ABSTRACT The production and circulation of poetry on social media has gained critical attention over the past decade. Known popularly as Instapoetry, this digital literary phenomenon has been celebrated in the Global North for increased printed poetry sales and changing readership patterns. Little has been written about Instapoetry from the Global South despite its popularity amongst black women readers and sharers, especially in South Africa. By offering a Southern analysis of the poetry and Instagram profile of Malawian storyteller and instapoet Upile Chisala, grounded in decolonial theory, this paper suggests that the oft-cited criticism against Instapoetry as “not poetry” fails to acknowledge its location on “the other side of the line.” Chisala’s poetry is an example of post-abyssality: it draws attention to the abyssal line and seeks to overcome it. The paper argues that Chisala’s call to voice and self-love is a “re-humaning” ethic that is useful for challenging coloniality of being. Her poetry therefore contributes to reimagining the being of black women and girls.

ABSTRACT This study maps the Greek Instapoetry landscape by exploring a) the central formats and themes through which Greek Instapoetry becomes communicated, the most common hashtag sequences used and the predominant types of elicited responses, as well as b) the basic perceptions and experiences of Instapoetry practitioners. Findings evidenced how multiple individual forms of labour are involved in practices of content production, rendering thereby Instapoetry as a system of “applied poetics,” structured around the application of distinctive and individualised types of technological affordances for textual composition. Traditional understandings of poetry were found to be strongly upheld amongst practitioners, while the value of print was shown to be preserved as holding an additional merit. Poetic hashtags were found to be more related with visibility, in order to generate algorithmic classifications and were used mostly with strategic intent. “Ideal” instapoems were construed as short and comprehensible texts that address issues of love or point towards inspirational messages, able to elicit intense emotions in readers. Under this light, there is evidence to suggest that Instapoetry could be approached as a digitally distributed cognition ecosystem, in which affect plays a central role in understanding the cognitive processes underpinning interactions with Instapoetry-related content.

ABSTRACT Guided by a desire-centred framework, this article explores how Tenille Campbell (Dene/Métis) uses Instagram as a space for contemporary muiltimedia artistic practice. Her poetry, photography, and other creative endeavours have presented meaningful opportunities for community-building and identity-affirmation as a force specifically for Indigenous resurgence across national, tribal, and geographical lines. The first section begins with a discussion of desire-centred research as it intersects with Indigenous new media studies and decolonial methodologies. Later sections argue that Campbell’s artistic expressions nurture emotional, mental, communal, and spiritual connections to land, thereby growing a virtual landedness—especially in relation to the erotic, which best captures Campbell’s project of community-building and identity-affirmation. Lastly, this article highlights the remediation of Campbell’s poetry into fashionwear, which simultaneously cultivates networks of Indigenous women entrepreneurs. Her poetry, evinced as a co-creative, community-based, multidisciplinary literary arts practice, surpasses its manifestation on social media, and should be understood as a multimodal constellation that has impacts that ripple far beyond digital environments.

ABSTRACT This article will study the evolution of Instapoetry within the Indian digital sphere and trace its trajectory of growth and development. It will take a close look at how local and historical issues find expression in a global, digital mediascape through this emerging body of writing. The article further argues that Indian Instapoetry is characterised by a peculiar aesthetic shaped by a combination of ancient traditions of oral poetry and digital affordances of a platform like Instagram. The merger of these influences results in the formation of a digital vernacular mode of expression constituted by a set of thematic and formal poetic devices. Owing to these features, Instapoetry comes into its own as the poetry of the people which echoes their concerns, anxieties and aspirations. At the same time, the digital vernacular facilitates the creation of radical spaces where novel forms of poetic expression and affective engagement are made possible.

