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Rupi Kaur’s highly anticipated new collection, the sun and her flowers (2017), was published by Simon & Schuster at the beginning of the month. Kaur documents, in characteristically sparse free verse, journeys of wilting, falling, rooting, rising and blooming. The poems are illustrated by Kaur herself with line drawings of sunflowers, bodies, and insects, rendering her message multidimensional and complex, despite its apparent simplicity.

Fans of Kaur’s debut collection milk and honey (2014) will find much to be familiar in her new book. Themes of abuse, love, grief and healing remain central, as do symbols like fruit, honey, and celestial objects. Kaur sends roots not only inwards, but outwards and downwards in this new collection. One striking sequence takes Kaur’s mother as its subject, focusing on the difficulties she faced after emigrating to Canada, and the sacrifices she made for her daughters.

Kaur’s poetry is often disparaged as shallow or superficial, but this has plenty to do with the origin of her fame on Instagram and popularity among young women – a category that has long been synonymous with literary inferiority. The discomfort of both a poetry-reading intelligentsia and internet trolls with terms like “consent” or “rape culture” in poetry may also be a contributing factor. While not every poem in the sun and her flowers is a winner, the collection glitters with gems reminiscent of Sappho or Matsuo Bashō. Kaur’s true strength lies in her honest descriptions of what it is like to inhabit her female body.