Not the Time to Rhyme?

Building an Audience for Poetry in the Digital Age

Picture the following scene – you've just come back home after a draining day at the office. You go on Netflix, find out there's a new season of Emily in Paris, so you immediately hit the play button, stretch yourself on the sofa and surrender to that modern day bliss.

After a while, the pace of the episode slows down a bit. At this point you pull out your phone, double tap the dozens of reels your friends sent without even watching them. You're about to exit the app, but you see an intriguing ad. It's a poem, only a few lines long. You decide to give it a shot. 

Now, this is the least predisposing environment for reading poetry I can possibly think of (except you could've been watching Peaky Blinders). It's also quite realistic, right?

"Don’t write poetry. The internet hates it."

The alternative scenarios ain't that much better either. Simply being on an electronic device hinders your state of connection to yourself and your surroundings and can be quite distracting. For poetry you need both your mind and spirit present and open. 

Which happens to be a problem when you try to build an audience around it. Oui, c'est moi! 

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a list of writing advice by Tim Denning (

Unfiltered by Tim Denning

). His Substack has over 125K subscribers, so he clearly knows what he's talking about. One of the few bolded points said "Don’t write poetry. The internet hates it."

Clearly, that's not universally true. There are a number of poets who have amassed millions of followers thanks to the internet. Nonetheless, Tim has a point. These guys are the exception, not the rule. 

What makes them different though?

"Processed" vs "Unprocessed" Poetry

Not real terms. I made them up to illustrate the difference between what I've noticed works on the internet and what doesn't. Just note – I don't want to imply one is better than the other. There's no such thing in art.   

By "processed" I refer to poems that don't take much effort to be mentally comprehended. They're extremely accessible to a wide audience and are written in a way which allows readers to relate immediately. Here's an example:

"Unprocessed" poetry on the other hand takes quite a bit of, well, processing by the reader. It's complex in terms of imagery, characters, ideas, etc. The message is often expressed indirectly and interpretations may be flexible. Unsurprisingly, there's a higher barrier to entry:

Both examples, by the way, are by quite successful poets from different generations. Author of the first one is Rupi Kaur. The other is by Giorgos Seferis, one of my favorites.

My style leans much more towards the latter. It's not hard to guess which is more marketable to an audience with a limited attention span. 

That brings me to my next point – what's my plan?

My Strategy to Find Readers

Time travel. Nah, not an option. Yet.

Anyway, you have the first element of my strategy right here. The "soft sell". More specifically, these will be blog posts not directly linked to the poems, yet making subtle references. The value they'll provide are supposed to be the main feature which makes people read and discover the newsletter. 

A second strategy is to give a bit of insight. If you've read my previous post – Preface to "Written by a Poem" – then you know what I mean. There I introduced a new rubric, "Behind the Line". My goal with it is to make things more authentic and to encourage diving deeper. 

I also spend quite a bit of time rethinking the medium through which my work is discovered. I've asked myself questions such as:

• What physical objects or products can I put excerpts of my poems on that would complement the message and make it stand out?

• What if I let actors adapt my poems into mini plays?

• What if I collaborate with musicians to make recordings of my read out poems accompanied with some music?

But that’s a topic for a separate post.

Final Thoughts

It may or may not be the right time to write poetry if building an audience was the goal. But it never should be anyway. Not with anything worth reading at least.

I'm about to go out for my evening stroll in the park and it got me thinking – in the age of noise-cancelling headphones, birds have less of an audience too. Yet, it doesn't stop them from singing. And the world's a better place for it. 

Keep doing you!

Love, 
Vanauthor