"you are more than beautiful" by Rupi Kaur

Rupi Kaur, poet

During this quarantine, I spent some time surfing the Internet in search of some creative inspiration and I pleasantly encountered an Indian born Canadian poet, Rupi Kaur. Nowadays, it is renowned that the Internet and social media are powerful and enable a single individual to reach other millions of people, sharing thoughts and ideas.

This is how Rupi Kaur became famous, by regularly posting on Instagram. She also gained popularity through the publication of her first book Milk and Honey in 2014, with 2.5 million copies printed and a nomination in the New York Times bestseller list. In 2017, she released her second book, which enabled her to appear in BBC’s 100 Women in the same year.

Amongst the reasons behind her popularity there are her feminist poems, where she shows her strong position in favour of women empowerment. In fact, in her poems she depicts women as powerful, independent and beautiful.

Here is one of her short poems

“You are more than beautiful”

I want to apologize to all the women

I have called pretty

before I’ve called them intelligent or brave.

I am sorry I made it sound as though

something as simple as what you’re born with

is all you have to be proud of

when you have broken mountains with your wit.

From now on I will say things like

you are resilient, or you are extraordinary

not because I don’t think you’re beautiful

but because I need you to know

you are more than that.

My interpretation

From my point of view, this poem is really emotional and motivating, especially in a difficult period like the one we are living today, where we are forced to stay at home, with the risk of forgetting about how strong and capable we are.

Everyone now has to put all their strengths together and try to stay active and not to forget all the wishes and goals that we want to achieve.

This is just a period of our history and life, it will eventually pass and we will be back to normality because as we say in Italy “Tutto andrà bene”.