The must-reads: The new poets’ society

Dubbed the “Queen of the Instapoets”, 25-year-old Rupi Kaur has amassed a 2.4 million-strong following eager to find inspiration in their feeds courtesy of Kaur’s beautifully searching prose. She’s had her issues with the social-media platform, though – in an effort to smash taboos around menstruation, Kaur uploaded a picture of her blood-stained trousers and bed sheets in 2015. It was removed (twice) for breaching Instagram’s “community guidelines”, and the story made international headlines when Kaur challenged the platform for trying to censor her. But she’s not just a force in the digital realm – her first collection of poetry, Milk and Honey, has been translated into 30 languages.

There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé is the kind of attention-grabbing title that hints at the pop-culture references and black female experience Parker draws on to craft her unique verse (Michelle Obama and Solange also feature in the collection). The poet, editor and educator is currently working on a young-adult novel and her first non-fiction book. Plus, she’s one half of The Other Black Girl Collective, a Brooklyn-based black feminist poetry duo she runs with Angel Nafis.

Jenny Zhang declared Lena Dunham her “fairy godmother” after the Girls creator got in touch with her via Twitter to say she loved her poetry, setting in motion a working relationship that hit a high last year when Zhang’s collection of short stories, Sour Heart, became the inaugural release on Dunham’s publishing imprint, Lenny Letter. Born in Shanghai and raised in New York, Zhang’s work to date has explored girlhood and the Chinese-American experience.

In 2013, American poet and essayist Patricia Lockwood wrote Rape Joke, a long poem that detailed the trauma of being raped by one of her father’s students, which went viral. Her memoir, Priestdaddy (her father experienced a later-life conversion and managed to become a priest in the Catholic Church despite being married), is an astonishingly funny and moving depiction of her family life.

Poet, RADA-trained actress, model and filmmaker Greta Bellamacina made her acting debut aged 13 in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and has fashion campaigns for Stella McCartney, Shrimps and Burberry to her name. The London-based multi-hyphenate’s first poetry collection, Perishing Tame, was published in 2016 and explores motherhood, female identity, ennui and love.