As contemporary writers gain hordes of young followers, most of whom have read far more words on screens than on paper, the line between author and influencer starts to blur. A single viral poem now has the potential to launch a career of literary stardom. As with most things on the internet, this comes with the cost of critics who question the validity of the work itself. How do we navigate an art form like poetry in an age of online consumerism?
Whether you’re an avid literature fan or a passive scroller, there’s a good chance while online you’ve run into the phenomenon that is “Instapoetry”. These often minimal, straightforward and easily consumed, pieces garner ridicule across social media platforms.
Readers expecting the cultivated intellect of literary greats may feel shorted by products that look mass-produced, shallow and churned out by an algorithm. With audiences so large, and so young, it makes sense for these writers’ content to be so accessible, even at risk of being watered down. However, waves of discourse continue to beg the question: Are Instapoets killing the art of poetry, or keeping it alive?
What many criticize about Instapoetry is that it lacks adherence to traditional forms of poetry. Surface level sentences describing basic observations of the human experience suddenly become poems when seemingly random line breaks are inserted. As long as you can spread it out vertically on a page, and maybe include a minimalist drawing, something that could be a Tweet becomes a work of art.
These poems sometimes venture into the realm of metaphor, albeit the connections made are often quite easy to grasp and rarely new. Such criticism implies that there’s a minimum level of complexity required for something to be a “real” poem. By this logic, when you choose to make your poetry easily readable and interpretable, you risk it becoming nothing more than a fad.
But is there really such a thing as poems that are “too simple?” What gives a poem the legitimacy that readers seek?
University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences professor and poet Mia Leonin, who leads poetry workshops at UM said, “A great poem is a poem that makes surprising connections or leaps, and that can be because the language is surprising, or fresh or innovative.”
Readers like Leonin value poems that bring perspectives they hadn’t previously considered.
When one looks only to social media for poetry content, they lose exposure to the artistic risks that come from stepping outside one’s own perspective. In online spaces, people have the benefit of the like-minded “in crowd.” Poets and readers alike form communities that uplift very similar voices and connect people.
However, sometimes these comfort zones can become traps. As Leonin puts it, “we become very siloed…and conversation and nuance gets lost because we’re all in our own echo chambers.”
Writers, especially non-professionals, with huge followings sometimes fail to expose their audiences to poetry in all its fullness, because these communities can be so insulated.
This doesn’t have to be true of all Instapoetry audiences. While social media’s most popular poets reap the rewards of skyrocketing book sales — a particularly rare phenomenon for poetry books —, they also may be leaving a positive impact on aspiring writers. Leonin shared that enrollment in poetry workshops across UM has increased in the last several years. She says, about today’s young students, “they’re not dismissive of poetry. They’re curious about it.”
Marine biology major and writer, Andy Ashton, is a sophomore at UM who has felt inspired to put his own work online. From his perspective, poetry spaces on the internet are “overwhelmingly positive”, and participants within these groups tend to uplift their peers. In the age of social media algorithms, where explore pages are curated to fit your online interests, it’s often the case that criticism and rage content gets more clicks. Spaces that promote positivity instead are a valuable rarity.
The inside of these poetry communities, writers are often supportive, outside perceptions of them are tainted with negativity. Often, this stems from the idea that the writing produced on the internet is amateur-ish.
This isn’t an unfair assessment – after all, a lack of valuable, critical feedback unsurprisingly allows for stagnation of writers’ personal growth at times. What the average social media user should consider is how young these writers are, on average, and how harsh criticism can discourage beginning Instapoets from pursuing what they love.
“There’s more beginners out there in the world, so you’re gonna see more beginner-level poetry,” Ashton said.
Not only are the faces of Instapoetry largely young, they’re also largely female. Sophomore creative writing and marketing major Julia Pomeroy shares, “A lot of the reason that people don’t think it’s legitimate is because, from what I’ve seen, most of the authors are women”.
In the public eye, Instapoetry’s biggest crime could simply be that it’s popular, particularly among young women. This doesn’t invalidate the fact that many online writers have a long way to go in developing their craft. However, the way readers approach criticism can easily turn from constructive to dismissive and belittling, especially online.
Before feeding into the collective “cringe” response aimed at Instapoetry, social media users should consider who’s behind the poems. After all, viral poetry is a harmless way to get more young people reading. April is National Poetry Month, which means now is the perfect time to celebrate a movement of poetry you may not have given proper credit before.
words_jay moyer. illustration_marita gavioti.
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