ABSTRACT Instagram started in San Francisco, yet it has been clear that its usage has spread worldwide. The influence of this global outreach is apparent not only in the platform’s general use, however, but in unique content trends as well. In particular, there is Instapoetry, the movement of minimalist poetry that has taken Instagram and the rest of the world by storm since 2018. Although Instapoetry was dominated by writers based in English-speaking countries at its outset, it has now become extremely popular across multiple nations and languages, a truly transnational and translingual cultural phenomenon. As these writers emerge from a vast cultural landscape, it has become critical to examine how the various Instapoets across cultures resemble each other in some ways, yet vastly diverge in others. This series of essays seek to examine how Instapoetry as a transglobal movement evolves within its capitalistic platform, studying the manner that users may escape or re-establish digital hegemonic structures. From Malawi to Greece, India to Norway, the First Nations to Latin America, these critical pieces show how Instapoets may alternatively use social media poems as tools of weaponry, commercialisation, protest, and healing.

ABSTRACT In this addition to the European Journal of English Studies special issue, the author reflects on the employment of social media application Instagram by contemporary poets in peninsular Spain as a tool for projecting societal concerns specifically related to feminism and social equality movements, proliferated by technological affordances such as the graphological hashtag (#). By analysing the connections between poetry, digital culture and feminist activism, this article examines the poetry of popular Instapoetas Elvira Sastre and Leticia Sala and its underlying feminist message, as well as the implications of writing in and of the so-called “fourth wave of feminism.” Where the poetic content, visual imagery and captioned employment of hashtags are seen to perpetuate the work of offline, feminist activism, Instapoetry can be seen as an assistant or a “valid contribution” to collective action.

ABSTRACT Uncensored, unlike many other social media platforms in Iran, Instagram has become the most popular social media platform among Iranians, providing a space for creative expression including the creation of Instapoetry. Here I offer an interview with the group behind the @barkhi_az_honarmandan account, an Instagram account run by anonymous admins that produces digital poetry. Since Iran and its news form the main focus of this account, the page is actively involved in creating visual poetics as a form of digital activism. In its work, @barkhi_az_honarmandan takes on a performative presence on Instagram and combines visual and literary digital art to create digital contents that reflect. It thus prompts reflections, on news and issues related to Iranian culture and society, by creating engaging digital art with a poetic style and powerful impact. This interview, prefaced with a brief description of the impact of social media visual poetry. It shows that social media and Instapoetry have become vital tools for political dissent and creative expression in Iran, allowing individuals to connect with others and engage in dialogues or political activism in Iran. In particular, the close reading of specific posts and poems by Iranian account demonstrates some of the semiotic codes of Persian language activist online poetry.

ABSTRACT The name instapoetry – or Instagram poetry – suggests a specific attachment of poetry to Instagram. But how bound is instapoetry to Instagram? This article uncovers the relationship between instapoetry and Instagram by analysing the participatory-made exhibits of Norwegian instapoet Trygve Skaug. By investigating the various media instantiations of Skaug’s poetry, the article discusses how instapoetry is platform-dependent and shows how the poetry binds to many different contexts and materialities by existing in multiple media ecologies. Based on this, the paper introduces the post-digital circulation process of poetry as constituting instapoetry’s medial constitution. This process focuses on the emergence of “new media”-cultural approaches to poetry as a post-digital, but still platformed, state of cultural production, interlocking with “old media” ways, as well as creating a setting for the dominance of a platformed lyric poetry.

"The Nutmeg’s curse: parables for a planet in crisis." European Journal of English Studies, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2

ABSTRACT Crises have always brought along transformations in gender identities, roles, and relations: while much has changed in Western culture regarding the role of women and notions of masculinity are also challenged, efforts to control female roles, bodies, and sexualities persist. For example, Susan Faludi’s The Terror Dream has described the post-9/11 age as an era of reconstituted “traditional” manhood, redomesticated femininity and nuclear family “togetherness.” The question that lies at the basis of this paper is whether – and if so, how –science fiction cinema continues to respond to moments of crisis and vulnerability through the old myth of protective manhood and feminine weakness. By identifying two cases of insecurity – climate change and the coronavirus pandemic – we analyse a recent film (Bird Box, 2018) and two TV series on pandemic outbreaks from the US (Sweet Tooth, 2021) and Italy (Anna, 2021). All three works break new ground – though not devoid of limits – about family structures and parental care: while Bird Box proposes a reversal of gender roles, Anna elaborates on the notion of motherhood by presenting unconventional models of mothering; in Sweet Tooth, the ethics of care is extended to the relationship between humans, animals, and the endangered environment.