Turning Community Support Into Global Poetry Success | Rupi Kaur EP 828

The Daily Motivation

Lewis Howes

Education, Self-improvement

4.8 • 893 Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2024

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"I had no access point to this 'industry' of publishing and literature. But what I had was a community on Tumblr and Instagram of young women who felt so seen by these words." - Rupi Kaur At just 21 years old, Rupi Kaur defied traditional publishing wisdom and followed her instinct to keep her poetry collection "Milk and Honey" intact, rather than fragment it for literary journals. Despite her professor's warnings against self-publishing, Kaur recognized that her community of young, progressive readers on Tumblr and Instagram were connecting deeply with her vulnerable explorations of taboo topics. This intuitive understanding of her audience and unwavering commitment to her artistic vision led her to self-publish, initially hoping to reach just a few hundred readers. What began as a passion project quickly transformed into an unprecedented literary phenomenon. Without fully grasping the significance of her early success, Kaur had sold 18,000 copies through grassroots efforts and her website in just five months. Her breakthrough moment came in April 2015 when a powerful photograph she posted online went viral, drawing hundreds of thousands of new readers to her poetry. Rather than pursuing her planned legal career, Kaur's courage to share her most vulnerable work and bypass traditional gatekeepers revolutionized modern poetry publishing, proving that authentic connection with readers transcends industry conventions.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.
0:12.1	How did you even have the courage to say, I'm going to write the most vulnerable stuff ever
0:16.5	and reveal myself at 21. I'm going to try to figure out the sub-publishing world and get this message out to people
0:23.3	when everyone could criticize everything I put out there.
0:27.1	How did you have that courage to put out that type of work?
0:30.8	So when I started performing in 2009, a lot of the pieces I was performing about in person were about these topics that
0:40.3	were taboo, whether it was sexual assault, domestic violence. And the people who were coming
0:45.6	to watch me perform, it was such a supportive group. Everyone was very progressive and radical.
0:51.7	It was a group of young activists. Chearing for you.
0:54.5	Cheering for me. Yeah. And so and then they were like, you know, you should share this work
0:58.9	online. You can really connect with like the diaspora around the world because my
1:02.9	original audience was like my community in Jad B6. And so because of them I started sharing
1:08.8	my work on Tumblr and Tumblr was also like a very radical progressive space.
1:14.5	So everybody was like, wow, this is so cool.
1:16.7	And they, my readers online were the ones that planted the seed
1:20.2	of publishing.
1:22.3	So I wasn't even thinking about it.
1:23.6	They were like, they would send me messages, being like,
1:26.5	I love this poem, What book is it from?
1:28.3	Where can I get your book? And I would laugh. There is no book. Yeah, I was like, this is ridiculous
1:34.7	that you think there's a book. I'm, I was in university. I'm like, still haven't finished my
1:39.0	undergrad. Like, there's no book. But once they planted that seed, I was like, could there be one? Like,
	...

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