Many scroll through Instagram to see the latest photos of stunning sunsets, inspirational vacation shots (so you can pretend you can go there, too, one day) and pets—lots of pets. What Instagram users may not realize is that the spot is an increasingly popular publication arena for poets. The New Yorker wrote about the phenomenon in a profile about Reuben Holmes, who goes by the name r.h. sin on Instagram and who has over 600,000 followers.

English teacher Susan Laurencot sees Instagram poets all the time in the monthly Arm Your Voice poetry performance series she coordinates at the Hygienic Art Gallery in New London, Connecticut. They love the kind of poetry aesthetic they see in amateur poets. Poets like @atticuspoetry, @tylerknott and @thealiciacook rack up thousands of likes and shares; they share short, typewritten stanzas on crinkled scraps of paper or old Polaroids(!). Pressed flowers and inky quills are heavily suggested. It’s a world young poets today have no real experience in but one in which they’re completely obsessed.

“These Instagram poets are becoming wildly popular overnight,” says Laurencot, an English teacher at Montville High School. “And you don’t want to ignore the fact that these Instagram poets have given rebirth to something that could have been a dying art.”

#atticuspoetry #atticus #poetry #loveherwild

A post shared by ATTICUS (@atticuspoetry) on Apr 16, 2017 at 8:30am PDT

Each Arm Your Voice features student poets, in addition to one “featured poet” and a student poet laureate. Newer poetry writers and performers can win a featured spot by returning to Arm Your Voice over and over to prove themselves worthy of that position.

Typewriter Series #1846 by Tyler Knott Gregson … bit.ly/WildlyIntoTheDark

A post shared by Tyler Knott Gregson (@tylerknott) on Apr 16, 2017 at 12:45pm PDT

Laurencot inherited Arm Your Voice from a spoken-word poet who was in residency at Hygienic Art. Once his residency ended, Laurencot, who’d been volunteering with Hygienic, took over. “I said I would do it with the caveat that I could include high school students,” she says. “Because, especially with how things are politically, it’s been my goal to have my students use their voices authentically.”

Many of her students are interested in spoken word and slam poetry, which is how Arm Your Voice was first conceived. When Laurencot began hosting, she also invited narrative and other forms of poetry. Still, her students, inspired by the poets of Instagram and Tumblr, vent their frustrations with politics, social issues and growing up primarily through slam. (Slam for the political, spoken word for the personal, Laurencot says.)

"What's the greatest chapter in your book?/Are there pages where it hurts to look?/What's the one regret you can't work through?/You got it baby, mine would be you." – Blake Shelton, Mine Would Be You. #writersofinstagram #writerslife #amwriting #lifequotes #poetsofinstagram #relationshipquotes #lovequotes #empowerment #inspirationalquotes #selflove #breakupquotes #movingon #lettinggo #lovepoem #blakeshelton

A post shared by Alicia Cook (@thealiciacook) on Apr 6, 2017 at 8:11am PDT

“Slam has become very popular,” she says. “And poetry is a quick write. It’s a perfect blend of what Gen Z is interested in. ‘I don’t want to spend a long time writing a novel, but I’ll work on a poem and I’ll post it on Tumblr and Instagram.’ And there is some benefit to it because it gets kids to look at poetry, and read poetry, and experiment with poetry. You think, Wow, this is a door. It’s gateway poetry.”

Susan Laurencort, director, Arm Your Voice
New London, Connecticut
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Allison Hornak searches for materials suspended between life and death that are scattered throughout Connecticut forests and neighborhoods. Desiccated leaves, preserved nests, discarded plastic, matted clumps of hair and bones are all objects of affection for Hornak, who deftly reimagines their existence through sculpture and performance. “Lately, I have had an immense desire to marry the decaying objects I find with the brightly colored sterile objects of my studio,” she says. “Acrylic paint, neon tape, plastic. . .They come together to inform one another about the contingency of time.”

