The Rise of the Instapoets

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It seems that for years now, people have been warning us of the decline of poetry. Dwindling

book sales and the advent of social media-based poets has led critics to lament the genre’s

demise, voicing concern over the replacement of complex and nuanced pieces with easily

digested bite-sized verses.

In her essay The Cult of the Noble Amateur, published this January, Rebecca Watts speaks of the rise of ‘consumer driven content’ and ‘personality poets’, directing her critiques at writers

and spoken word poets Hollie McNish, Rupi Kaur and Kate Tempest. All rose to fame thanks to

the popularity of their YouTube and Instagram accounts, and are accused by Watts of trivialising

the genre through making it overly accessible.

Watts’ criticism was picked up by a number of publications, including The Guardian and The

Bookseller, and indeed the question she raises is one that the burgeoning popularity of such

Instapoets has also brought to the forefront of people’s minds. This is the question of how we

define poetry, and whether we have the right to reject certain writers from the genre if they do

not fulfill our preconceived criteria.

When I first read Watts’ essay, I was partially on her side. Though I enjoy some of Kaur’s work,

I had also seen enough terrible Tumblr-esque posts labelled as poetry to share some of Watts’

sentiment, her frustration over people writing things motivated more by social media presence

than true emotion. It can be so easy for someone to know the words and phrases that will be

triggering for adolescents without really meaning what they’ve written. Perhaps that’s a

subjective idea in itself – that poetry is, in its essence, emotion – but in my experience it’s what

has always drawn me to certain poems, the fact that they can capture what you’re feeling so

elegantly and simply. As such, falsified emotion for the sole purpose of sparking a reaction

irritates me, and I find that it often devalues the experience of reading.

However, despite my initial thoughts when I read Watts’ essay, the idea of rejecting poets such

as Kaur and McNish didn’t sit well with me. Elitism in art remains a big problem, and excluding

people from an art form because we don’t deem their version ‘sophisticated’ enough is wrong.

The wonderful thing about poetry is that it can take so many forms, and leaves so much space for personal expression. As such, to assume the emotions discussed are false because they’re not laid out in a sufficiently nuanced way puts a prescriptive demand on poetry which is so out of touch with the reason so many enjoy it. If a writer’s work has an honest and genuine motivation behind it, to tell them it’s invalid would be to say their self-expression is invalid and would limit the very genre chosen for its liberating form.

While some may not like to admit it, Instapoets have had a revitalising effect on the genre. The

Nielsen Book Research reported that in 2017 more than a million poetry books were sold in the

UK, specifically due to social media poets such as Kaur. Similarly, The Canadian Book Market

2016, noted that sales of poetry books grew 79% that year, “largely due to the success of Kaur’s

collection Milk and Honey”, while the NPD Group said 47% of poetry books sold in the US in

2017 were written by ‘Instapoets’.

Sparking people’s interest in poetry cannot be a negative thing. Showing people that poetry

doesn’t have to be a dense tome that takes days to untangle will invite people into an art form

that they may have previously felt excluded from or daunted by. Reading more accessible works

may well act as a gateway to more canonical authors, and keep an otherwise ageing genre alive.

Social media has its – substantial – negatives, but to utilise the platform to spread a love of

poetry and sentiments of self-worth, wonder and beauty, is surely a positive thing. If at the root

of poetry we want to help others experience certain emotions, why should the manner in which

this is achieved matter? If you write something that many turn their noses up at, but which one

person finds comfort or strength in, surely that small victory proves its worth.

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