On her latest tour, Rupi Kaur raised some eyebrows from even her most diehard fans when they started to realize that she was merely reading her grocery list.
The poet is currently on tour in support of her latest book, Healing Through Words, a collection of guided writing exercises. Fans of her shitty drawings and quotable one-liners easily shared as captions for their selfies were pleased to find that at least the format and themes of her printed words were basically untouched.
They must have thought she was reading one of her earlier, less memorable poems from Milk and Honey, but once they heard her say “cottage cheese” and “double-A batteries” they realized what she was doing.
A live tour is something different altogether, however. How would Kaur fill an entire hour and a half slot with her little poems about the benefits of mental health and the strength found in positive female friendships?
Apparently, reading a grocery list is how.
Up until that moment, the performance was going great, as was the entire tour. Kaur’s spoken-word poetry experience (as her website is calling it) has fared well, with positive reviews and sold out shows in dozens of major cities.
At first the audience didn’t even pick up on it since her poetry is often minimalistic and abstract. They must have thought she was reading one of her earlier, less memorable poems from Milk and Honey, but once they heard her say “cottage cheese” and “double-A batteries” they realized what she was doing.
It turns out it was just her grocery list for her visit to Save-On Foods later that evening. Needless to say, the piece was met with mixed reactions.
During the reading of the “poem,” Kaur gestured dramatically as if on an unhinged spree adding everything to an invisible shopping cart; she added avocados and foot cream, and everything in between.
Audiences were expecting a journey of loss, love, growth, mental health, and community. What they got was insight into Kaur’s strange shopping habits and her love of healthy yet expensive snack foods.
Adding to the immersive experience, one fan got into it so much that he started yelling his own wish list items to her shopping list. “You gotta buy Cape Cod chips, too,” he yelled. “The Dark Russet ones!”
Another audience member started booing Kaur after she listed a brand of peanut butter that uses hydrogenated oils. “Kaur can’t even buy natural peanut butter? Guess she doesn’t care about her low-density lipoprotein cholesterol,” she Tweeted.
Later in the performance, the audience was even subjected to her reading a list of ingredients and the nutrition facts off of a recently consumed RXBAR, leaving many critics scratching their heads while superfans of the poet instantly started adding cases of RXBARs to their Amazon grocery list.
It was perhaps a little tacky, but she ended the set with what some are saying was just a full-blown advertisement for the Chicago-based protein bar company.
“Just like the protein bar uses as few ingredients as possible, so too do my poems use as few words as possible,” she said, still chewing. “These bars are now part of my healing journey.”
After the show, her tour manager was asked about her decision to read the grocery list and protein bar wrapper. It was there that she revealed that a new upcoming tour would be sponsored by RXBAR along with a newly formed deal with Stacy’s Pita Chips.
“We are very proud to have both companies fund the new Spring tour. To thank all of her Patreons and anyone who purchase VIP tickets we would like to offer one small bag of pita chips, an individual serving of hummus, and one Mint Chocolate RX, their least popular flavor.”
Stacy’s Pita Chips has actively begun to promote the sponsorship, even setting the poet up at Sundance a few weeks ago at a Stacy’s Pita Chip/Rup Kaur crossover event where they showed a short film about women business owners and Kaur hosted “an aura cleanse.” (Editor’s note- this was fucking real, not even a joke).
But is it art?
Hmmm…to that we leave it to Helen Vendler, a colossus of contemporary American poetry, a literary critic, and Porter University professor at Harvard University.
Despite her misgiving, yes, she reluctantly declared, it technically is art, she guesses.
“According to my own recent definitions the last few years, yes, it must be art if it is called art,” she said, kicking herself in the pants.
“Commercial art,” she stressed, “but art nonetheless.”
She didn’t sound thrilled.
“Commercial art is rarely showcased in a public setting, is typically created to specifically sell something. Leave it to an Instagram poet (she gave air quotes to the words) to blur those lines.”