Fashion
In Her New Book, Kate Baer Turns Troll-y Instagram DMs Into Poetry
Like most women who exist on the internet, Kate Baer knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of some truly awful messages. Prior to becoming a published author, Baer wrote a blog about the less-glamorous realities of motherhood, themes that showed up again in her New York Times best-selling book of poetry, What Kind of Woman. In the process, Baer has become a sensation on Instagram, where she occasionally posts her poetry and often goes viral, opening the door for even more people to find and critique her work. Now, in her new book, I Hope This Finds You Well, she’s discovered an alternate use for the otherwise-deletable hate mail she’s received along the way.
Starting in May 2020, Baer began taking her Instagram DMs and examining them more closely, using the white-out tool to erase select words, leaving a poem behind. One, a man’s rant about why her first book is everything he’d teach his daughter not to be, turns into: “it’s funny how / men go ahead and / have / daughters / even though / they / can’t fathom / what / daughters can be.” The book compiles messages like these, as well as texts you’re already familiar with, like Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the assault allegations levied against him or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s speech on the House floor in response to Rep. Ted Yoho calling her a “fucking bitch.” From all of them, poems emerge.
And while Baer explains that this poetry is not meant to make light of online harassment, or suppose that she’s the first to receive it, I Hope This Finds You Well does offer up a means for reading in between the lines. “I guess I present this book as an artifact for examination,” she tells ELLE.com over the phone from her office in Pennsylvania, “when we can finally zoom back and see what we’re all doing here.”
Below, Baer shares more about her book came to be—she turned the offer down three times and eventually wrote it from the front seat of her van—and why she no longer cares if you call her an “Instagram poet.”
I’d love to hear how this idea first came to you. What was the first erasure poem you wrote?
I’d never thought about doing erasure poetry. I’d heard of it and read it and appreciated it as art, but I wasn’t looking to do it. It was around George Floyd’s murder when I was posting [on Instagram] calling for police reform. My inbox was full of people either agreeing or disagreeing. I was looking through these messages, and as a writer and a woman on the internet for the last 10 years, I’ve gotten pretty used to deleting or blocking or muting when people send unkind messages. But this one caught my eye. It was from a woman who was arguing against police reform. I was looking at this message, and I was getting ready to delete it, and then the words just kind of rearranged in front of me. It was just a whim. I posted it without really thinking much about it, and people really responded to it. It was surprising to me, but I guess it shouldn’t have been, because it was such a contentious time—it still is often. And it went on from there. Each time I think I’m not going to do this anymore. I like to say I’m no longer taking submissions for erasure poetry. No one needs to send me an unkind message; I don’t want it. Every time is my last time, and then sometimes they’re just too good that I can’t pass it up.
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When you get a message now, is there something you’re looking for or you see that makes you think, Maybe I’m not done yet?
Something people don’t realize is that I get a ton of messages, and most of them I can’t use, because there aren’t enough verbs and nouns. So often I’m like, “Come on, why didn’t you give me some more to work with? I don’t really like these nouns you chose. I need some more fodder than these three sentences.” I think often when people are trying to send a quick jab, it’s quick. It’s not a long paragraph. But that’s what I’m scanning for now when I get those messages, which is kind of fun in some ways, because at least I’m not reading it and taking it so personally.
Reading these poems, it’s really upsetting to consider that this is a small sliver of the criticism and harassment that women receive online. But it’s also empowering to see these messages turned into something beautiful and purposeful. Did creating these poems change your feelings about social media or the messages you receive, or just being a woman on the internet?
Cyberbullying and online harassment are very real problems. Not every woman online feels comfortable calling these things out, and not every woman has the social network or the mental space to deal with it. Threats of rape and death and stalking, that can take an incredible toll on a person—and I don’t just mean taking up time, but costing money through legal fees or online protections. One of the reasons I really hesitated to write this book—I turned it down three times—was because I don’t want to make light of such a serious problem. I’m terrified to have my kids on social media, especially my daughter. Teenage girls are significantly more likely to be cyber-bullied than boys. It’s such a real, serious problem and real, serious consequences occur. Yet there’s so much nuance to it, because some of it is very serious, and some of it is very passive aggressive or not quite mean, but also not not mean. I hope that through reading this book, you can see some of those differences and see how, even with the best intentions, the impact is not great. People have recommended I change my profile picture to a cartoon or not open my DMs or take down any photo that shows my body, but then we get into “she was asking for it” territory, which is also not okay. It’s not my job to present myself in a way that people won’t take offense to. It’s very complicated. I feel like we’re in such a baby stage of the internet that we still don’t realize all the ripple effects. I guess I present this book as an artifact for examination, when we can finally zoom back and see what we’re all doing here.
