PBS高端访谈:诗人瑞比·考尔用新方法赢得新观众（在线收听）

Judy Woodruff: And finally tonight, we take a look at a poet reaching new audiences in a new way. At just 25, Rupi Kaur has burst onto the literary scene, surging to the top of nearly every bestseller list. Jeffrey Brown reports how she's done it by embracing social media, and building an avid following of young readers.

Jeffrey Brown: It's become a strange new normal for 25-year-old Rupi Kaur, fans eager to share how her work has changed their lives. There's often a photo and a hug. Sometimes, the exchange becomes emotional.

Woman: It's because you remind me of my mom.

Rupi Kaur: I still don't believe it. Like, I have to pinch myself. It's real, but it still doesn't feel real.

Jeffrey Brown: And how could it? Kaur's debut collection of poems, "Milk and Honey," has sold three million copies worldwide. And her new work, "The Sun and Her Flowers," has already sold a million since its release in October. Meanwhile, performances of her poetry, like this one in Washington, D.C., recently, routinely draw hundreds.

Rupi Kaur: There are mountains growing beneath our feet that cannot be contained. All we've endured has prepared us for this. Bring your hammers and fists. We have a glass ceiling to shatter.

Jeffrey Brown: It's heady stuff for a young woman who grew up in the Toronto suburb of Brampton in a large South Asian community, and used social media to build an ardent fan base of mostly young women.

Rupi Kaur: They are like my sisters. They are me.

Jeffrey Brown: We spoke recently at Brampton's Rose Theatre, where Kaur graduated from high school, and these days performs her poetry.

Rupi Kaur: I was 18, 19, 20 when I was writing "Milk and Honey." And so, we're always going to be growing together, and I think what I want to say to them is like, I'm with you. I'm here. I think people just want to feel understood and feel seen. It's what I want growing up. And so that's why I think the poetry works so well.

Jeffrey Brown: Kaur's poems are typically short, even just a few lines, with simple, unadorned language and spare punctuation. They're often accompanied by her drawings. In them, she writes of everyday occurrences, like starting relationships, or ending them.

Rupi Kaur: You ask if we can still be friends. I explain how a honeybee does not dream of kissing the mouth of a flower and then settle for its leaves. I don't need more friends.

Jeffrey Brown: But she also tackles raw issues of sexual violence and trauma and how to heal.

Rupi Kaur: The books are not 100 percent, like, autobiographical. There are — the emotions of it, yes, perhaps, but they're also stories that my sisters or my cousins or my mom or my aunt experience every single day. And so I have had the ability and the privilege to go and write poems about their experiences.

Jeffrey Brown: Kaur was born in Punjab, India, and emigrated to Canada at the age of 4. Her father is a truck driver, work that takes him as far away as California, her mother a stay-at-home mom. At home, they speak only Punjabi.

Rupi Kaur: The rule was kind of like, you know, you're going to speak English 90 percent of your day, you know, out and about, no matter where you go in the world. This house is like where you're going to speak Punjabi.

Jeffrey Brown: In fact, Kaur didn't learn to speak English until the fourth grade. And she says it was through writing and performance that she found her voice.

Rupi Kaur: I think I just fell in love with the way the mic picks up my voice, and it like boomed throughout the entire space. And for someone that felt voiceless for so long, that was so refreshing. For me, poetry is like holding up a mirror and seeing myself, and it gives words to these very complex emotions and these feelings that I had as a child, and not being able to put words to them.

Jeffrey Brown: She continued to write, posting work online, but it wasn't until 2015 that she captured national attention, after the social media site Instagram twice removed a photo for an art project showing her with what looked like menstrual blood on her sweatpants.

Kaur responded: "I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in an underwear, but not be OK with a small leak." The response generated an outpouring of support online, and that same year, a major publisher picked up her first book. Since then, she's cultivated a massive online presence. Nearly two million people follow her Instagram page. A lot of lovers of poetry would think that poetry and social media just don't go together, right?

Rupi Kaur: Yes.

Jeffrey Brown: Social media's this ephemeral, surface-type thing.

Rupi Kaur: The gatekeepers of these two worlds are so confused. But, in my mind, it also seems so very natural that these two things would come together, because — because of technology and because of social media, so many things are changing, and social media has become a platform for so many different industries. Why can't poetry do the same?

