Instagram is filled with eye candy, one visual wonderland after another; here, text is the stepchild, typically relegated to caption and hashtag status. Which is what makes poet Rupi Kaur’s rise so refreshing — she’s turned a whole new generation on to poetry, and she’s done it one post at a time. To date, Kaur has 2.8 million followers — and counting — and just announced a 10-city tour of the U.S. this fall, including New York (September 26th), San Francisco (October 14th) and Miami (October 26th).

In a few short years Kaur, dubbed “Queen of the ‘Instapoets'” by Rolling Stone magazine, has reinvigorated the typically dusty genre of poetry and given it a lightening-hot currency. Her debut book Milk and Honey, published in 2014, sold over 2.5 million copies and was on the New York Times Best Seller list for over 75 weeks. The follow-up, The Sun and Her Flowers, from last October, has already sold over a million. It’s hard not to see the appeal. Her spare and simple poetry, which she pairs with line drawings, is deeply intimate yet accessible, and hits at all the raw emotions that are universal to people today: abuse, depression, heartache, acceptance, love, empowerment… She makes you feel understood. Below, a few of our favorites.

Follow Rupi Kaur on Instagram.