Instagram Poetry

As I sat in my house with my eleven other housemates (desperately trying to do work, but of course failing miserably since I live with eleven…other…girls…) I was stumped on what to blog about for this week. Looking around the room, everyone was either engrossed in a calculus book, or talking excitedly to the girl next to her.

After zoning out for far too long, I finally said, “What should I blog about for my poetry class this week?”

An almost eerie silence filled the air. A few people tossed out some cute ideas, but nothing struck me until my friend Kayla said, “You should write about how people post poetry on Instagram.”

“People do that?” I asked, but I immediately knew that that shouldn’t have surprised me. Poetry can be found all around us, so why not Instagram?

Kayla quickly sent me the information, and I began to explore this guy’s Instagram. To my surprise, it wasn’t some random person off the street, but a rather well known poet. His name is R.M. Drake, and he has over 585,000 people following him.

So basically R.M. Drake posts a photo every single day of a short poem he wrote. On August 25th he posted this photo.

 

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On May 16th his posted this photo.

 

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And on September 24th he posted this.

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They all are very short, but very beautiful. What I notice the most about them are the line breaks. Each and every one of them has such meaning and weight behind it. I think it’s so amazing how we can find poetry in any outlet. I personally (for whatever reason) never thought to see poetry being circulated through Instagram, but I am happy I was proved wrong!

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