From newsfeeds to shelves: Meet the Instapoets

As smartphones have become ubiquitous, poetry has found a new home in the digital space. Poems that sprout and thrive are on Tumblr, Pinterest, Facebook and the most popular social networking app of them all, Instagram. Through it and the popularity of social media as a form of distribution, a new crop of poets has emerged.

The social media poets, dubbed Instapoets, have achieved such huge fanbases that they’ve found their way from the Instagram squares to the pages of bestselling books. Their powerful work tackles themes from friendship, racism, romantic love, immigration, self-love and mental health to gender identity and politics.  

Rupi Kaur

Tagged as the Queen of Instapoets, Rupi Kaur became well-known for her trademark short poems and sketches, encompassing themes often deemed taboo for women: violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. Her debut book, milk and honey (2014) became The New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 42 languages.  Kaur currently hosts a show on Amazon Prime called Rupi Kaur Live and is now gracing the stage with her live performances across the globe, performing poetry combined with stand-up comedy. 

Morgan Harper Nichols

Conquering the platform is Georgia-based artist and writer Morgan Harper Nichols. To say that Nichols’s content is refreshing is an understatement: her art work is filled with colors, flowers, and city skylines, her words centred around the question of “how can we create connection?” It’s no wonder her work successfully crossed over to print with bestselling books like All Along You Were Blooming (2020), and You Are Only Just Beginning (2023). 

Lang Leav

Lang Leav started her foray into poetry in 2012 when she posted short poems, sometimes accompanied by drawings, on Tumblr and Instagram. Now Lang Leav is an international bestselling author with five poetry collections and two novels under her belt — her most recent one being Others Were Emeralds (2023), a literary fictional novel loosely based from the harrowing experiences of Lang Leav and her parents as they fled the Khmer Rouge to seek refuge in the predominantly migrant town of Cabramatta.

Atticus

Atticus, the masked slash anonymous hero of Instapoetry, wants to remind himself to always write what he feels, and not what he thinks he should feel. His short verses encompassing themes of love, relationships and adventures have successfully leaped from the Instagram squares to the pristine pages of publishing, with instant bestsellers like Love Her Wild, The Dark Between Stars (2018) and The Truth About Magic. 

Nikita Gill

Nikita Gill is an Irish-Indian poet, playwright, and illustrator. Gill shares that she envisions speaking to her younger self when writing poetry, embracing themes of self-love and the empowerment of womanhood. Gill is the author of eight volumes of poetry, and a novel entitled The Girl and the Goddess (2020). It is currently being adapted for TV by Lena Headey. 

Caroline Kaufman

Caroline Kaufman started writing when she was 12 years old to cope with her depression and anxiety. Her book, Light Filters In (2018) is a poetry collection about not fitting in, endlessly Googling “how to be happy,” and ultimately figuring out who you are.

Marisa Crane

Marisa Crane’s poems have been circulating on Instagram and Pinterest for years, recognizable by their clean text or vintage typewriter-inspired images. Some of her finest verses include powerful commentary on the discrimination against the LGBT community. She has contributed to Literary Hub, Joyland, TriQuarterly, and other publications. Crane successfully released her debut novel, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself (2023), about queer survival in a dystopian world, published by Catapult, New York.

Amanda Torroni

Amanda Torroni is a poet, an independent writer, and a freelance editor. Her fame as a poet took off after she self-published four poetry books, garnered an online following, and showcased her work in various venues in the US She is the author of Stargazing at Noon, a collection of poems tackling themes of intimacy, distance, the body, self-doubt, nostalgia, and love, and finding beautiful patterns in the material of life.