![Mcc0099608 Instapoet Arch Hades, Gary Grimshaw for The Telegraph](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2021/04/02/TELEMMGLPICT000254889811_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqns00Yr3adAEDzK0boJuIHeJBictqs_sYS1V10WrBevc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
No rhyme or reason to publishers, says Britain's most followed poet on Instagram
Arch Hades is one of a number of up-and-coming artists who have been forced to turn to new publishing media
![Mcc0099608 Instapoet Arch Hades, Gary Grimshaw for The Telegraph](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2021/04/02/TELEMMGLPICT000254889811_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqns00Yr3adAEDzK0boJuIHeJBictqs_sYS1V10WrBevc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
For aspiring poets looking to follow in the footsteps of John Keats, William Wordsworth and Mary Shelley, getting a deal with a publishing house might seem like hitting the jackpot.
But bestselling romantic poet Arch Hades, who has sold her latest work for £50,000, has said Instagram is the real moneymaker.
She is one of a new generation of poets who share their work on Instagram, although she hates the name "Instapoets" because she sees publishing houses and peers use the phrase as an attempt to “belittle” artists who succeed on social media.
The 29-year-old is one of a number of up-and-coming artists who have been forced to turn to new mediums such as Instagram and NFTs (non-fungible token) to monetise their work, instead of through books which would see them paid “scraps”.
“There's a revival of poetry, there is an appetite for poetry, ironically, thanks to platforms like Instagram, the very platform that they [publishers] love to patronise.
“But instead of embracing this wave of enthusiasm for poetry, these publishing houses are putting up walls and stopping poets from entering.
“So no wonder so many poets are on social media because they're not welcomed in the old world,” she told The Telegraph.
![Arch Hades, the 28-year-old poet, with her best work found not on bookshelves but her Instagram feed, where she publishes poems almost daily for her one million followers](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2021/04/02/TELEMMGLPICT000254889815_1_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqrnKnv-EZ40EhYX8nU7dr82zdSzxNGa24oxDmyuy5rcQ.jpeg?imwidth=350)
“It does frustrate me whenever somebody calls me an ‘Instapoet’ because it implies that I'm not a real poet, it implies that what I'm doing is shallow and ephemeral,” she said, adding: “Poetry dissects emotions and explores feeling, it reveals something about ourselves and inspires, what poetry does will always be more important than what medium it appears on.”
She is not alone in her success. Acclaimed Canadian poet Rupi Kaur, who initially posted short poems on Instagram, has become a household name on the app and beyond.
She currently has 4.3 million followers and her 2014 book "Milk and Honey" has sold over five million copies, been translated into more than 35 languages, and landed as a No1 New York Times bestseller, where it has spent more than three years.
Other rising stars include Cambodian-Australian poet Lang Leav and the anonymous poet Atticus, who has 1.5 million followers on Instagram.
![JAIPUR, INDIA - JANUARY 25: Rupi Kaur during milk and honey session in the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) 2018 at Diggi Palace at on January 25, 2018 in Jaipur, India.](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2021/04/02/TELEMMGLPICT000218322829_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqRXxTsPz81IKK5imdugl-0L-tno1l1dW8C8G11EgX67w.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Their work, however, has struggled to win over their peers. In PN Review – perhaps the foremost poetry journal in the country – critic Rebecca Watts attacked the “cohort of young female poets who are currently being lauded by the poetic establishment for their ‘honesty’ and ‘accessibility’”, and suggests work like Kaur’s is popular because “artless poetry sells”.
Despite the attacks, Hades believes they should be studied alongside the greats at university. “I'm really frustrated by the fact that traditionally poetry has been a very male-dominated world. How wonderful is it that poetry has become much more democratic. I really hope more people are interested in this and accepted into the wider poetry circles.”
She is also critical of what she describes as “the game of nepotism” of traditional publishing routes, with publishers often not accepting unsolicited manuscripts and requiring people to have a literary agent, who will also take a cut of the profit.
Hades has two anthologies depicting love and loss behind her (High Tide, Vol 1 and Fool’s Gold, Vol 2) and shares her work on Instagram, where she has amassed over a million followers.
Her latest poem, an extract from love letters she wrote back and forth to an ex-boyfriend during lockdown, sold for $71,410.76 (£51,637.91) in an online auction lasting only 45 minutes.
Penned on a postcard, that was then turned into a graphic, which accompanies a one-minute song by her friend, the Grammy-award-winning musician RAC, the poem reads: “You sing a song that only I can hear / And you, the only one, who hears mine.”
Hades, who fled to London aged eight from Russia after her father was killed at the hands of the Mob, said she and RAC had decided to turn to the world of crypto art after her book tour was cancelled during the pandemic.
The two artists had previously collaborated together on a remix of Hades’s poem ‘Anticipation’, which she wrote in an attempt to pursue her now ex-boyfriend, the Irish folk musician Hozier.
“Sadly, it didn’t work out.. despite our differences, I still think very highly of him, which is not something I can say about a lot of my exes,” she said.
Hades and RAC’s latest collaboration was sold as an NFT (non-fungible token), which are unique digital assets, bought and traded securely through a digital ledger called a blockchain, with 75 people acquiring copies of the poem.
Hades (a pseudonym after changing her name for safety reasons) lives in London with her corgi Byron.