Jeffrey Brown: But social media can also bite back. Kaur's poetry has been the subject of frequent parody online, while some critics have questioned its literary merits. And the title of Instagram poet, she says, comes with baggage.

Rupi Kaur: To be completely honest, I'm not OK with it. A lot of the readers are young women who are experiencing really real things, and they're not able to talk about it with maybe family or other friends, and so they go to this type of poetry to sort of feel understood and to have these conversations. And so, when you use that term, you invalidate this space that they use to heal and to feel closer to one another. And I think that's when it becomes unfair.

Jeffrey Brown: Does it hurt you when the poetry is being critiqued as more therapeutic or more emotional, rather than real poetry?

Rupi Kaur: No, not really. And it's because I never really intended to get into the literary world. This is actually not for you. This is for that, like, 17-year-old brown woman in Brampton who is not even thinking about that space, who is just trying to live, survive, get through her day.

Jeffrey Brown: Kaur says social media, the thing that first connected her work to the world, can also be a cause of the pain that so many young people feel today.

Rupi Kaur: What happens when you're so connected with other people through these things, you become so disconnected with yourself, and we find it so difficult to just sit with ourselves and just be alone.

Jeffrey Brown: And the poet who's followed by so many on Instagram follows no one.

Rupi Kaur: What it teaches you is to put up your boundaries and really figure out, OK, this tool is so great, and it's brought me so many great things, but I also need to protect myself if I want to continue to do what I'm doing.

Jeffrey Brown: Self-preservation.

Rupi Kaur: Oh, yes. Yes. And it's like, I'm here to like be around for the long haul. Like, I'm not going anywhere. I want to be around until I'm 80. And so I need to start some practices now, so that I can sort of continue on for the next 50 years.

Jeffrey Brown: Kaur just wrapped up a North American tour. The next stops, India and Europe. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Jeffrey Brown in Brampton, Ontario.

Judy Woodruff: And on the NewsHour online, you can listen to Rupi Kaur read more of her poems about womanhood, love, loss, and trauma. That's at PBS.org/NewsHour.

