Sunday, 28 October 2018

More Morsels of Verse

Last year I read Rupi Kaur's bestselling collection of poetry, Milk and Honey (2015). While I enjoyed some of the poems, I wasn't overly impressed by the collection, especially by many of the short verses which I described as fortune cookies. So, I wasn't really interested her next collection, The Sun and Her Flowers (2017).

Having just finished another 600 page whopper, and doing a lot of deep reading for work, I found myself needing something light and breezy to consume so I turned to Kaur's latest collection.

Divided into five parts - wilting; falling; rooting; rising; and blooming - the poems and Kaur's drawings align with these themes.

'Wilting' focuses on romantic break ups, with many sad poems about love gone wrong and trying to rebuild life again alone. I found these poems to be quite similar to Milk and Honey and was thinking about giving up on the collection as if I had read it all before.

But then I got to the 'rooting' section - with many poems about immigration and the voyages of refugees. I found this to be quite moving - poems about journeying across the sea, admiring the broken English of parents, the bravery and sacrifice that people make in the quest for a better life. There was quite a lot of depth here that I found missing in her other verse and this section alone saved The Sun and Her Flowers for me.