Poetry and Instagram

This guest post by Kim Stafford is a passage
from the Afterword in As the Sky Begins to Change,
poems by Kim Stafford (Red Hen Press, 2024)

Once at a big literary conference I went, as a skeptic, to a session called “Poetry & Instagram.” Going in, I was curious, though I considered my poems “too important” to be littered online. Confirming my disdain, an expert explained to us that Instagram could be a platform for experimental forays with language, and a great place to market your published work, but dedicated writers should never post new poems online, he said, because such a poem is thus technically “published,” and can no longer be submitted to a literary magazine. Instagram for marketing, he said, and magazines for literature.

As I listened, though, I realized a new poem posted on the Web could be read — right now — by hundreds, or thousands of people, instead of only by those who seek their literature in print, often in magazines largely read by poets. And it often took me months, or years, to place a poem in such a magazine. What if someone in grief or confusion or loneliness needed a poem right away, a poem I might be hoarding? What if I wanted to share a poem with people in real time — today, this moment — perhaps for people who don’t read journals or books? Why not harness my daily writing practice, and reach out by posting in all directions?

When I discussed this with my daughter, who has used social media for years to share work as a “floral innovator,” she pressed me to post my poems online with abandon. Her own images blossom on various sites, and she convinced me to lean into this practice. She pointed out that poems come to me in abundance, so why hold back on letting them flow forth toward readers? There would always be more where those came from, she said. The source is infinite, and the need is now.

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Kim Stafford’s poems can be found at www.instagram.com/kimstaffordpoetry where he posts a new poem and an image each morning.

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Kim Stafford, founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, teaches and travels to raise the human spirit. He is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft and 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared. He has written about his poet father in Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford, and his book Having Everything Right: Essays of Place won a special citation for excellence from the Western States Book Award. His most recent poetry collection is As the Sky Begins to Change (Red Hen, 2024) (also available as an audiobook, read by the author).
He has taught writing in dozens of schools and community centers, and in Scotland, Italy, Mexico, and Bhutan. In 2018 he was named Oregon’s 9th Poet Laureate by Governor Kate Brown for a two-year term. In a call to writers everywhere, he has said, “In our time is a great thing not yet done. It is the marriage of Woody Guthrie’s gusto and the Internet. It is the composing and wide sharing of songs, poems, blessings, manifestos, and stories by those with voice for those with need.”

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For a list of upcoming readings, visit Kim Stafford’s event page.

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pussy willow photo by Kim Stafford
author photo by Rob Reynolds