A new book studies how Indian women ‘Instapoets’ are forming new collective cultural identifications

Cultures and communities on Instagram and Facebook are bound by common interests and may often reveal underlying ideological inclinations. Through the process of interpellation, they also have a profound impact on self-perception and the construction of identity. Taking into consideration the importance of processes of globalisation for the production and transformation of knowledge and cultural norms, the essay will discuss the poetry of Rupi Kaur, Nayyirah Waheed and Nikita Gill on Instagram, and the complexities of interpretation which emerge in their approach towards the identity of “postcolonial” women in popular culture.

The works of these young women poets suggest a wide range of cultural references and appeal to a mass culture, displacing the traditional canon of English poetry for its modern readers who are more familiar with an Instagram culture than the discipline of literature. They exist in a hybrid digital universe with a plethora of communities mimicking the structures of collective society and developing through interpersonal interaction.

These new “hybrid” poets, who have acquired celebrity status, function as both influencers and creative producers, and through their poetry they present vastly multiplying opportunities for exchange and reproduction. Through their work they attempt to construct belonging and identity, albeit through a virtual society.

They have changed the character of leisure to a neo-liberal notion that the leisure space on Instagram or Facebook can serve as an identity-making space with serious implications.The hybridity of form and language in this poetry is also an important consideration. Firstly, the aesthetic of Instagram and Facebook enables the creation of thematic collages from multiple media and represents a form of visual art.

Secondly, the minimalist expression, the colloquialism and neologism challenge the discourse of poetic language and the creations are thus opened up to young readers from diverse cultural backgrounds.Their poetry further establishes an intersectionality of social and ideological positions and cross-cultural identities within a new space.

Within the shared media culture where this poetry has grown, these poets allow for new and wider modes of personal and collective cultural identification. The politics of identity which is played out is in this sense intrinsically connected to a particular understanding of agency, apprehended as the faculty that enables autonomous subjects to transform certain practices or norms or to act self-consciously for their emancipation.

The polarities of cultural location are often diminished as this poetic movement engages in a shared critique of the troubled and fixed boundaries of patriarchal thought and of the “constituted female subject” which is produced through mechanisms of male power. Of equal significance is the fact that this poetry contests institutional structures and transforms political issues.

It has a galvanising political effect on women of their generation. These poets not only express ideas, but in their recent support of the Me Too and Time’s Up campaigns, they have shifted emphasis and created young active political communities. Rupi Kaur, for instance, discusses the trauma of sexual abuse in her poem ‘#metoo’ by relating the patterns of exploitation to close family members or acquaintances, who often exhibit the same male predatory tendencies which women survivors have recently drawn public attention to as a part of the Me Too movement.

Nikita Gill, in her poems “Me Too (Trigger Warning)” and “When They Catch the Abuser”, also addresses the issues of sexual abuse and exploitation of women, emphasising the need for public redressal of ‘monstrous actions’ and crimes against women.In many ways, through their poetry, the conceptualisation of a collective international youth culture is actually made possible.

The effect of this feminist rethinking of politics is to shift the terrain of what could be counted as “political” and introduce the issue of gender into mainstream politics.These women poets critically engage with structures of domination – patriarchy’s forms of sexual essentialism, belittlement and contempt – and resistance through writing.

Examining issues of gender inequality and empowerment, their resonance is far-reaching and has resulted in a new kind of feminist activism. Rupi Kaur and Nikita Gill have gone on to publish anthologies of poems in print and have avoided classification as “Instapoets”. Rupi Kaur, for example, who has 4.

5 million followers on Instagram (as of February 2024), published her first anthology milk and honey (2015) combining poetry with hand-drawn illustrations. The publication of Kaur’s book witnessed unprecedented sales which were encouraged no doubt by online marketing. Other Instagram writers such as Amanda Lovelace, r.

h. Sin and Atticus have also made a foray into the dominant print culture capitalism and successfully transitioned from social media to print publishing. The cultural trends spawned on social media are enthusiastically absorbed by the print industry and the publication of Instapoetry has proved profitable for publishing houses by reviving the fledgling popularity of printed volumes of poetry among youngsters.

While it is easy to dismiss this as writing that relies on flashy visual triggers and homespun language rather than a critical engagement with rhythm and words, Instapoetry is distinct in terms of promoting self-help and self-improvement among women of the younger generation. It relates to millennial “coming of age” experiences and creates a strong sense of collaborative ethos by inviting engagement from the wider audience who can post responses or share their own experiences via comments.

Through their poetry, these poets have openly or implicitly spelled out, in a terminology of empowerment and disempowerment, issues related to women’s experiences. They reflect on typically feminist issues such as emancipation from patriarchal control and oppressive standards of femininity. Through their very position as women subjects, they trace the subjective patterns of women’s experiences determined by power, prejudice and discrimination, and indicate the need to reclaim agency.

The construction of women in terms of their body and sexuality is an important aspect of Instapoetry and the visceral quality of description makes these poems appealing to a generation struggling with issues of identity. Many of these poems deal with mental health, depression, anxiety and body image issues.

Nikita Gill writes about the need for women to overcome their dissatisfaction with their bodies and distorted perceptions of beauty in her poems “If All Girls” and “Don’t Be Beautiful”.Addressing a young audience on a digital platform, where the flow of information has gained such speed and dynamic that it often becomes difficult to relate to available content in a meaningful way, these poems are expressions of desire and intimate feeling.

Nikita Gill, in an interview with Culture Trip published on 25 April 2016, spoke about the subjective quality of her poetry: “My greatest influence is empathy and my greatest teacher is experience. And for a sensitive person who wears her heart on her sleeve, empathy for other people’s suffering has always made me want to help them in any way I can.

And experience from my own suffering as well as theirs has taught me how to write about it.”Though reclusive in person, Nayyirah Waheed does not shy away from critiquing the notions of desirability and consequently its distortions which accompany the popular representation of women in the public domain.

The relationship of the self with one’s body and the need for bodily autonomy is at the centre of Waheed’s poetry. These issues are further extended to puberty, menstruation, reproduction, motherhood, queer love, and other experiences, in order to associate with a wider spectrum of readers of different ages and social groups, who often seek a form of emotional well-being through reading.

In this respect, Rupi Kaur’s controversial post on Instagram with an image of her posing in a pair of period-stained track pants and bed sheet is worth mentioning, since it recorded an outpouring of public support when the post was removed by the social media site. In an interview with CBS News published on 26 February 2018, she mentioned how it “just turned [from] being a small project to my form of protest”.

While the poetry of women poets on Instagram is generally supportive of feminism, the status of social media sites as capitalist products makes it difficult to regard them as unproblematically feminist. The tension between maintaining a sustainable position in the market and practising feminist principles was articulated by Rupi Kaur in her interview with CBS News where she discussed how the image was censored for “violating community guidelines”.

However, it is important to consider the fact that the images and poems are also designed to cultivate certain responses and generate followers. The free access and democratised content of their poetry arguably encourage a mass consciousness by downplaying the hierarchies between reader and writer and shifting towards the idea of a progressive feminist media, but the liberal feminist consciousness is often complicated by commercial interests and publicity strategies.

Excerpt with permission from ‘Millennial Women “Instapoets”’, by Medha Bhadra Chowdhury, in Postcolonial Popular Culture in India, edited by Abin Chakraborty, Ramanuj Konar and Sayan Aich Bhowmik, Orient Black Swan.We welcome your comments [email protected] kaurpoetryinstagram