今晚的最后，我们来介绍一位诗人，她以全新的方式收获了众多读者芳心。

Rupi Kaur年仅25岁时，就已跻身文坛，荣登各大畅销书榜首。

Jeffrey Brown为您报道，她如何利用社交媒体获得项项殊荣，又如何吸引众多年轻读者为其热血沸腾。

对于25岁的Rupi Kaur来说，这已成为一个见怪不怪的新常态，他的诗迷们急切地想要告诉别人，Rupi Kaur的作品何以改变了他们的人生。

一张照片，一个拥抱。有时，这样交流让人难抑激动。

全因你让我忆起了我的母亲。

我还是很难相信。比如，我非得掐自己一下，是真的，但仍感觉不真实。

怎么可能呢？Kaur的首部诗集，《牛奶和蜂蜜》已在全球狂销三百万余册。

而她的新作《太阳和她的花》，自十月份发行以来也已卖出了一百万部。

同时，近来她在华盛顿特区的诗歌表演也常引来成百上千的观众。

我们脚下的群山已经无法容纳。我们所忍受的一切都为我们的未来做好了准备。

拿起锤子和举起拳头。我们将打碎（制约我们的）玻璃天板。

对于一个生长在布兰普顿多伦多郊外大南亚社区里年轻的女人，这是多么令人激动的场景。

她利用社交媒体，吸引了大批年轻女性，忠实狂热地追随着她。

她们就像我的姐妹。她们就是我的化身。

最近我们在布兰普顿的玫瑰剧院聊过天，当年Kaur的高中毕业典礼就是在那里举行的，这些天她又在那儿朗诵了自己的诗歌。

当年我写《牛奶和蜂蜜》的时候，也就不到20岁。

所以我们可以说是，共同成长，我想对她们说，我和你们同在。我在这里。

我想人们只是想被理解和看见。我当年长大的时候就是这样。我想这就是这部诗集如此受欢迎的原因。

Kaur的诗通常不长，甚至也就短短几行，语言简单质朴，鲜有标点。

而诗歌旁边就是她的画作。字里行间，她书写着每天发生的点点滴滴，比如一段感情开始，抑或结束。

你问我们还能不能做朋友。我解释道，蜜蜂焉会不想亲吻花唇，却在叶上委曲求全。我的朋友已经足够。

但她也会触及性暴力以及创伤疗愈等现实问题。

这些书并不全是自传写实。的确，里面掺杂了我的情感，

但同样，也是我的姐妹、表亲、妈妈抑或姑姑每天的日常经历。

所以我近水楼台，可以去写写他们，把他们的经历，载入我的诗篇。

Kaur出生于印度旁遮普省，4岁时移民加拿大。

父亲是一名卡车司机，为了工作，他不得不只身离家，前往遥远的加利福尼亚州，妈妈是个全职妈妈。在家里，他们都只讲旁遮普家乡话。

你知道，这种惯例有点像，无论你身处何地，一天里你都有大约至少90%的时间要讲英语。

在这个家里，你要讲旁遮普语。

事实上，直到上了四年级，Kaur才学会说英语。

她说自己是通过写作和表演，听到了自己的心声。

我想我那时是爱上了麦克风，因它能承载我的声音，让它响彻整个房间。

对我这样一个太久没有发言权的人来说，这真的让我精神抖擞。

对我来说，诗歌就像一面镜子，可以照见自我。

让那些复杂的情感可以透过文字得以彰显，重理我孩提时代的心绪，毕竟那时想说却无能为力。

她继续写作，在网上发布作品，直到2015年，社交媒体Instagram两次删除了其艺术作品照片后，她终于在全国范围内一夜成名。那些照片上似乎有她内裤上的经血。

我不会为没能满足厌女症人群的自负和骄傲而道歉，他们能接受我只穿内裤赤身裸体的样子，却无法忍受一点点经血的渗漏。

这一回应赢得了众多网友的支持，同年，一家大出版商为她出了第一本书。

也是从那时起，她成为了网络红人。

每天关注她Instagram的网友达近两百万之多。

很多诗歌爱好者会认为诗歌和社交媒体不搭，对吗？

的确。社交媒体是那种转瞬即逝，只做表面文章的东西。

忠实于这两个世界的人，彼此对对方都感到非常困惑。

但是，在我看来，这两件事似乎正是浑然天成，

因为现如今科学技术发达，社会媒体影响广阔，很多事情都在改变，社交媒体已为各行各业搭建了良好平台。

为何诗歌不顺势而为呢？

但是社交媒体也会"咬人"。

Kaur的诗歌成为了网上被频繁拙劣效仿的对象，因此有些评论家也对其作品的文学价值大道质疑。

她说，顶着Instagram诗人的头衔，压力山大。

说句实话，我不赞同。

很多读者都是年轻女性，有些事情她们正在亲身经历，

而对于这些事情，她们对家人和朋友难以启齿，所以她们诉诸诗歌，这样在某种程度上，她们感到自己有人理解，大家还能聊聊。

所以，当你用这个词的时候，你也就剥夺了，她们用来疗愈自己和靠近彼此的空间。

我认为那不公平。

如果有人批判那本诗集掺杂了过多的疗愈，太过矫揉造作，不是真正的诗，是否会伤害到你？

不，并不尽然。

因为我从未真正想要涉足文坛。

这实际上并不适合你。

因为，比如就像在布兰普顿，一个17岁褐肤女孩，根本没有思考关于那个空间的问题，

只是想生活，生存，过日子。

Kaur说，首次将她的作品和世界连接起来的社交媒体也正是导致现在很多年轻人如此痛苦的原因。

如果这些事情把你和他人联系在一起，会怎么样？

你会脱离自我，发现独处是如此困难。

而那些在Instagram上为千万读者追随的诗人，其实不会追随任何人。

这教给你们，要建造自己的围墙，真正看到这个工具的伟大，

它还带给我更多更棒的东西，但我若想继续做真正的自己，就需要适当自卫。自我保护。

哦，是的。对，就比如说，我来这里就是为了走得更远。

比如，我哪儿也不去。我就在这儿了，直到80岁。

所以我现在就要开始一些训练了，这样我才可以继续走完接下来的50年。

Kaur刚刚结束了北美巡演。接下来是印度和欧洲。PBS NewsHour，我是Jeffrey Brown，布兰普顿，安大略。

您可以在NewsHour的在线栏目收听到Rupi Kaur，阅读她更多关于女性，爱情，失去，创伤的作品。这里是pbs.org/newshour。