Was there a poem that was the hardest to complete? Or, on the other hand, a favorite?
I think my favorite is the one that I wrote from one of those messages—it’s probably not even a person, it’s, like, a bot—that’s like, “Hey, I’ll be your sugar daddy. I’ll give you an allowance.” That one was fun to write, because I feel like most people have gotten those kind of messages. It felt funny, like we’re all joking around. I hated pouring over the Brett Kavanaugh transcripts. I didn’t want to read that again. I didn’t want his voice in my head.
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You’re often described as an “Instagram poet,” which can be taken as a snub, but this book wouldn’t exist without Instagram. You’ve said you not only use the DMs you receive, but the white-out tools within Instagram to create these poems. Was writing this book a conscious decision to try and reclaim that term in some way?
Not really. The majority of my work is in published books, but since I do share pieces to Instagram to give a preview of the work, anyone can certainly call me that. In seventh grade, Mike Parker called me “Big Miss Piggy,” so I’ve been called so much worse than “Instagram poet.” I usually refer to myself as “person who makes people sandwiches” and also “writer.” Anyone can call me “Instagram poet.” It used to really bother me. Now, I don’t know, I am a poet who posts on Instagram, so I guess it’s also true.
Also who’s to say that being an “Instagram poet” is bad?
People are so funny with labels. Everyone wants to be taken seriously, of course. But also, we’re all just going to die. You can call me whatever you want.
You’ve spoken previously about people who made drastic life changes because of the poems in your first book, What Kind of Woman. What has that experience been like for you?
It’s this dual feeling of immense pride in women taking back their own lives, and then also the feeling of, oh shit, don’t listen to me. I’m just as fucked up as you. I’m not in any position to tell anyone to make changes in their life. I just try to say that I’m rooting for you, and I hope you can find peace and happiness in your life. There was a woman last year—I don’t want to give too many details—she left her husband, because of many different reasons, but he was being emotionally abusive, and she had four kids and no income. It was a big deal, and I felt very worried about her and kind of guilty, like I pushed her into a situation, even though I didn’t, but that she’s not going to be okay. I just talked to her not that long ago, and she’s really thriving and I’m so proud of her. I don’t take any credit for this whatsoever. She’s the one who had to leave an emotionally abusive husband and try to raise four kids on her own and get a job. She’s the hero here, but it was a beautiful thing to experience through her.
Both of your poetry books have also been published during the pandemic, when we’ve all been so isolated. What has it been like to have your books come out during this very specific moment in time?
It’s been such a roller coaster, which sounds so cliché. I wrote most of What Kind of Woman in a non-pandemic time. There was a lot of panic just on a logistical level as far as marketing and [thinking] How am I going to do this? I’m not going to be able to have a book tour, and no one’s going to want to buy poetry when they are panicking about their jobs or how they’re going to go see their grandma. So [the response] was really shocking. I know people turn to poetry in difficult times, but I just didn’t think that was going to be true for this book. It was a big surprise to have people buy it and respond to it like they did.
I Hope This Finds You Well was written [during] peak pandemic. I wrote it in my van in the front seat, because my kids were home from school. We recently moved, so I have an office now, but it was such a shitshow. Honestly, writing this book was terrible. Writing What Kind of Woman was hard, but it was wonderful in so many ways. Writing I Hope This Finds You Well was depressing because of the content, and then it was difficult because I was in my van, propping my laptop up on the steering wheel, turning the van on and off to get the heat going so I could warm up my cold fingers. I was parked outside of Panera to use their internet. It was really a time.
So throughout the pandemic and writing this book, and the difficulty of it all, was there anything you found that really helped you make it through?
The women in my life. That’s the answer to any question that’s talking about what helps in difficult times. It doesn’t matter if it’s a pandemic or something else. That is who I always turn to, the friends in my life, even though we couldn’t necessarily see each other face to face. Sometimes we were standing six feet apart in a parking lot, or it was over Houseparty or FaceTime or texting or Snapchat, sending memes across the airwaves. They are equally as important to me as a marriage. They are a marriage, in a way. That absolutely was my saving grace.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
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