Whether you like it or not, social media has been redefining a lot of things including the world of poets.
Social media apps such as Instagram has become a platform for poets to freely share their rhymes and verses to an audience.
And if they are good enough, they can even score a book deal or two for making their works accessible to the world.
So if you are looking for sincere, relatable words to soothe your poetic soul in the midst of the viral craziness of social media, here are 15 poets you should follow on Instagram:
1.Lang Leav
Love & Misadventure, Lullabies, Memories, The Universe of Us and Sea of Strangers; these are published poetry and prose books written by Lang Leav.
Taking matter into her own hands, Lang self-published her first book Love & Misadventure. When the book started to top best-seller charts, publishers began calling her for book deals and now she signed up with Writers House.
Apart from her books, you can find some of her works on her Instagram account where she also shared about her future events.
2.Michael Faudet
And we cannot talk about Lang Leav, without talking about Michael Faudet. Faudet is Lang’s partner and perhaps the only one who knows how Faudet looks like in real life.
Unlike Lang’s work, Faudet is known for his erotic writing style, which you can tell even by the title of his books such as ‘Dirty Pretty Things’.
3.Rupi Kaur
Before this poet shared her work on Instagram, she started to share them on Tumblr back in 2013.
Rupi Kaur’s Instagram feed of poetry and illustrations started in 2014. Then, she published her first book, milk and honey on Nov 4, 2014.
The book sold more than 2.5 million copies and was on The New York Times Best Seller list for over 77 weeks.
The success of Kaur’s book is indeed a far cry from her days writing poems on Tumblr account.
4.Atticus
What does Atticus looks like? No one knows (or at least none of his followers do, anyway). The poet always wears a mask even during his public readings of his book and on TV.
Is he a good poet? His 1 million followers on Instagram think so.
His Instagram feed is carefully curated in monochrome mostly with one-liners that hit straight to your heart.
5.Nikita Gill
The scariest thing about putting your work online is to have people sharing them without crediting you. And no one knows this better than Nikita Gill.
A couple years ago, Khloe Kardashian shared one of her poems without credit. Even after people tried to inform her, Kardashian refused to respond.
The poet shared her thought about it during an interview with Fashion Magazine, “The longer it’s been out on the Internet, the longer the Internet seems to think that it belongs to them. It’s scary being a creative person sharing their work online.”
So, if you are reposting any poems from these poets on Instagram, do not forget to give them proper credit!
6.Najwa Zebian
In 2016, Najwa Zebian self-published her first collection of poetry and prose. And she continued to publish her works in books like The Nectar of Pain and Mind Platter.
Her upcoming book Sparks of Phoenix is set to release this coming Mar 5.
Meanwhile, she continued to share some her lines on Instagram.
7.Alison Malee
Malee is a poet/author/artist. This New York-based poet has been featured in The Huffington Post, Bustle, Thought Catalog.
You can find her poems, quotes and prose on her Instagram, mostly posted with flowers as her background.
8.Amanda Lovelace
She is the winner of 2016 Goodreads Choice Award-winning poet. Her first published book has a title which screams feminism, The Princess Saves Herself In This One.
The titles of her books are always intriguing; The Witch Doesn’t Burn In This One, To Make Monsters Out Of Girls, The Mermaid’s Voice Returns In This One.
Recently, Lovelace joined power with two other bestselling authors Nikita Gill and Trista Mateer to publish Dragonhearts.
9.Tyler Knott Gregson
What is the best part about following Tyler Knott Gregson on Instagram? He currently publishes a raw poem from his “Typewriter Series” every day!
And he wrote “Daily Haiku on Love” on a piece of paper and posted it daily too! Wait, we are not done yet. Gregson is also a professional photographer so he posted his photo on his Instagram.
Combining these three kind of photos on his Instagram feed; we have his typewriter-written poems on the left column, a handwritten note in the middle column and a photograph on the right column.
There you have it; one of the most perfectly curated Instagram account and it comes with poems.
10.Nayyirah Waheed
The first word to describe Nayyirah Waheed’s style of poetry is unconventional. Let just say that, she is not a fan of capital letters and traditional punctuation.
Nonetheless, her short lines and few words style of poems manage to draw about 700 000 followers on Instagram.
11.Christopher Poindexter
How to get Christopher Poindexter’s attention on Instagram? Get a tattoo of his poems on your body, post it on Instagram, do not forget to tag his account and he might repost your photo!
Poindexter started to write poems when he was 18. Since then, he had published three books; Naked Human, Lavender (Remastered) and Old Soul Love.
12.Robert M. Drake
With 1.9 million followers on Instagram, it is no surprise that Robert M. Drake is also the author of several best-selling books.
Like some of the poets on this list, Drake is also a popular street artist which you can see his work in all major cities in the US.
13.Marisa Crane
Like many other poets, Marisa Crane also write her non-poetical poems such as fiction and non-fiction pieces.
And the coolest thing about Crane? She is also the co-founder and editor of Collective Unrest, an undergound resistance magazine to promote social unity and political unrest.
14.Pavana Reddy
Most poets write because they found peace and serenity in the rhythmic and metaphoric words of poetry. The same thing can be said about Pavana Reddy who found solace in poetry after losing her sister at a very young age.
You feel how she talked about her pain, love and loses though her poems on Instagram.
15.Amanda Torroni
This author of Stargazing at Noon and Poetic Conversation is currently based in Summerville, South Carolina, US.
Her Instagram profile shows a mixture of poems and prose as well as some glimpse of her personal life.
Occasionally, she posted videos of her reciting her poems.
Do you have any favourite poets on Instagrams which are not on this list? Let us know on the comment box.
Read also: 15 Wildlife Photographers You Should Follow on Instagram
