Poet Ian McMillan says Instagram is breaking poetry's gatekeeping problem

Ian McMillan posts a haiku on BlueSky every day. At 70, he says social media is doing something the poetry world has long struggled to do: opening the door to new voices.

McMillan argues that social media is assisting the upcoming generation of poets to bypass the gatekeepers in the poetry industry. According to him, the Instagram poetry is great and has liberated people who were fearful of the poetry industry.

According to McMillan, posting poems and pictures on Instagram constitutes publishing. One does not know who will view them, and it is easier than negotiating with the gatekeepers who prevent the entry of new literature into the market.

McMillan will appear at Ilkley Literature Festival alongside authors Jacqueline Wilson and Kate Atkinson, swimmer Mark Foster and tennis coach Judy Murray.

He first played the festival's fringe in the 1980s, expecting something like Edinburgh's. Instead he found an upstairs pub room, three other performers and no audience, which he says did not matter.

He likes that the festival is outside London, so people can reach it easily. He also plans a fat rascal at Bettys, eaten well before he goes on stage.

His most recent collection of poetry, Red River Valley, focuses on family life, everyday surrealism, and the effect of austerity on the village close to Barnsley, where he lives. McMillan was born in Darfield in 1956, which he finds constantly inspirational.

Every morning he takes a walk around the village that he has been doing for years before, and then he writes down five things that he has seen. He says his walk takes the same path that he has been taking since childhood.

Living still, McMillan thinks that he has got a good perspective of the town. He says Barnsley has managed to reinvent itself, as evidenced by regeneration in the centre of the town and villages. He cites an example when he had been told by a taxi driver that people travel from Leeds to Barnsley for nightlife there.