Instapoesía: A “Prestigious” Literary Practice?

“Can Instagram make poems sell again?” (Maher). Poetry published via social media platforms, namely Instagram, not only provides readers with a “nuevo medio [que] equivale a nueva formación” [new medium and a new form] but one that “a la larga provoca una nueva concepción de lo poético” [forges a new understanding of poetry] (Quinto 198). The poetic phenomenon has sparked an interesting debate regarding its validity and position within the literary field, as critics and journalists alike are beginning to either critique or justify the emerging presence of Instagram poetry (Instapoesía) in the contemporary landscape of Spanish literature. This article, in adopting Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework of the notion of prestige, will make critical interventions into this debate, not only in the consideration of the social and communicative aspects of social media, but also in understanding the importance of “reader dispositions” in the online literary space (Shapiro 251). The author focuses on one of the most prominent Spanish-speaking online poets, Elvira Sastre, not only to demonstrate how poets operating on social media dedicate their work to the online space, but also how they appeal to the public in order to gain symbolic capital. By observing how aesthetic expectations of the “field” can be both replicated and rejected by characteristics of the digital medium, this investigation will analyse how this digital poetry is contributing to today’s cultural field, while changing contemporary understandings of what constitutes a valued or prestigious text in Spanish poetry.