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How poetry survives on Instagram

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It can be said that the internet has pretty much replaced everything. When English Literature majors think of poetry, they would probably think about Iambic Pentameters, William Wordsworth, or a grotesque war poem by Wilfred Owen. In today’s day and age, poetry has taken a different turn. Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms where people share pictures and videos with their followers. ‘Insta-poet’ is a term that represents those who upload their work on this site for a large community of online poets. According to The Atlantic , around one half of poetry books sold in the past years were written by Insta-poets. The poet’s Instagram feed would all together be a replacement of a book having posts instead of pages. This approach of creating an Instagram account and putting your words out there has proven to be easier than presenting a draft of your book to a publishing house; however, it has major disadvantages. Unless your work is copyrighted, anyone can disc
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Brazil writes a love letter goodbye to books.

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It’s always unfortunate how financial crises can stop someone from doing what they love. In the case of Brazil, book lovers are falling short of resources as the book trade sector is facing major decline in book sales because, well, people are getting poorer and poorer. The Guardian report ed that the publishing sector of the country is experiencing critical changes as both bookstore chains Cultura and Saraiva are struggling to protect themselves from a highly possible bankruptcy. Photo by Fernando Guerra   This economic failure in the book market is not just damaging to readers and bookworms but it is also discouraging publishers and writers to share their work with the world due to a concrete fear of ‘flopping’. Ever since the climax of this crisis, 20 bookstores were announced to be closed. Only a book lover will understand what it feels like to roam around a bookstore laying their eyes on 10 exquisitely different titles at once hoping to find a gem. This feeling is never
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Is the 'Worst Alphabet Book Ever' the best alphabet book ever?

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The new best-selling book ‘P Is for Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever’ written by Raj Haldar and Chris Carpenter with illustrations by Maria Beddia became everyone’s favourite upon release. The first batch of copies was entirely sold out but the hype is still at its peak. What was striking for the public about this random children’s book is its approach in teaching the language to little minds. Instead of the easy, short options, the book comes up with complicated or perhaps unusual words for the 26 letters. Front page  source Chris Carpenter explains in an interview with Bored Panda  that the hilarious idea stemmed from a gathering between him and Haldar alongside their other friends and their child. Haldar says that as soon as their friend picked up a flashcard that said ‘Q is for Quinoa’, the two friends were instantly captivated by the ridiculousness and funniness of teaching children random  words in the early stages of their cognitive experience. An online spa
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Missing the point? Everything wrong about The Handmaid's Sale.

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The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a genius well-crafted piece of work written to shed light on the ill treatment of women. This best-selling science-fiction book, which was published in 1985, narrates the story of a dystopian society where authorities manipulate fertile women to have babies for elite couples that are unable to. The book parallels the real life difficulties of women who don’t have say in controlling their own life. With the ever-growing feminist movement, the past 100 years have been a continuous realization of unnoticed discrimination against women, the blooming of equal rights and a step forward towards a visionary society. As the Daily Telegraph claims this work to be “Compulsively readable”, this novel have touched many from young people studying the bold lines in school to critics around the world reading between them. An interesting parallel emerged after this year’s Halloween season. A Handmaid’s Tale related costume has been circulating the screens
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The first of many

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Hi, My name is Ibtihal but you can call me Ibti! Although I've only started my blog for an assignment, writing has always been a passion of mine! Whether it's scribbling verses of poetry on the margins of my school notebook or reading someone else's published work, I find comfort in words.  This love has grown ever since I discovered a YouTube Channel called Button Poetry . It's an online space that publishes Spoken Word videos for everyone to watch. People write about everything and anything from heartbreak to politics to any touching experience. The best part is definitely listening to the writers read their own personal writing with such composure and sentiment! Finding out about this creative cyberspace gathering creative minds into one community has been of great inspiration and entertainment for when the boredom strikes. 
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