Milk & Honey: A Sweet Read

My Rating: 5/5 stars

Milk and Honey is a collection of poetry and prose by Canadian author Rupi Kaur. The approximately 200-page book is composed of 4 sections: The Hurting, The Loving, The Breaking and The Healing. In her work, Kaur deals with topics like first loves, family dynamics, abuse, loss and most importantly, survival. The poems are primarily based on her own experiences and the pain she was exposed to early in her life.

I enjoy Kaur’s work and Milk and Honey in particular for a variety of reasons, including her exclusive use of lowercase letters and complete lack of punctuation (except for full stops), the absence of titles, and the simplicity and, often, brevity of her poems. Kaur mentions that she chooses to only use lowercase letters as a way of connecting her work to her culture and history. Rupi Kaur was an immigrant to Canada from Punjab, India. Her mother tongue, Punjabi, uses a form of writing called Gurmukhi script which does not have case distinction and only uses periods. Additionally, she feels that not having capital and lowercase letters creates a sense of equality, however insignificant. Kaur translates these rules to English for her poetry. Her poems are also usually quite short and straightforward, which intensify the severeness and boldness of the topics she discusses.

Even though there were many things I loved about this collection of poetry, there are some who think that Kaur’s work shouldn’t even be considered poetry. One of the top comments on Goodreads for Milk and Honey states that “There are zero pages of poetry in this book. There are 208 pages of excerpts from someone’s diary, with oddly placed line breaks, occasional doodles and chapters with theme names.” Although I disagree with this statement, I understand how some of her work would not be considered traditional poetry.

Either way, this is still a great collection to read, and I rated it 5/5 stars: it is a definite must-read. However, there are some intense moments and overwhelming topics at times, so keep this in mind when choosing to read this book.

For more information visit Goodreads and rupikaur.com.