Where Contemporary Poetry Is Migrating: New Platforms for the Written Word
Why contemporary authors are increasingly choosing social media to spread their work.
Just ten years ago, poetry lived on the page — in collections with terse titles and on library shelves alongside the classics. Now, it develops in Telegram channels, plays out in short TikTok videos, and becomes part of internet culture. Texts that once waited for their reader in bookstores now find them instantly — in notifications, comments, and reposts.
Why this is happening, and what tools contemporary authors use to popularize their work — read on in this DeTalks article.
How New Literary Communities Are Born
Since the start of the full-scale war, authors have adapted to new conditions. Under constant threat, it's hard to work on lengthy prose — there's no stability or time to concentrate.
In a reality like this, poetry becomes a way of capturing a moment, a means of documenting experience and preserving emotion. Under wartime conditions, short texts are easier to take in, when there isn't the energy for a full book.
Pasha Broskyi, founder of the literary community Ursus Poetry, has described how people are under constant pressure from a huge flow of information every day — war, shelling, air raid alerts — leaving them with little energy for books or creative work, while TikTok and Telegram offer quick dopamine that doesn't require concentration.
Pasha adds that, despite all this, poetry isn't disappearing — it's just finding new forms.
He notes that people still keep writing despite everything, improving their craft and putting themselves out into the world, and that the fact people like that remain, in the war's fourth year, gives him hope.
Ursus Poetry began with intimate evening readings, but now lives mostly online. The community's Telegram channel publishes poems by various authors, and also runs a separate chat for critiquing texts, where members exchange thoughts and feedback.
Online communities are becoming new literary hubs that have no physical address but give poetry a chance to be heard. For many young authors, it's a way to make a name for themselves, get feedback, and find an audience without needing publishers or literary journals.
From Lines to Rhythms
In 2023, a literary community also began forming on TikTok. Many teenagers first heard the names Serhii Zhadan or Yurii Izdryk not from books, but from short videos. Edits were cut to the lines of 'Liubov Varta Vsoho' ('Love Is Worth Everything'), and clips from Zhadan's readings were paired with music and effects.
Trends appeared on TikTok where users lip-synced to poems by young Ukrainian authors, making them go viral. Classic Ukrainian poets — Symonenko, Kostenko, Stus — found themselves back at the center of youth culture. Their words are now soundtracks to short videos.
That same year, a new format went viral — recitation of poetry over music. This phenomenon combined literature and sound in a new form, so-called 'spoken word,' or 'poetry over music.' One representative of this genre was Marusia Chuprynenko, whose videos racked up hundreds of thousands of likes. Her texts spoke of family, childhood, occupation, and life in the Kherson region before the war.
Poems are also increasingly moving into the musical space. Ukrainian performers use works by classic poets, blending them with contemporary sound. ROXOLANA, for instance, set Lina Kostenko's poem 'Ochyma Ty Skazav Meni Liubliu' to music, Kalush feat. Skofka used lines from Vasyl Stus in the track 'Batkivshchyna,' and Nadia Dorofeieva and Artem Pyvovarov created the song 'Dumy,' based on Shevchenko's poetry.
Poetry in the Age of Screens
Today, poetry lives in two worlds at once: the dim halls of literary evenings and the bright feeds of social media. In videos where words settle over music; in Telegram channels, where messages replace the stage; in books that still smell of printer's ink.
Despite the rise of digital formats, poetry hasn't lost ground in traditional publishing either. In 2024, for instance, the publishing house Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva released the largest number of poetry collections in the publisher's history.
Pasha Broskyi has said he believes poetry will one day flourish everywhere again — on stage, in books, on social media, in songs, and in theaters — since it's impossible to do without, adding that right now just isn't the most favorable time for it.
The digital age hasn't destroyed poetry — it's brought it closer. Young authors publish their poems for people who live right alongside them in the same reality: amid anxiety, under the wail of air raid sirens, in an endless stream of news.