From social media to AI, new technologies have changed the way that we produce and consume poetry. For World Poetry Day, we take a deep dive into the trends that brought a renewed popularity to this genre.
When French writer Marion Fritsch began posting short texts on Instagram in 2023, she did not think her work qualified as poetry. That was, until everybody else told her so.
“When I chose my status for my Instagram account, I hesitated between ‘writer’ and ‘artist.’ I put ‘poet’ just for fun. In the end, what started out as a joke has become serious”, she told Euronews Culture.
Fritsch, 33, now defines herself as an instapoet, and her account @unlivre_unehistoire_ (“one book, one story”) has almost 450,000 followers. She is part of a new generation of poets who blossomed on social media and brought a new light onto this literary genre.
Now, poetry has always been relevant in some form or another. But the development of the internet and the rise of social media have led to new ways of producing and experiencing poems.
The rise of instapoetry
One of the main transformations of the genre has come through Instagram. In the early 2010s, the birth of the platform foreshadowed a world where images would become even more significant to communicate ideas. And yet, it is the app where 21st century poets found refuge to share their words. Millions of publications are posted under hashtags like #instapoetry and #instapoets.
“When we talk about instapoetry specifically, it’s very hard not to mention Rupi Kaur from Canada. Her rise to fame drew a lot of attention to other names”, said Norwegian researcher Camilla Holm Soelseth, who wrote a PhD on Scandinavian instapoetry.
Rupi Kaur began performing spoken word poetry in 2009 and released her first book, “milk and honey”, in 2014. But it is her activity on Instagram that propelled her to stardom. She now has 4.3 million followers on the platform.
Her signature style has remained unchanged through the years: short texts, written in black lowercase letters on a white background, and usually illustrated by a handmade drawing.
Rupi Kaur has inspired many others, including Marion Fritsch. “I understood that for [my writing] to match with social media, it had to be fragmented, shorter formats”, she explained.
Publishing poetry on Instagram “goes beyond writing. On social media, there’s a communication, a visual, an aesthetic and an audio aspect. Of course you must have a way with words, but you also need a good artistic direction.” Fritsch designs her posts to make her words look like they were handwritten on yellowing paper.
“The people’s poet”
On social media, poets are not just writers. They have become communications officers, marketing executives and even influencers.
“To be an instapoet, it’s not enough to just post something online. You also have to be engaged with the audience” and become a sort of “people’s poet”, said Holm Soelseth.
Social media, she explained, is a distribution platform but also a marketplace where people comment and share poems, offering feedback and feelings, and drawing from each other’s ideas to create their own work.
The downside of this community aspect is the expectation that poets must cater to the needs of their followers.
From Victor Hugo criticising the French Emperor to Maya Angelou fighting for civil rights and Mahmoud Darwish supporting the Palestinian resistance, poets throughout history have often been torchbearers, sometimes paying the price of their freedom for it.
“Then we get into this very long debate: aren’t you a slave to the people if you’re just writing what they want?” said Holm Soelseth.
Marion Fritsch, who also performs spoken poetry, has chosen to draw a strict line between the poems she posts online and the rest of her activities.
On stage, she allows herself to offer longer formats and to diverge from the love and self-help topics that made her success on social media.
Instapoetry follows guidelines “that I sometimes want to break free from”, she said. “At the same time, it can inspire and challenge me, because restrictions also help us to experiment with our writing.”
Stepping onto new turf
Experimenting can also mean stepping onto new turf. Instagram remains a favoured outlet for online poetry but TikTok is gaining ground, and many successful creators use both platforms.
American poet Whitney Hanson is known for reading her verses on camera over a soft background music. Her TikTok videos have received more than 78 million likes. Other writers, like Ellen Everett, produce stylised, hybrid content, halfway between a performance and a vlog.
We are far from the traditional poetry collection that schoolchildren buy to analyse and recite.
“There’s a lot of good coming out of poetry as an art form becoming closer to song lyrics and music” because it helps it flow towards the public, said Holm Soelseth. “People want to experience poems.”
Critics of online poetry have sometimes dismissed it as cliché or simplistic. These comments emerge in a context of fear that human creation could easily be replaced by AI-generated content.
A 2024 study has already shown that readers can’t tell the difference between poems written by humans and AI-generated poetry. Perhaps worse, they tend to prefer the latter.
“The best way not to make it a taboo is to talk about it freely. I think it’s great when writers mention that AI has been used in their work”, said Fritsch.
Despite these new evolutions, for online poets, publishing a book remains the ultimate sign of success.
Whitney Hanson’s TikTok popularity caught the attention of landmark publisher Penguin Random House. Marion Fritsch published her first book Les fragments du coeur (Fragments of the Heart) in 2024.
Rupi Kaur’s poem collections have sold over 12 million copies and have been translated into more than 40 languages. She even released a 10th anniversary collector’s edition of her best-selling book “milk and honey”.
Sharing poetry online has also attracted younger audiences towards books. 2023 was the highest year ever recorded for poetry sales in the UK.
“It is thanks to people like me that poetry is moving forward today”, said Fritsch. “If we want to be clever and see the place of poetry in our society grow, we have to include people like me.”
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Source: Euronews
