Elle Speaks With Instagram Poet Yrsa Daley-Ward

Marta Bausells interviews Instagram poet (and former model) Yrsa Daley-Ward, the author of new poetry collection, bones. Daley-Ward cites poets Sonia Sanchez and Nikki Giovanni as influences. "Many of Daley-Ward's poems are short capsules of emotion," Bausells explains, "gut-wrenching, laugh-out-loud funny and tear-inducing." More from there: 

'Truth is a beauty, whether pretty or not,' she writes in a poem called Things it can take twenty years and a bad liver to work out. And that certainly applies to her raw writing. Whether she is describing family relationships, depression, anxiety or abuse, or self-care, love, sex or late-night, wine-soaked talks with friends, her words are intensely magnetic.

Her poems happen to not just be powerful streams of feeling but also perfect for the re-posting age. If you're on Instagram, you probably have seen some of her verses posted by someone else, in inspiration or awe, framed by a symmetric white square.

None of this was exactly part of the plan, she tells me over tea during a brief visit to London, where she used to live. A year ago she moved to LA to pursue acting and, before that, she was singing in jazz bands and travelling the world thanks to her modelling career.

Now, she counts more than 120,000 followers on Instagram. She's okay with being pigeonholed as part of the relatively new phenomenon of social media dissemination of poetry. This 'modern sharing,' as she calls it, excites her because it's taking it into the hands of people who might feel intimidated or bored at the idea of a poetry book. 'Poetry hasn't been this popular for years! And I feel blessed to be part of it.'

'Instagram poet is such a weird term,' though, she says. 'It's funny that people have even coined a phrase. We're just poets who have found a community there.' And they've found each other, too – through social media she met two other poets that the internet loves, the American Nayyirah Waheed and the Zimbabwean Tapiwa Mugabe, now her friends. She cites them as influences as part of an heterogeneous list including Charles Bukowski, Sonia Sanchez and Nikki Giovanni. 'They all write really beautifully about the state of hearts and souls and the human condition.'

Read more at Elle.