Nayyirah Waheed reopens long-running dispute with Rupi Kaur over 'salt' and 'milk and honey'

View this post on Instagram“Rupi Kaur, since you took credit for my blueprint/literary innovation ‘salt’ (in front of the whole world) — I’ll also take the credit for those 11-12+ million copies of Milk and Honey”, she said.

“I’ll also take credit for the multi-millions that were made from these global sales, the industry, the economy, the entire genre, that was created from my innovation. Thank you”, she further said, adding, “Get ready to see ‘salt’.

EVERYWHERE”. Waheed also used the post to argue that she was not the first writer or artist to accuse another artist of taking from their work. She cited Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton’s.

Hound Dogand Elvis, Little Richard and Pat Boone, Richard Berry and The Kingsmen, and Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon and Led Zeppelin. View this post on Instagram.

The post came days after Waheed published a lengthy statement on September 11 directly addressing Kaur and her team, accusing them of refusing to engage with her invitation for a formal discussion mediated by a major media outlet.

“At the time of this post,” Waheed wrote, “Kaur and her team are using silence, ignoring, and refusal of acknowledgment of Waheed’s invitation for a formal discussion with a major media outlet as mediator.”The latest statement goes beyond the plagiarism allegations that first brought the two poets into the same conversation almost a decade ago.

Waheed accused Kaur of relying on what she described as “silence and erasure tactics” while continuing with her public career and upcoming performances.

She also framed the broader dispute through the language of “Anti-Blackness, Racism, Erasure, Appropriation, and Cultural Extraction”, alleging that Black writers — particularly Black women — have been treated as sources of creative material without corresponding recognition or accountability.

She continued, “Kaur believes she can use fame, resources, and the machine of the mainstream as a shield — because she has done so for 13+ years. She has been rewarded by the world for stealing from a Black woman in real time.

She believes she can continue to operate in this way — but not this time”. View this post on Instagram. Waheed self-publishedsaltin 2013, while Kaur’smilk and honeyfollowed in 2014 and went on to become one of the most commercially successful poetry collections of the 21st century.

Kaur’spublishersays the book has sold more than seven million copies worldwide and been translated into more than 40 languages. In a 2018interview, Kaur was asked directly about Waheed’s accusation. She responded that the literary form in question was not something she believed either poet owned, pointing to earlier writers who had used lowercase writing and short-form poetry.

The similarities betweensaltandmilk and honeyhave remained a point of debate. Some commentators have argued that they are too extensive to dismiss as coincidence, while others have pointed out that minimalism, short-form poetry, lowercase writing and social-media presentation were not invented by either poet and had existed in different forms for decades.

A 2017 analysis in. The Varsitydescribed what it considered evidence of “hyper similarity” and paraphrasing, while stopping short of definitively declaring Kaur’s work plagiarised. The.

Guardiansimilarly reported on the plagiarism controversy, noting that the two poets shared a broader form of short, confessional poetry and that Waheed had accused Kaur of ignoring messages concerning the similarities. The dispute, however, has increasingly been framed by Waheed as something larger than a question of whether two poets share a similar writing style.

Her latest posts place the issue within a broader argument about race, publishing, cultural power and the economics of literary visibility. For now, the latest development is not a legal ruling or an institutional finding, but Waheed’s decision to publicly reopen the confrontation in unusually direct language.

Nearly a decade aftermilk and honeyhelped transform Kaur into a global literary brand, Waheed is making clear that, in her view, the story surrounding that rise is not finished.