing. Yeah. And allowing more grace. When did the idea of presenting the poems in all lowercase start? It just made sense to me. I just feel like capital letters are not beautiful. And it just, there was a lack of symmetry. Yeah. Yeah. And so I love the lowercase, just the design wise, visually, I thought it was beautiful and it created a lot of calm. And I think it also came from in Punjabi. We don't have any uppercase. There's just one case. And it's all quite symmetrical and there's no punctuation. And I went through a period of being like, I wish I could write poetry in Punjabi.

1:18:12Because there are things that you can express that you just can't do in English, but I wasn't very good at it. Because even though it's my first language, you know, now I feel like English has become that. But it became a way of me preserving that. And I've since, with the fourth book, introduced capitals because it wasn't poetry. But it's also not poetry, right? Yeah, yeah. But I think for the poetry, it still makes sense to me. And line spacing, do you think about that at all? Very much so. Because that's the way the poem dances on a stage. Is it the way it looks on the page or the rhythm of what it sounds like?

1:18:54More so the rhythm of what it sounds like and then how it looks. how it looks is important but it comes second but it's more so what it sounds like and so much of the you know the poem especially the ones that are more concise are the ones that people circulate more so on social media it's about removing everything that you can possibly remove to preserve the original idea i don't know i don't want to waste words like let every word work really hard and let it deserve to be there. Yeah. I think the other beauty of having less words is it allows the reader to create the image. The more information you give, the less the reader participates.

1:19:47Yes. I think it leaves room for their own story, right? Yeah. Probably the biggest critique I get is it's so short, but it's just a feeling that to me it's the right way. Yeah. Whatever feels right is what's right. The short ones are the hardest to write. Yeah. Like the spoken word ones, I'm like, yeah, I could do this. I could probably have like 50 books written. But the short ones, you can't cheat your way to writing those. you really gotta yeah would you say for you the writing is therapeutic i would say so it's always been a way to feel closest to myself a way to process life and find answers to questions that i have writing has always felt like a spiritual experience which is something i had to accept when i was trying to make it very methodical like i must wake up at this time and i must write these many words and it must be every single day that just wasn't my way and you know it was more so it was a spiritual dance for me and that's not something you could put like a timeline on so what type of meditation do you do right now i'm doing a lot of joe dispenza great That's what's been speaking to me.

1:21:16Yeah. Do you listen to recordings? I do. So it's like guided meditation. It's guided meditation, but his are like, they're guided, but then there's sometimes long periods of time. Yeah. So when I first did it, I was like, I don't like this. I used to do more like panayama, a lot of breath work, but I started it at a time I I was like very depressed and looking for help and anxiety. And when I realized it's working, then I meditated my way into like injuring my diaphragm. I was like so type A and like, I'm like, okay, we're going to do this right and we're going to do it really hard. And then I was like, oh my God, no, this is like the opposite.

1:21:59So when I first did Joe Dispenza earlier, he was here. I was like, this sounds weird. And his voice is weird. And why does he talk like that? And now I love it. It's so comforting. And sometimes I don't listen to anything at all. I'll just be on a flight and we'll just sort of sink in. The body scanning helps a lot. Do you remember your dreams? Only the scary ones. Do you write them down or no? I don't. I find that as I wake up, I remember, but the moment I start to write it down because I haven't had the practice, it's like it goes instantly. Yeah. tell me about your relationship to music i actually find that that the music holds the memories and the inspiration because sometimes i feel like oh no the inspiration i felt after like i went to this event or i did this thing i didn't capture it and it's gone and then i will listen to a song that i was you know hearing or that was on when i went through a certain thing and suddenly i'm fully there again and we're back I had that moment while actually on my way here.

1:23:12And there was tears rolling down my eyes. It's that way in. It's like a road back to that thing. What was the music on the way here? It was called I Came Here to Leave You, the song by Charlotte Carden. And it's about just a woman who meets her partner and is having that conversation. And that's what my next book is about, is having that conversation, choosing yourself. And I remember listening to that song after I left and I would just like walk around West Hollywood where I lived at the time. Just like a crazy person crying and that song on repeat because it was so, so, so soothing. Typically, are the poems in the books related to each other?

1:23:56Yeah, because I think that there's poems, but the book is one poem. I see. because it's a reflection of one part of the journey or one journey so the next book is about leaving a partnership and so all of the poems are related to each other and then even the way that you know they're laid out and organized is like all purposeful and how the poems sort of dance into each other and create a journey and where they leave the reader. Can you imagine writing a book about a celebratory part of life as opposed to a heartbreaking part of life? Yeah. I think even when I'm writing the heartbreaking part of life, half of it is celebratory.

1:24:51Yeah. So that's happening. And then I think the other thing, And cooking is just one, it's a book just on love, which I've never, and actually I found love really hard to write about. I just feel like I've always struggled with it. It doesn't really land, but it's sort of landing for me right now. So I think I'll do one just that. How is a poem different when it's read out loud versus when it's read on the page? I know a poem on the page is done when I read it, and by the end it makes my stomach turn. And then I'm like, oh, we're done here. Like we can move on to the next one. But performing out loud is celebrating life with other people.

1:25:32And it's so fun. And that's what I always wanted to be about. So a lot of women come to my shows and they'll bring, you know, their boyfriends and the guys look so unhappy to be there. and they're just like what am I doing here and I just call it out in the beginning I'm like I know you think poetry is so boring trust me I know I believe those things too I'm like I promise you're gonna have so much fun and by the end of it they're like we love it because they're laughing and they're crying and I feel like poetry's just been done such a disservice in the west yeah in the east I mean it is a part of everyday life and every age group is engaged with it.

1:26:16It's given as much space and respect as music and film and more of like mainstream culture. And in the West, it's been, I don't know, put into this corner where most people just think, I don't enjoy it. And I don't know if it's because of the poetry we read in school that we need like a hundred literary devices to like dissect and understand. But the poetry of the East is accessible and actually quite often, at least in South Asian culture, always performed. It was more often than it was written, it was actually performed out loud. So my grandparents couldn't read or write. My grandma was illiterate, but she participated in poetry her whole life because it was something that happened as a community.

1:27:04Do people in the audience ever say the poems along with you? They do. What's that like? It just makes me want to cry. Yeah. But when it happens, you're just like, my babies. I mean, I'm sure, you know, singers experience it. Musicians experience it all the time. But yeah, there are certain poems that they'll finish my lines for me. And it's unbelievable. It feels so, you know, it's definitely like, that's what I want people to know is that poetry is something that we can all enjoy. Yeah. What I feel is very excited. Mm-hmm. And this deep belief that there is greatness ahead. Yes. And, you know, I think the older we get, uncertainty is scary.

1:28:00So to get to that greatness, I can't use the same road that I used that first climb. The road has to be different, and I want it to be different. I'm excited for it to be different.

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1:29:57You

From the publisher

Rupi Kaur is a globally acclaimed poet, performer, and artist. Rising to prominence with her debut collection Milk and Honey in 2014, which she self-published at 21 years old, Kaur became one of the best-selling poets of the 21st century, expanding her voice through later works, including The Sun and Her Flowers and Home Body. Kaur’s achievements extend beyond publishing, with sold-out international tours, multimedia collaborations, and millions of followers engaging with her work across platforms.

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