Welcome to my new inquiry! I will now be delving into poetry specifically looking at form, theme, and structure in different collections. I am currently formatting my old poetry from my teenage years into thematic collection which is my motivation. Since I have the materials and was intending to do this to some degree anyway I think this will be more productive of a project.

Most importantly poetry brings me joy instead of dread (goodbye baking)

This inquiry topic sparked interest naturally last week when I was watching a youtube video essay on InstaPoetry. The video explains it best, but basically the genre is called insta poetry because its produced quickly (instantly), often about an instant event or feeling, and is most often posted on instagram (though is now a hot publishing comodity).

Here is the video embed but it’s long so this link might

The collection I want to focus on this week is Sabrina Benaim’s Depression & Other Magic Tricks. This collection and Sabrina’s work were incredibly influential to me in my teen years but it’s sat dormant on my bookshelf ever since. While most of the poems in the collection predate the peak and plateau of instapoetry, upon rereading it, I would now classify most of it in that genre. It’s strange to think poems that meant so much to me make me cringe now.

Sabrina is/was primarily a spoken-word poet. Something I found interesting was that the poems that were written versions of her spoken word poems packed the same punch for me as they did last decade. It could be that I could hear her voice in my head while reading it, but I like to think that it’s because spoken-word poems like that are the opposite of instant. Her spoken poems were clearly rewritten, rehearsed, and respoken countless times and continue today.

I find it difficult and tedious to transcribe/format spoken word poems but this observation reminds me that the process is worth it.

This is a poem in the collection that I like, almost purely because of the way she says minnows.

The collection is available for purchase here from the publisher, Indigo, and Amazon