Rise of the Instagram Mum Poets - Ali Sharman
/Rise of the Instagram Mum Poets
How the Online Poetry Community Has Become a Positive Wellbeing Tool for Mothers
The Online Poetry Renaissance
If I ask you to think of a poet, what is the first name that comes into your head? Is it Wordsworth or Keats or Shakespeare – or another from a long list of “worthy” or “classic” authors who are mainly dead white men? And how about if I ask you what you think of poetry and what it means to you?
Often rooted in our memories of school, where the curriculum is still focused on a singular, elitist definition of what makes a poet admirable or valuable, poetry can have a bad reputation. Along the spectrum from ‘enjoyable but too hard’ to ‘dull and irrelevant,’ it’s hard to shake off these ideas about what poetry is, who it is for and who has a voice worth sharing, even years after you’ve left the classroom. Discourse around making the Canon more inclusive is increasing, but the curriculum (and arguably the world of publishing) is still controlled by such a tiny handful of people that change remains minimal in formal settings.
However, the online world is, as always, very different. Social media has created a modern Renaissance in poetry and Instagram has become the unlikely saviour of a genre that had previously been relegated to shelves at the back of bookstores. As a result, the perception and accessibility of poetry has changed. Alongside this, a strong, vibrant community of mum poets has flourished on the platform. Whether writing and sharing or reading and digesting the words of others, this online space has become a positive, inclusive way for mums to forge connections and share emotions and experiences through the pandemic and beyond.
So what is Instapoetry?
Right from its launch in 2010, writers have shared their work on Instagram and the term “Instapoetry” became popularised as others tried to explain the way poetry began to change as a result of this influence. Other platforms (including Twitter, TikTok and Tumblr) have been used as well, but the way that these poems are often designed to fit into the little trademark squares on your feed means that it is Instagram which has come to define this new genre.
Short and direct, these poems are not burdened by the long-winded sentences and unapproachable vocabulary that many of us remember from school. There is no need to sit in rows and analyse it line by line. What could be more different to a dense classic like Wordsworth’s The Prelude (does anyone remember the extract about the boat?) lauded by school curriculums which, in its entirety, is a whopping 8,000 lines long? The beauty of the Romantics’ themes – nature, awe, the contemplation of human insignificance and our fragile mortality – is undeniable but the fact remains that such poems are, in practice, hard to read and understand in a modern context. Therefore, their emotional power is invariably lost.
With Instapoetry, it is the opposite – its brevity is what imbues it with its success. It is because this style of poetry is clear and direct that it is so intense and vulnerable. It provides, like its name, “instant” engagement with an accessible, universal version of poetry, without the fog of effusive metaphors. It is no longer the domain of dead white men; now, poetry feels democratic and able to express emotions and experiences with an immediacy that is intensely relevant to our current reality, not something distant and remote. The openness of both the style and language offers a low-commitment experience as we scroll through easily-digested but raw, compassionate vignettes of modern life. We feel the buzz of recognised emotions and empathy – a moment of kinship and rapport with the writer that validates our own struggles or joys.
It’s not hard to see why, therefore, mums have found a home in this environment, particularly in lockdown. Instapoetry became a soothing balm for the soul, a way to practice self-care online, and navigate the intensity of the world around us.
Writing in Lockdown
Even when the world is not consumed by chaos, it can be difficult to remember that picture-perfect social media posts and stories don’t show the reality of motherhood – these are highlight reels, specifically shared online as bright moments captured amongst the mundanity and hardships. As a mum in the age of Instagram, it can also be difficult not to feel lesser in some way – like you’re not enjoying parenthood as much as other mums or setting up as many educational activities or serving as many healthy, home cooked meals. Scrolling too much when you’re in the thick of tantrums and sleep deprivation can have a negative impact on your mental health and wellbeing.
Then, even worse, there is motherhood in a pandemic.
Without friends’ houses and playgroups and soft play and cafés, those social media highlight reels and the resulting feelings of unworthiness became heightened to an impossible pressure. As a result of the lockdowns, our opportunities to see the truth beneath the Instagram gloss and engage in those little but integral conversations with other mums – the ones that can be so helpful in resetting your expectations and anxieties for the day – disappeared. It became, for so many mums, an incredibly isolating and overwhelming time without that emotional contact.
So we needed an outlet, a comfort, a way to feel that sense of rapport that vanished almost overnight. Teacher and now mum-of-three Karan (you can follow her @KaranChambersPoetry to read her brilliant poems) remembers a moment sitting on the kitchen floor at the height of the first lockdown, sobbing whilst her children screamed in the other room. “I knew I had to do something,” she says, “so I started writing. First it was very messy journal entries in my notes app but then I started spending more time crafting my thoughts into poetry. I remember wondering if anyone else was having the same experiences.”
Feeling alone in a house that was, ironically, constantly full, inspired many mums to turn to writing poetry as both a creative outlet and a way to process what was happening in the world around them or in their own homes as their parenting journey continued in isolation. It was the start of something therapeutic for Karan, and other mums, who found that writing down those difficult thoughts and confronting their emotions addressed their anxieties and helped them navigate being a parent in such a stressful situation. Two years on and Karan “can’t imagine not writing – it’s helped me find a way back to me and carve out a space for myself within the overwhelm of motherhood.”
The Mum Poet Community
Some mum poets had written previously, many were brand new to the idea, but in both cases it was the pandemic that created both a time and a need for writing. With fewer social engagements and, conversely, more emotions to process, poetry became a form of catharsis which helped them unburden their souls without the usual opportunities to vent or laugh or cry and swap stories or even just share a glance with someone in the same situation. Trying to find this sense of empathy and rapport in a world in lockdown was tough – and also what led many mums beyond writing to posting their work on Instagram. Instead of fuelling the pressure on their mental health, Instagram became a positive wellbeing tool – a way to communicate when they were unable to access the usual outlets and support. Yorkshire-based poet Vanessa Napolitano (@nessanapswrites and find her in the Poetry edition of the Positive Wellbeing Zine for Mums) reflects on how she initially set up a separate Instagram account to curate a poetry feed to follow but instead stumbled into a community of other writers. “The connection may have been online, but it was also very real. The poets and the poems themselves have been one of the genuine positives of the last few years and have given me a real sense of community, a place to discuss writing, motherhood and life.”
One of the most important online hubs for this community has been The Mum Poem Press – set up during the first lockdown – whose peer feedback groups, prompts, zoom events and published anthology and zines became a focal point to help mum poets find and follow each other online. It has exploded in its number of members beyond founder Katharine Perry’s expectations, perhaps because of the anchor it offered us in such a turbulent time. During a period when we needed to know that we weren’t going through this alone and that actually, yes, it is this hard sometimes, reading and sharing poetry in this way helped us to feel the connection that was missing elsewhere.
It’s a well-known adage that it ‘takes a village to raise a family’ and this is exactly how Jen Copley (read Jen’s brilliant work @JCopleyWrites) describes the mum poet community on Instagram: “I have found a sort of village of kind, compassionate women, whose words I have found great joy and comfort in. I feel so grateful to be part of that.”
The Instagram Effect
This is arguably the biggest shift of momentum we’ve ever seen in the genre of poetry. However, like all seismic cultural shifts, Instapoetry has attracted its fair share of criticism. Snobbery continues to exist in literary circles – take Rebecca Watts, for example, a young, up-and-coming female poet who infamously launched an attack on other young, up-and-coming female poets who use social media, including Rupi Kaur and Hollie McNish, for their “amateurism and ignorance” in the PN Review. Whilst it’s true that Instapoetry often rejects traditional (and arguably elitist) aspects of poetic form and style, dismissing it fails to see how these writers have changed the reputation of poetry (and if you haven’t read Hollie McNish’s incredible reply to Watts on her website then you’re in for a treat).
Watts also fails to recognise the way that the reach and accessibility of this type of poetry has influenced the offline world as well. Annual sales of poetry books surpassed £10 million in 2016 for the first time since records began and have continued to soar since. This is partly thanks to Rupi Kaur’s collection milk and honey (which was responsible for almost £1 million of the 2018 sales) which arguably began to bridge the gap between online influence and traditional publishing. As a result, in bookstores around the world, other poets have found their work shifted to the front shelves alongside it. Instapoetry, it seems, has acted as a gateway to introduce new readers and writers of poetry to its capacity for beauty and self-reflection and affirmation and emotional power.
Poet Kazim Ali rather scathingly writes on The Poetry Foundation that Kaur’s poems “identify; they do not interrogate. They provide moments of recognition; they allow the reader to notice something in their own perception through the voice of Kaur.” For me, however, this is what is instrumental in their success: Instagram has changed poetry from something that is experienced by someone else into something you have experienced or can experience yourself. This is not the irrelevant poetry of dead white men that we knew at school – this is poetry which is accessible and real, which exposes the joys and hardships of motherhood, which exposes the vulnerabilities of being a mum. It is poetry which shows that you are not the only one who has felt this way. It is poetry that tells you: you are not alone.
Bio:
Ali (Alice) Sharman lives in the North West of England with her husband, two small boys and fluffy dog. She has previously worked as a journalist and online content editor before teaching English abroad and then in secondary schools in England. Her real passion, however, is writing poetry and fiction. She is currently applying for a PHD in Creative Writing to pursue this passion further. You can read her poetry @aliwrites_poetry and find a full list of published work on her website.
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