Urban Muser

Rishi Dastidar, Assistant Editor of Poetry Magazine explains poetry, (in a sense), “it’s important to remember that poetry is not just about the uncontrolled expression of how you feel but how you shape that expression.  What makes you a poet is learning the craft, spending time reading other poets and bringing writerly tools to the emotions you are trying to convey“.

The reason I was reading this was because of the ‘uprising’ of Instapoets on Instagram. These poets are connecting, moving their readers and achieving commercial success with it. “It’s actually a great subversion of the debates on narcissism and self-obsession which always accompany social media”, says Dastidar. “Posting a poem instead of a selfie means you are asking people to engage with you at a deeper level and that sort of subversion is part of poetry’s tradition“.

I can see both sides of this story and my leanings are very strong in both literature and photography and art. So, this week, I thought it would be great to marry a mobile image with one of the vibrant new Instapoets on Instagram. This week’ poetry is by Lang Leav, one of the bestselling poets catapulted to celebrity status, through her use of social media. With a following of 153k followers on Instagram alone and a very successful Tumblr blog ‘The Girl Who Cries Wolf‘ star is opening poetry up to a new generation.

Her latest book ‘Love & Misadventure’ is available here to purchase.

Leav’s new poem to her blog is called ‘The One’ and it is illustrated below. I have matched this poem with this image by Urbanmuser entitled “Spotlight Series, 1, She Walks Softly Now…”.

To view the others in our Mobile Photography/Art Saturday Poetry section, please go here.

To ensure your image receives our attention, please upload it to Instagram with this hashtag – #theappwhisperer