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Poetry on course for a record year
Tom Tivnan is the managing editor of The Bookseller.
Tom Tivnan is the managing editor of The Bookseller.
The poetry market will almost certainly chalk up its biggest year since accurate records began, boosted by pop stars, the “insta-poet” space, a groundbreaking translation of Homer and led by collections from a writer whose breakthrough came during lockdown.
Through the first 48 weeks in 2023, £11.9m has been sold through Nielsen Bookscan’s Poetry Texts & Poetry Anthologies, tracking 5% ahead at this stage on 2022’s previous record (a full-year £13.6m); with a push, the category might crack the £15m mark for the first time by 2023’s end.
Instagram is still the key sales driver—the format of “the grid” suits sharing blocks of text—but BookTok is becoming as important
The past eight years have been a purple patch, initially driven by the insta-poet craze kickstarted by Rupi Kaur’s 2015 début milk & honey. The Canadian has earned £5.1m through BookScan’s Total Consumer Market and is the fourth bestselling poet since records began, trailing only Ted Hughes (£8.9m), Pam Ayres (yes, Pam Ayres, £7.5m) and Seamus Heaney (£7m). Since its UK launch, milk & honey has never been out of the annual top five poetry books; it is number three here, Kaur has another trio in the top 20 and she has shifted £463,000 through the TCM, third among poets in 2023.
Instagram is still the key sales driver—the format of “the grid” suits sharing blocks of text—but BookTok is becoming as important. Both are crucial to Scot Donna Ashworth who burst on the scene during 2020’s first lockdown with History Will Remember When the World Stopped, which went viral and was read on social media by the likes of Michael Sheen and Vicky McClure. Ashworth has earned £1.2m through BookScan since (and that omits pandemic-era BookScan data blind spots), a colossal take for a poet. Nearly £600,000 has been generated this year with Ashworth claiming an impressive five titles here, three in the top four.
That social media space has helped pop/poetry crossovers such as Lana Del Rey, whose eighth-placed Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass has been a hit since its 2020 publication, and Mercury Prize winner Kae Tempest’s latest, Divisible by Itself and One (to be fair to Tempest, they are more poet first, having won the Ted Hughes Award in 2013).
The second bestselling poet of the year is Homer. Reading lists are the main driver of the Blind Poet’s annual success, with father and son translators E V and D C H Rieu’s version of The Odyssey placed 13th. But the big story in Homeric studies is Emily Wilson’s much-praised new translation of The Iliad, following on from 2017’s The Odyssey (Norton). The University of Pennsylvania classicist is, unbelievably, the first woman to ever publish translations of both works.
This social media stars’ influx has raised the ire of so many in the traditional poetry community. Kaur in particular sets these people’s teeth on edge, with her youth, being featured in Vogue, an Amazon Prime Video special and chatting with Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show”. The gall of actually being successful at poetry, right?
So few make money from poetry. Even in this record year, Julia Donaldson will outsell the entire UK poetry market. Anthony Joseph’s 2022 T S Eliot award winner Sonnets for Albert (Bloomsbury) is one of that prize’s biggest-ever post-win successes, and it has shifted 1,600 copies since bagging the award. Jason Allen-Paisant’s excellent 2023 Forward Prize winner Self-portrait as Othello (Carcanet) has sold 308 copies. The current UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has earned £136,000 through BookScan this year, about half of what Richard Osman churned out last week. Those who dismiss the insta-poets are being blindingly reductive. But, poetry snobs, why not think of Kaur, Ashworth et al as gateway drugs who are broadening what has heretofore been a closed market?
