Source : Times of India
Emma Watson is not just an actress and a feminist activist but also an avid reader. On July 1, Watson’s book club Our Shared Shelf announced Instagram poet Rupi Kaur‘sMilk and Honey as its book selection for July-August — which is also the first poetry collection picked by them.
Milk and Honey is Rupi Kaur’s debut poetry book which was also on The New York TimesBestseller list for more than a year. Rupi Kaur has written two poetry books so far: Milk and Honey and The Sun and Her Flowers.
Announcing Kaur’s Milk and Honey as her book club selection for July-August, Watson recently wrote, “Over my lifetime, I have fallen in and out of love with poetry. Performing poems was what got me into acting (I had a primary school teacher that made everyone learn one a week, and eventually I won a poetry recital competition!) In secondary school and at university, I loved deciphering the codes of poems in class discussion, but I honestly wondered if poetry would continue to feature in my life outside of an academic context.”
Addressing that some people have criticized Kaur’s form of poetry for being different from the traditional form, Watson further wrote, “I am loathed to say Rupi has made poetry “accessible” because while this is the truth (Rupi’s poems and illustrations fit well into those famously square shaped Instagram frames), there is nothing easy or accessible about what Rupi chooses to talk about. In fact, the topics she chooses, are audacious.
“Here is a 25-year-old girl saying the unsayable… to hundreds of thousands of people: that she has been raped, that at times she has been abused, that she bleeds. And sin of all sins… she actually likes the hair that grows on her body. Yes. She actually thinks it is beautiful. And that she is beautiful as God made her — what a transgression. That her body is her home and nobody else’s,” she added.
Our Shared Shelf will read and discuss Kaur’s poetry book Milk and Honey in July-August 2018.
