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Featuring deep conversations with thought leaders, innovators, rule-breakers, and the causal geniuses we discover inside Swell.

@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:09

Instapoetry : Social that Soothes Our Souls

article image placeholderWriter Sonya Matejko
Hi, it's Deborah. It's January 2022. And here on the Spotlight today, I want to introduce Sonia Mateko, who s a journalist who wrote a really cool article in The Huffington Post. And we've invited her here to speak with us about something called Insta Poetry Tree. We've all been exposed to it, but we probably didn't know we were. And she really goes into the idea that Instagram and social media in general, they say it's really hard on mental health

@sonyamatejko Sonya Matejko/ the upside of scrolling our feeds. Link : https://s.swell.life/SStfcYiRyijrnPX #swellinterview #artist

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@sonyamatejko
Sonya Matejko
@sonyamatejko · 4:14
I was writing in Composition notebooks when I was a little girl, and then I self published a book of poetry in the 8th grade and sold it in the hallways of my middle school, continued to write poetry even when it wasn't cool in high school and started to bring it up again after College and finally started posting it on the Internet when there was a huge craze for personal essays
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:00

Poetic vs poetry @sonyamatejko

Like, I think how one receives writing kind of creates a poetic moment that you can turn around and say what was written was poetic. Where is the definition right now in your mind about what poetry is versus what just a post is with words in a certain order? Can you kind of talk about the discipline of when we talk about something that's poetic versus being poetry
@Swell
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15

Welcome to Swell!

@sonyamatejko
Sonya Matejko
@sonyamatejko · 2:03
And so what I wouldn't want to happen is that we start labeling things as well. This isn't poetry and making people feel like imposter syndrome. Perhaps if they were to write something, put it together, and then someone tells them that it's not good enough to be called poetry or it's not right, or it doesn't fit in the construct of what we know poetry as
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:16

Curating your feed

I wanted to ask you something that you mentioned in your first response here about filtering your feed to really serve you as opposed to having things in it that turn you off and make you disconnect. So can you give us some advice because you are somebody who did this article connected with people you feel really passionate about this. Can you give us advice about curating? How do you make a feed that you don't like into a feed that you like?
@MysticScientist
Indy Rishi Singh
@MysticScientist · 1:44

Poetry and philosophy

This is a great conversation. Just because poetry is such a significant part of my life and how I reconcile with all the things going on with me. I have been practicing something really fun using Instagram, just my own expression. A lot of the whenever I do a post, I try to make a habit whether it's highlighting a quote from somebody in history or whatever, or if I'm just sharing like a cartoon or sharing even an image from my life
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@sonyamatejko
Sonya Matejko
@sonyamatejko · 3:54
When it comes to curating your feed. The first step is awareness, so I don't know about the listeners, but I've definitely been in that phase where you're just scrolling through Instagram, and you're not even really looking at the content. You're not really taking it in, and you might not even be reading what the words say or opening up the caption
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@sonyamatejko
Sonya Matejko
@sonyamatejko · 1:02
And Indy to your point. I love that you are doing that, adding Limerick into your post, whether that's quote or images and you actually hit on something that I forgot to mention is that poetry is a way to add depth you the everyday experiences. So I think the fact that you're using it to express your creativity with an image or an update that you're sharing with your community is exactly one of the best perks of poetry is getting even more creative
@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:36

Your link on IG. https://s.swell.life/SStrLPvXetg4pZh

It's really interesting to think about our social feeds as public canvases. I think that's what you're both hitting on right now, the idea that when we decide to write something out there or draw something or, you know, we're we're doing public art. And in this conversation, we're talking specifically about words. I'm going to link a force of nurture your Instagram feed here so that people could look at your Instagram feed and see this in practice
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