With Picked Bones Inside, Objection in Blood and Cadmium (from “Small Boxes” series), 2015 | bone, blood, acrylic and aerosol paint, pine, oak, cotton, plastic, 15 ½” x 12 ¾ ” x 10″ | Photo courtesy the artist

Hornak grew up along the southern base of the Paugussett State Forest, next to the soft blue rush of the Housatonic River. The abundant nature of Connecticut’s forests and rivers has profoundly shaped her practice as a maker. “The woods are dark and lonely at first,” she notes. “But then, they are not. Eventually, the woods and the things you find in it (bird sounds, dead things, fungus, unexpected flowers or patches of unique light and color) feel, if you focus, like an extension of your body. Or, the body is an extension of these things, of it all.” An homage to her extensive time exploring the verdant landscape of her childhood home, Hornak’s sculptural series Small Boxes (2012-2015) bathes objects seemingly dead or forgotten—such as animal bones and discarded cement—in candy-colored acrylic hues, giving them new life.

Since receiving her BFA from Montserrat School of Art in 2010, Hornak has immersed herself in the New England art world; from directing a gallery in Sandy Hook, to an ongoing engagement with performance and sculpture, Hornak pulses with creative electricity. In her recent performance piece Fuck Your Apology (A Composition in Five Movements for Vladimir Umanets), viewers watched Hornak paint the wall of the gallery with a concoction made from raw honey, honeybee bodies, compost, and other found materials while she repeatedly recited W.S. Merwin’s poem “End of Day”.

Fuck Your Apology (a Composition in Five Movements for Vladimir Umanets), 2016 | 20-minute performative action, raw honey, honeybee bodies, compost, glass containers, sunglasses, bandanna, cotton shirt, pants, pumps, acrylic and aerosol paint, finished white wall, “End of a Day” by W.S. Merwin | Photo courtesy the artist

Fuck Your Apology was the opening performance piece of the curated series Colony Collapse at Hygienic Art gallery last April, which was organized loosely around the devastating number of bee deaths occurring nationwide due to colony collapse disorder. Earlier in the year, Hornak was given a jar full of diseased honeybees from artist Silas Finch from a colony that had perished in Connecticut. During her performance, the overwhelming odor of bee decay filled the gallery, causing some onlookers to leave. Hornak feels that the unexpected odor and visceral reaction to her performance made it a success. “I find beauty in the visible vulnerability of performance,” she explains. “As a trained painter, I feel like I have been taught to make highly private and isolated work. When you are performing, in a way you are forced to face yourself.”

Prelude, Poem of Vitamins, 2015 | ceramic, cardboard, paper, bone, wood, shell, potpourri, tape, charcoal, cotton, rope, rubber, glass, cloth, stone, 11 ½”” x 9” x 8 | Photo courtesy the artist

Hornak’s upcoming work, a collaborative project with friend and fellow artist Jessica Gaddis, opens at Hygienic Art gallery on February 16. The show, lovingly entitled Collaborative Economy, is the brainchild of both Gaddis and Hornak, who have found creative and emotional solace in one another over the years—especially in the face of post-election political and social turmoil. “Most people have been talking about feeling frustrated with the economy during this election, and I get it,” notes Gaddis. “I looked up the term ‘economy,’ which I always felt was a deeply patriarchal term; it actually means ‘management of household resources,’ which I find to be incredibly warm and matriarchal.”

Hornak and Gaddis feel that their collaborative work will ignite a sense of partnership for both artists and viewers. “With Collaborative Economy, we are trying to face another person with our highly personal and highly private practices,” says Hornak. “It is a gesture towards the social, and bridging these practices that have such a belief in art, but are searching and wanting for something that is of the moment, that allows for something more.” Gaddis adds that “by coming together, hopefully we can instill a sense that we all need one another, that it is this sort of dependency, not isolation, that will get us through this idea that we are supposed to be independent into a space where we are actually just free.”

Wasp and the Stirring Sea, 2013 | wasp nest, foam, pine, plywood, aerosol paint, paper, acrylic 9 ¼” x 7” x 8 ½ | Photo courtesy the artist

Allison Hornak, performance artist
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Top photo A Struggle (a Painting in Two Acts), 2014 | 12-hour performative action, wood, rope, earth, acrylic, water, brushes, palette knives, cotton shirt, denim pants, glass and plastic containers | Photo courtesy Chris Randall

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