In Which Instagram is Shown to Have Two Merits
I think I’m going to make yet another 𝑒𝓍𝑒𝒸𝓊𝓉𝒾𝓋𝑒 𝒹𝑒𝒸𝒾𝓈𝒾𝑜𝓃 about what I’m calling my “writing career” and start blogging regularly again. You’re welcome, and yes, it will be free. You’re welcome again! Wow, what a great crowd! Thank you!!
Gather round: today I wanna talk about Instagram. In case you’re unfamiliar, it’s another of Zuckerburg’s offshore investments, but it makes me feel LESS like a Swamp Thing than facefuck facecook I mean FACEBOOK ugh. I’d say that in normal times, when I’m not totally addicted to scrolling it, just a normal amount of total addiction, I feel like a baby Swamp Thing. Smaller and more manageable. Big difference!
Anyway: I created a book review account on IG last year. I had recently followed my first “bookstagram” account, which I noticed was posting reviews of ARCs (advance reader copies). Now, if you know me, you know I’m into classics. My super-insular conservative homeschooling experience, through high school, was all about denigrating and/or deleting modern fiction and elevating what we might call “the Canon” above everything except the Bible (the most classic of all classics, the Canon of which all other canons are but mere shadows! -St. John, Aisle of Pasties). In similar news, this trend is still going strong! A neighboring county just banned Maus from its public school libraries! Regardless, I still love the shit out of some of my favorite classics. But I’ve read stuff people are writing now, and some of it absolutely rocks. So I decided I wanted free ARCs.
The first thing I did after starting my bookstagram account and uploading gross photos of books with the shadows all wrong and my reviews from Goodreads was to message all the publishers I could find and ask for ARCs. Only one person got back to me, and he said: “We send books to accounts with more than 2,000 followers.” Undeterred (very uncharacteristic of me) I made “follow trains” a part-time job and read internet things about hashtags and got enough followers to actually feel like free ARCs were in my future.
Fast-forward about a year. I got my first poetry ARCs from Milkweed Editions, and I was so excited I lost my mind and tripped on some anxiety and now I’m struggling to even want to pick up a book. It’s very absurd! Like, oh my god! Granted, I have A FEW other things going on right now, and it’s not like I have a deadline on these ARC reviews exactly, but I’m dealing with some guilt (very characteristic of me) about them. If you’re curious, it’s Ada Limón, Nicky Beers, and Jos Charles. SMH. Hoping to get to them next week.
SO THE REAL REALLY POINT of this post is to highlight the shift I’m making on my book IG right now, which is toward poets, poetry, and poetry groups and publishers. It’s not really bookstagram, but that’s great, because I have all the followers I need to get ARCs and most “bookstagrammers” are uh, … well, for the most part, it’s just the kind of silliness and unself-aware absurdity that exists on any of the others of Zuckerburg’s islands. Also there’s a lot of fucking idiots who have dumb as shit opinions about books. There’s also girl bookstagrammers who are 26 and read 8 books a week and post selfies of underboob and cheek half-hidden by books. It’s honestly fascinating, which is why I still scroll.
One of the accounts I’ve found that I love is Roberto Pastore’s. He’s a Cardiff-based poet with one chapbook and one collection already out who—like all the rest of us poets trying to get new work published—can’t post new poetry online, essentially, until it’s under contract, so because of the competitive nature of poetry publishing & me not having gotten around to buying his other books, I haven’t read a single one of his poems. It’s a weird thing about poetry, really. Painters and illustrators can post works-in-progress all day long and it doesn’t mess with their work’s salability (is that a word), but poets have to do their best to promote their newest work … without showing it (😱😱😱). Recently, however, he put out a new chapbook! And I bought one! And it came yesterday! And I’m saving this delicious little work for a time, over the weekend, when I can sit in my Special Reading Spot and read it. Here’s a link to his previous collection, and he can be found on IG here.
I think one function of this website blog will be highlighting other poets’ work, so feel free to follow me on IG and send me recommendations, whether for your work, or a new favorite.
Cheers,
Anna Laura Reeve
