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Twenty-seven Rupi Kaur poems on self-love, grouped for the days you need them, each linked to her own Instagram post with notes on what it says.
This is our guide to twenty-seven Rupi Kaur poems on self-love, grouped by the kind of day you might need them on. Each links to the post where Kaur shared it on Instagram, with a few lines from us on what the poem says, how it works and, where she's told us, which book it comes from.
Loving yourself sounds simple until you try it on a bad day. We all know the voice that says we're behind, not enough, too much. These poems talk back to that voice in a few short lines, which is exactly what you need when you don't have the energy for a whole book.
Rupi Kaur is a poet, illustrator and performer, born in Punjab in 1992 and raised in Brampton, Canada. She self-published her first collection, milk and honey, in November 2014, at 22, while still at university. Since then the sun and her flowers (2017) and home body (2020) have joined it, and together they've sold more than 12 million copies, according to her website.
She draws every illustration herself, and she's the best-known name in Instapoetry, the short verse that grew up on Instagram. Critics have called that style too simple. Her readers would say the simplicity is the point: you can carry one of these poems around all day.
Many of the poems below come from home body, a book Kaur began during a period of depression and finished during the pandemic. Read in that light, its self-love is hard-won.
Kaur writes only in lowercase, with the period as her one punctuation mark, a tribute to Gurmukhi, the script of Punjabi, which has neither capitals nor commas. Her lines are short and her breaks are deliberate pauses, written to be spoken aloud. Many poems end with an italic title, a one-word key to what you've just read.
So here's our suggestion. Pick one poem from this page, read it out loud three times, and keep it for the week.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
An affirmation for not knowing what comes next. In her caption Kaur recalls a friend pointing out that life was never certain, we just felt safer pretending it was. It's page 27 of home body.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A vow of loyalty to yourself, made on the assumption that your best moments haven't happened yet. Kaur captioned it "when the irrational thoughts kick in", which tells you exactly when to use it.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
One of her shortest poems, and one of our favourites. It's an act of noticing, a quiet acknowledgement that surviving counts. Posted on New Year's Day 2021, it works on the darkest days and the brightest ones.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A neat piece of logic that turns your ability to fall into evidence of your ability to recover. Kaur writes that she shared it as a reminder that every low phase is temporary. She has also shared it as page 142 of milk and honey.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
The speaker is buried alive and claws her way out, and calls her whole life "one burial after another". It's a defiant, physical poem. The caption says we're more powerful than we give ourselves credit for.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A poem of self-recognition: the speaker looks at her own life and is astonished by what she's made out of the cruelty aimed at her. Kaur calls it important for her own healing. It's page 170 of home body.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
This post is a short video. The poem reframes survival as strength, and treats who she became as an honour. It's from page 43 of home body.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
Two lines that draw a boundary between your identity and your history. Kaur wrote in her caption that it's for the days guilt and shame spiral you down. It's page 30 of home body, and it's short enough to memorise.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A single line, and Kaur says the whole of home body was made in its spirit, an uphill climb out of a low place. Say it out loud when you're feeling small. It works faster than you'd think.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A one-line affirmation with a spiritual edge, about recognising something sacred in yourself. Kaur says it arrived during a deep meditation, when a voice inside told her she'd got this. If that sounds lofty, try her route in: ten quiet minutes, eyes closed, before you reach for your phone.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A poem that treats the body as somewhere to travel inward, rather than something to fix. It's about not needing to look elsewhere for what you already have.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A poem about moving house, emotionally: from other people to yourself. Kaur loved it enough to have it woven into a wall hanging.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
Loneliness gets a rebuttal built from the body itself, the idea that being alive is its own kind of company. The title is the comfort. It's page 180 of home body.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
The tiniest poem here, a little ritual of thanks to your own body that ends on the words "no home like you". Kaur posted it while sick in bed, admitting she'd pushed her body too hard. Try it tonight.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A short poem that ranks the body's instincts above the mind's arguments. It's page 212 of the sun and her flowers. Next time something feels off, pause and notice where you feel it.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A gentle, slightly cheeky question about who your longest relationship is really with. Kaur's caption turns it into a list: pause, check in, listen, all the things you'd do for your best friend.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A wish to age with "laugh lines and wrinkles" as proof of a life lived, rather than a body kept perfect. It comes from the chapter of home body called awake, page 169, which Kaur calls her favourite. We read it whenever a piece of clothing makes us feel unworthy.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
Three blunt lines rejecting anyone's rules for how a woman should look. It's page 160 of home body, and Kaur's caption says it best: there's no single definition.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A two-line poem about the beauty we start with and what the world does to our belief in it, which it calls "the greatest tragedy". She posted it the day her nephew was born, which makes it ache a little more.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
Two lines that set the beauty industry's ideals against the speaker's real self, and the speaker wins. It's page 225 of the sun and her flowers.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A poem that treats your difference as deliberate, the work of something larger than you, so that self-doubt becomes a kind of disrespect. It's page 197 of the sun and her flowers. On a doubting day, write down one thing only you bring.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A longer poem that walks away from endless self-improvement. It argues that the finished version of you isn't waiting somewhere ahead, and that still growing is a sign of life. Kaur calls it one of her favourites in home body, page 114.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A small poem about presence. Kaur put it on a T-shirt because, she admits, she has a habit of living in tomorrow. It reminds us of Ram Dass's "be here now".
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A mantra of release: three short commands, then the reason we can afford to loosen our grip. Kaur says these were words she repeated to herself through deep grief.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
"i am water", it begins, and then it claims both sides of water's nature, the gentle and the dangerous. Her caption reads it as a lesson in how we treat the people around us.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
A poem about healing that refuses shortcuts: no covering up, only going deep and being tender there. It's page 235 of the sun and her flowers.
Read this poem on Rupi Kaur's Instagram
We close with a four-line poem about where real care comes from: other women and ourselves. It's page 228 of the sun and her flowers, and it reminds us self-love was never meant to be lonely.
These poems were written to live in books, where they build on each other. Most of the ones above are from home body (2020) and the sun and her flowers (2017), and her debut milk and honey (2014) is where it all began. If you'd like to write your way through your own feelings, Healing Through Words (2022) is a book of guided writing exercises.
You'll find every edition on Rupi Kaur's own website, or ask your local bookshop. Buying the book is the best way to thank a poet whose words helped you.
For more, see our guides to milk and honey and to her poems on womanhood. And be gentle with yourself today. You're the one person you'll spend your whole life with, so you might as well be on your own side.