The media ecologies of Norwegian instapoet Trygve Skaug: tracing the post-digital circulation process of (insta)poetry through participatory-made Instagram archives

Abstract

The name instapoetry – or Instagram poetry – suggests a specific attachment of poetry to Instagram. But how bound is instapoetry to Instagram? This article uncovers the relationship between instapoetry and Instagram by analysing the participatory-made exhibits of Norwegian instapoet Trygve Skaug. By investigating the various media instantiations of Skaug’s poetry, the article discusses how instapoetry is platform-dependent and shows how the poetry binds to many different contexts and materialities by existing in multiple media ecologies. Based on this, the paper introduces the post-digital circulation process of poetry as constituting instapoetry’s medial constitution. This process focuses on the emergence of “new media”-cultural approaches to poetry as a post-digital, but still platformed, state of cultural production, interlocking with “old media” ways, as well as creating a setting for the dominance of a platformed lyric poetry.