Do not listen to the adage “Never meet your heroes” because then you’ll not get the chance to sHARE A STAGE WITH THEM LIKE I DID!!!
I’m not joking. Rupi Kaur completed her whistlestop UK tour in Glasgow, shrouded in purple and pink lights and smiled down on by the stunning stained glass of St Luke’s on Bain Street. While the east end of Glasgow initially seemed an unusual choice to me, Waterstones certainly introduced Rupi to a warm west coast crowd.
The room was abuzz with excitement. I was so glad to have bagged seats in the second row. It was the perfect view to soak up the palpable emotion that dripped from Rupi’s lips; rich like the honey she repeatedly makes mention of in both her published works.
Key readings were set to music that, at first, seemed odd choices but soon they married perfectly; matched – and mismatched – to stir up feelings I couldn’t put a name to. That’s one of the most magical mysteries of Rupi Kaur – her uncanny ability to unite a room with an emotion, even if it’s foreign to the crowd until she brews it with her piercing words.
Lyrical, smooth and utterly bewitching – Rupi Kaur was showered in clicks (a common sign of appreciation in the slam poetry world), claps and stomping as she roused a solidarity among the audience.
More wonderfully, though, was her interjections with utterly human stories of her friends, childhood, family and female experiences. She jokingly made mention of no longer being able to live now that her book is written – that she must practice what she preaches and accept the compliments that were made for her. She is adorably bashful and thankful for every click, clap and whoop that echoes through the church hall. Some moments, you could hear a pin drop as we hung on her every word. Other times, we were excitedly yelling in agreement with her empowering messages and proclamations of love before the words left her lips.
Being able to share a stage with Rupi Kaur will go down as one of the most unbelievable experiences of my life. I cannot begin to explain the nerves, disbelief, fangirling and admiration swirling through my veins. Words still escape me as to how surreal the experience was. I read her words alongside her – her arm around me, soothing and encouraging – as I prayed I didn’t butcher her art in front of her adoring fans (I only stumbled once or twice, thank god).
I’m still shaking with excitement. I hope someone took a photo or recorded it so I can share it with the world forever and ever. For now, you’ll have to make do imagining me shakily reading the odd numbers and her perfectly delivering the evens.
If she ever comes back to the UK (which she did say she hopes to), I would buy my ticket in a heartbeat. It’s not often you find words that, even on a page, reach down into your soul, set you alight and leave a lasting warmth emanating through your entire being. Hers did, and being able to imprint her own glorious energy to memory and revel in her delivery of such similar experiences to mine is something I could happily experience again and again.