Rupi Kaur

Oscar Wilde once said, “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.” But if that's the case, how do we explain Rupi Kaur? Ever since she came on the scene a decade ago, Rupi has seen equal measures of praise and scrutiny. And, youth and gender considered, it’s hard not to feel that the backlash to her work is yet another instance of people hating anything that’s popular. However, in this episode, Hannah and Maia are joined by special guest, poet Phoebe VanDusen, to peer behind the veil of Rupi's persona and ask some pressing questions. What exactly irks people about her work? Does all art need to be democratized? What is the line between anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism? And perhaps the most puzzling of all: is poetry something anyone can do? Tangent includes: Maia’s shameless love of Nickelback.

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Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:

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Poets mentioned by Phoebe:

Tommy Pico

Kim Hyesoon

Etel Adnan

Timmy Straw

Frank O'Hara

Alice Notley

Ocean Vuong - "Aubade with Burning City":

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56769/aubade-with-burning-city

SOURCES:

Javon Johnson, Killing Poetry: Blackness and the Making of Slam and Spoken Word Communities, Rutgers (2017).

Maria Manning, “Crafting Authenticity: Reality, Storytelling, and Female Self-Representation through Instapoetry” Storytelling, Self, Society, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2020).

Audre Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” (1985).

Miski Omar, “Whether voice of a generation or queen of cringe, Rupi Kaur was a gateway to the world of poetry” The Guardian (2024).

Soraya Roberts, “No Filter” The Baffler (2018).

Rebecca Watts, “The Cult of the Noble Amateur” PN Review, vol.44 (3) (2018).

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