Poetry's surprising renaissance in the UK

Poetry is rising in popularity in the UK as social media drives an unexpected renaissance in the often overlooked genre.

Last year, sales of poetry books reached £14.4 million – their highest since accurate official figures from BookScan began a decade ago. But what's making more Brits turn to verse and why are some in the sector unhappy about the trend?

'Instapoetry'

Scottish poet Donna Ashworth ended 2023 with five of her books in the Top 20 poetry chart after nearly 70,000 of her hardback books were sold last year. She has one million Facebook followers and 240,000 on Instagram and this is key to her success.

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Social media provides a platform for unpublished authors to share their work and for readers to access poetry. Instagram is a pivotal factor in the rising popularity of poems, explained The Observer, with "Instapoetry", a "style of short and direct verse, put out and shared online", particularly popular. The genre, which was "kicked off" by Canadian Rupi Kaur's "Milk and Honey" in 2015, has continued to grow in popularity.

A crossover between the poetry and self-help genres has been important. "There's been a real change in poetry over the past decade," Judith Palmer, director of the Poetry Society, told The Observer. “It's been led by Instagram and social media, with many more poems about shared experience and the human condition."

Two key translations of Homer also boosted sales last year. Father and son translators E.V. and D.C.H. Rieu released a version of "The Odyssey" and Emily Wilson offered a new translation of "The Iliad". 

The succession of emergencies, such as the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis, could also have played a part. In 2019, Dina Gusejnova, an assistant professor in international history, told the LSE website that "throughout history, readers have been drawn to poetry in the context of political crises which fragment and challenge society".

An 'alarming' trend

But despite its welcome success for publishers, "Instapoetry" is not without its detractors. The Economist described the rise in poetry sales as "alarming", dismissing Ashworth's verse as feeling "less like poetry than as though ChatGPT has been asked to produce inspirational fridge magnets". It insisted that Instapoetry "doesn't feel true".

The digitally driven form has "raised the ire of so many in the traditional poetry community", wrote Tom Tivnan in The Bookseller. "The gall of actually being successful at poetry, right?"

"The literary value of many of these Insta poets is zero," publisher Neil Astley told The Observer. "This boom in their sales is about stuff pretending to be poetry." But Tivnan feels that those who "dismiss the insta-poets" are being "blindingly reductive". He encourages "poetry snobs" to see the new wave as "broadening what has heretofore been a closed market".

That broadening should be seen in context, argued Susie Goldsbrough in The Times. Poetry sales may have reached almost £12 million last year at the time she was writing last December, but this figure is "peanuts", she said, and "not much more than Penguin is reported to have paid Richard Osman as an advance on his next few books".