According to the great Audre Lorde, “the farthest external horizons are hopes and fears cobbled by our poems.” It is hard to apply this sentiment to an Instagram poem I found, which reads “YOU ARE PRECIOUS / LET NO ONE / TREAT YOU / LESS THAN / GOLD.” If poetry gives name to personal feelings, then slandering any kind of poetry may seem counterintuitive. But, in my opinion, the term ‘Instagram poetry’ is self-defeating.
Maybe you are wondering what Instagram micro-poetry is. I considered including some poems, but then I worried that I would be wasting my word count. But some micro-poetry really is just this: “you do not just wake up and become the butterfly / growth is a process.” This is a poem by Rupi Kaur, an Indian poet who has spearheaded the rise in micro-poetry. In many ways, the aim of micro-poetry is to conform. The all-lowercase musings with doodles are adapted to the aesthetics of the Instagram grid, and the benign 140-character attempts at emotional depth create something so universal that it easily gets swept up by the algorithm. Kaur’s call to “honour [the] body and mind” reads more as a generic daily affirmation, rather than a unique moulding of language.
Maybe social media has just become the new platform for creativity. Yes, modern art has adapted to a digital world, but poetry can be relatable and not be algorithmic. Take Sylvia Plath, whose work has seen an increase in popularity on TikTok, with her analogy of the “fig tree” now a relatable image of girlhood. The work of Plath and similar poets can be shareable, but a stark difference exists between her work and the work of Instagram poets. The Instagrammable nature of micro-poetry is oriented towards the digital marketplace, where digestibility is rewarded.
One article that came up during my research offered me a step-by-step guide on becoming a successful Instagram poet: it ends with “Step 4 – Make Profit.” This highlights the main issue that I have with Instagram micro-poetry. It is created to serve the algorithm, to be mass consumed. This makes micro-poetry fundamentally antithetical to the nature of poetry, which is to be personal.
It fashions poetry as bite-sized and palatable, with Kaur’s first collection, Milk and Honey, churning out 131 poems. The creative process is akin to that of a machine.
Micro-poetry has stripped away poetry’s personality and replaced it with a vacuous, trend-obsessed persona.
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash