Selfie-Help: The Multimodal Appeal of Instagram Poetry
Lili Pâquet writes on the influence of social media poets and how they are reshaping literary form and reaching new audiences in her article “Selfie-Help: The Multimodal Appeal of Instagram Poetry” (296). She begins by discussing the difference of pen on paper to the typing to a screen, which the later has turned into a primary way of sharing ones inner thoughts. Though this has been seen as amateurish, poets like Rupi Kaur have made poetry more accessible and eliminating some of the anxiety that poetry can bring individuals. Pâquet states that “To date, academic scholarship has largely overlooked Instagram poetry, usually considering it a lowbrow form that demonstrates little literary merit” which in the English writing community seems to fall in line with the fact as it’s not the traditional idea of academic writing, then it is not viewed as worthy of the same merit. The instagram poets tend to focus on self help poetry, which goes against the grain of most of social media, which portrays a superficial idea of what is occurring in one’s life.
Instagram has been known to promote narcissism, lack of awareness to others and cultures around them, and psychopathy, as selfies and the captions paired with how well they do online, can dramatically determine how one sees themselves. Though the positive side of posting selfies through this platform is that traditional media can no longer regulate who is shown and made popular because the masses have access and the choice to make beauty standards popular. Instagram poets use this as well, taking their poetry and selfies, melding them together to create their own brand. Kaur shot to fame after Instagram removed one of her pieces about menstruation and periods. She fought against this as showing the normal bodily experience woman or individuals with uterus’s go through monthly, to the fact Instagram continued to allow individuals in the pornography business to post. She fought against the censorship Instagram created which led to her receiving more followers, and therefore readers, on her page. She has curated a page that shows the raw emotions and experiences of women and humans through the processes they go through, either physically or mentally. Pâquet states that Kaur knows how to “craft persuasive visual arguments” while branding herself as “successful, spiritual” and emphasizes her individuality (298). Though Instagram is literally a curated platform, Kaur has prided herself and branded herself on this self help and organic idea. She focuses on mediation and her Sikh background, pairing it with messages spoken directly to her followers about how she has reached an inner peace and wants to pass it on through her poetry.
Instagram has helped make poetry more accessible, yet there is still a sense that poets “are old-fashioned and romantic and that this romanticism is an appealing deviation to the focus on superficial physical attributes that is common to the rest of Instagram” (Pâquet 299). Some Insta poets use this as part of their aesthetic and branding, using filters and posed photographs that help play into this narrative. The irony is that even though they are playing into these shallow norms, the poetry they have written tends to be based on healing and inner beauty. These poems are always accompanied by hashtags which helps users filter what they want to see and the direct messages they are attempting to make their feed in to. These hashtags create a “…a kind of modern ekphrasis, making their visuals…available by describing them in search terms” allowing them to be searched exactly by what the poet wants to be known by or how they want the poem interpreted (Pâquet 300).
Overall, the idea that instagram poetry is not as academic as traditional poetry seems obsolete, as it is allowing significantly more access to poetry and the creation of it on one of the most used online platforms. Hashtags, photographs, and the poems themselves all curate a careful image of what the poet wants their readers and followers to understand about their poems. These online poets have moved to physical books, putting their thoughts and ideas into traditional form eventually, and almost using Instagram as a marketing platform that presents a multifaceted idea of who these poets are. Instagram poets have helps revive the genre in a more accessible and relatable way to the masses of online users.
I learned a lot from this piece — especially how Kaur got her own start. I think this is a really interesting defense of instagram poetry, and I like how the author discusses ways in which these poets are very much “of” their medium even as they offer some resistance to it, getting beneath the visual superficiality and is a hallmark of instagram. I also find it fascinating that instagram poets have broken into more traditional media forms as well, suggesting that this isn’t some marginal fad, but a new entry point into the publishing world, one that overturns the question of how has access and power. Great overview!