Poetry is by far one of my favorite forms of art. I read it, I write it, I live it. Honestly, my Twitter has become a collection of lines of poems that I’ll never write. Some days, I would be completely and entirely satisfied by doing nothing more than sitting outside at night, watching the world and writing poetry. With all of this in mind, it MASSIVELY pisses me off when I see people bashing on poets like Rupi Kaur ("Milk and Honey" poet) for their Instagrammable style of poetry. In fact, some of my favorite poets that I’ve found have been from Instagram.
The rise of the “Instagram poet” has been a recent one, as social media has strongly taken off within the past decade. The poetry publishing business has been largely underground, and a mainstream site such as Instagram is a wonderful way to get your poetry and your name out there. If it’s there, why not utilize it? This is especially useful for poets who write incredibly short (a stanza, if that) poetry whose format are easily applicable to the Instagram format.
However, as a result of popularity and common sightings of their writing, there have been a lot of people making fun of it. Rupi Kaur’s style in "Milk and Honey" was the most notable victim of such criticisms as her poetic style was turned into a meme. Books such as "Milk and Vine" and "Milk and Tweets" are now even coming out as well as all of the Twitter jokes that were made at Kaur’s expense. It’s fine to poke fun at something; it’s likely that there is someone to make fun of everything.
However, "Milk and Honey" is a really personal book about falling into an abusive relationship, leaving it, and finding yourself again and pulling yourself back together after it. It’s a really important message and Kaur put a lot of herself and her personal history into this collection of her poetry. To put so much of yourself into something and then to have the Internet rip it to joking shreds has to be an incredibly disheartening experience. I know for this very reason that I’m very cautious of who I choose to share my own poetry with.
In addition, I have had conversations with people where they discuss how the easy access to their poetry makes them think lesser of the quality of it.
Poetry doesn’t have to be some exclusive party that you have to pay $8.99 to get into.
No. Poetry is supposed to make you feel something.
If it can do that through Instagram (which it CERTAINLY can), then I would argue it is fulfilling its purpose. No one insists that memes be printed and published on paper to validate them — in fact, most often, they are most valid in the internet platform.
Online poetry is poetry.
Instagram poetry is poetry.
Published poetry is poetry.
Poetry that you write and keep in a journal for only you is poetry.
Stop invalidating others for stupid reasons and appreciate the messages that these poets are trying to convey.
