This from an article in the September 2016 BBC News:
Books are published by specialist presses with short print-runs or self-published. Poetry sections in bookshops appear to shrink by the month. There's a lot of poetry about but it seems few people want to buy it.
But social media shows us that a broader, more democratic appetite for poetry exists, after all.
The article includes the startling fact that Phillip Larkin was an internet sensation. Here it is:
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37319526
Btw, Twitter has an unofficial poet laureate. His
nome de plume is Brian Bilston. I’ve enjoyed his satiric wit and talent as a poet in the age of social media. How he came to be is a fascinating story.
To be blunt, Kaur's poetic expressions are candy. Bilston is a cup of coffee. I agree that her value is that she attracts people to poetry, but there have been and will be poet's of her ilk. Her work, in my opinion, is disposable.
Here is another article on the emergence of poetry on social media through the poetry of Brian Bilston:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-...ity-180959486/