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Written verse is seducing a new generation, as Tiktok-savvy creatives put paean to paper. Maddy Fletcher finds out if it’s more than just a one-night stanza

began the third season of his BBC poetry podcast, The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed, while comedian Frank Skinner returned to Absolute Radio with the sixth season of his own poetry podcast.

Oh, and Skinner is also presenting a Sky TV show about the 18th-century poets Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.

The 66-year-old comedian has been poetry-obsessed since he studied English at what was then Birmingham Polytechnic. His teacher was a ‘very working-class bloke’ from the Peak District who recited Wordsworth from memory. ‘Even talking about it now I can feel the tingle on my scalp,’ Skinner tells me. ‘I remember thinking, “Oh my god, I never thought it could be like this.”’

Anyway, you get the idea: poetry is her mum and her friend. When she woke up the next morning, her video already had 300,000 views. The second one she uploaded got 200,000, while the third reached a million. ‘It’s not quietened down since,’ says Dorta.

In 2022, Dorta’s first poetry collection, self-published, went to the top of Amazon’s poetry chart. After three days, Penguin asked her if she wanted to work with them. Dorta said yes, but only after a thorough look at the contractual details. Her self-published work was doing so well anyway, she wanted to make sure she was getting a good deal – and before she became a professional poet, Dorta studied law at Warwick University. ‘My contract law experience is quite high,’ she says, with a viral. But is social media really ruining poetry? It’s unlikely. If you google ‘worst poem ever’, all the results show Scottish author William Mcgonagall’s The Tay Bridge Disaster,

written in 1880 in response to a real-life tragedy. On 28 December the previous year, a rail bridge in Dundee collapsed as a passenger train passed over it, killing all those on board. The poem begins:

Beautiful railway bridge of the Silv’ry Tay! Alas!iamverysorrytosay

That ninety lives have been taken away On the last Sabbath day of 1879 Which will be remember’d

for a very long time.

Unsurprisingly, critics were appalled, and when Mcgonagall read it in public, audience members threw eggs and fruit at him. Eventually, Dundee magistrates banned him from performing altogether. So yes, poems have always had the potential to be rubbish – with or without social media.

Besides, as far as the Poetry Society is concerned, there’s no rivalry between traditional and social-media poets. ‘I don’t see any tension there at all,’ says Palmer. ‘It’s not an either/or.’ It’s like fiction, really. There are commercial novels and there are literary novels – and they can co-exist, perfectly happily.

Better still, that sort of straightforward social-media poetry sells. Rupi Kaur, a 30-year-old Canadian who is generally considered the queen of Instagram poems, has flogged more than 11 million poetry books in 43 languages since her debut in 2014. ‘If those books sell, it encourages bookshops to have a poetry section,’ says Palmer. ‘And, if people go in to buy Rupi Kaur, they’re very likely to see another poetry book on the shelf next to it and pick that up, too. I think it just expands the readership and the audience for poetry. It’s good.’

And even if all you ever read is Insta-poetry, Palmer thinks that’s fine too: ‘It can be an inspiration in itself!’