HOORAY! At long last, “Brits have rekindled their love of verse.” According to the Guardian, sales of poetry books are booming and poetry is now “the coolest thing.”
Awesome. Even more exciting is the news that “young rebel poets” from the “underground” poetry scene like Rupi Kaur, Melissa Lee-Houghton and Luke Wright have ended “centuries of white-male dominated verse” by “breaking the mould of traditional, more elitist verse.”

The last time a “poetry revival” was announced in the Guardian in March this year, the excitement was all about Kate Tempest. This time it is Instagram poetry. How quickly our amnesiac culture discards its gods.

Of course, this is just a corporate press-release dressed up to look like arts journalism for the broadsheets. Melissa Lee-Houghton is a beneficiary of the Poetry Society’s New Gen promotion and was short-listed for last year’s Costa Prize, Luke Wright is published by Penguin and Rupi Kaur by Simon and Schuster. Not very underground.