My Love is a Durian

Arranged into four parts, “Singapura: Lion City,” “Papa,” “Bedi Rebels,” and “Rising up,” Kelly Kaur’s poetry collection, “My Love is a Durian,” comprises roughly 83 poems. “My Love is a Durian” is Kaur’s testimony to her own life, experiences of the oppression of women as well as the experiences as an immigrant within Canada. In completing my reading of her work I feel that the collection resonated to me as a call to action for women. “Give a woman audacity/ plunk her in a classroom/ watch her tongue/ unfurl across continents.” That is exactly what this collection of poetry accomplishes. 

In a poem titled, “Lotus Flower,” Kaur retells the story of her birth. “My mother shed bitter tears of regret/ Not the son my father wanted/ Coveted/ A second daughter/ A woman who could deliver only girl children/ Useless.” The father does not come to the hospital for two days, the grandmother eventually makes him come. When the father does arrive he says that his boss can adopt the girl child. “My grandmother spat on the ground/ “Chi chi. This girl is the goddess, Lakshmi./ She will bring you wealth. Money. Money!” The father leaves the room. “My mother held me to her lips and whispered in my ear/ “A girl’s life.” A girl’s life. Unwanted girls. Yet, there is an undercurrent rising up that empowers and inspires a knowing of the importance of women within this world. 

Kaur breaks generational chains, her storytelling offers space of being wanted for the next generation of women. Her storytelling also fights back. In a poem entitled, “Revolution,” Kaur writes, “ground me in rebellion/ teach me to speak in tongues/ forking in non-compliance.” She will not settle. She will not perpetuate the same birth story to her own children. In “Birthright,” Kaur reveals that “at that precise crosspoint/ I envision my mother’s birth/ I remember my birth/ I give birth/ My daughter’s cries fill the room/ rising to a crescendo/ greeting my mother’s chants/ Rebellious/ Three generations of women/ three countries/ forever/ inextricably linked.” The power of three generations of women. 

Kaur offers the space of her poetry for other women, not just her own. In “Rising up,” she powerfully writes, “We need just one to advocate to/ Rise up for our mothers, sisters, and daughters/ Rise up for the muted and nameless/ Rise up for the invisible woman/ Until on her own/ every single woman in the universe/ Rises up for herself.” From the individual to the collective, this collection is not one to underestimate. 

Kelly Kaur is a writer, author, and speaker whose work emerges from a life lived between places, cultures and shifting ideas of belonging. Born in Singapore and now based in Calgary, Kaur moved to Canada in 1985 to pursue her education, earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from the University of Calgary before becoming an English instructor at Mount Royal University. Her literary practice grows from this experience of crossing borders and negotiating cultural differences. Moving among poetry, fiction and nonfiction to explore immigration, women’s rights, cultural identity and the complicated inheritance of home. Her work has proved remarkably diverse. Her poems, short stories and nonfiction have been published on beer cans, performed on stage, exhibited in galleries and museums, and, most remarkably, sent toward the moon through the Lunar Codex.

Kaur’s literary achievements have likewise carried her work beyond conventional literary spaces. She received the South Asian Inspiration Award for Outstanding Achievement in Arts and Culture, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and received an honourable mention in the Creators of Justice Literary Awards. In 2024, she was named one of the Top 25 Canadian Immigrants, recognizing both her creative accomplishments and her contribution to Canadian cultural life. Her first novel, “Letters to Singapore,” traces a young woman’s attempt to resist prescribed expectations and construct an independent life between Singapore and Canada, while her debut poetry collection, “My Love is a Durian,” continues this exploration through poems that braid together the landscapes, memories and emotional geographies of both countries.

The durian of the title, with its controversial scent, landscapes of difference between the spiked rind and inside sweet fruit, becomes an extension for the layers of Kaur’s life itself. “My love is a durian/ Furtive/ Prickly, bristly, inaccessible/ Takes time to comprehend.” Sometimes forbidden for the smell, the scent of a woman in patriarchal palettes. Some cannot get past the smell to know the glory of the fruit. “Prick your passionate explorations/ until you whiff/ how my faltering love reeks/ like an unfathomable durian.” But, what repels initially can also nourish. Our stories are not always easy to digest, or palpable. We have to want it. 

The University of Calgary Press offers an especially fitting home for Kelly Kaur’s debut poetry collection. Established as an academic press but extending its literary mandate through Brave & Brilliant, the Press describes the series as a space for fiction, poetry and work that exists ‘in between and beyond.’ The press emphasizes books with strong individual voices and fresh approaches to storytelling and verse. “My Love is a Durian” accomplishes just that. 

The University of Calgary Press describes its broader mission as connecting local realities to global experiences, a philosophy that resonates strongly with Kaur’s movement between Singaporean memory and Canadian belonging. “My Love is a Durian” turns that geographical crossing into a literary one. Kaur’s collection offers another kind of spatial inquiry, one in which we physically traverse geographies, but also where we traverse the frontiers within ourselves. In “Hungry Ghosts, Singapore,” Kaur identifies that “it’s not the departed who are adrift/ it’s the lost living souls/ patiently, I erect an altar.” She does just that, her poetry becomes an altar for women to lay their heavy bodies down before they cull up the strength to rise up. 

Thank you to Kelly Kaur, Calgary University Press and River Street Writing for a complimentary copy in request for an honest review.