Swipe poetry: Sylvia Plath, Lot Weijers and TikTok’s poetry culture

Few poets, more than sixty years after their death, continue to capture the public imagination on such a scale that they are shared tens of thousands of times on social media. Sylvia Plath, however, is among the great exceptions. Under the hashtag #sylviaplath, she has now amassed more than 150 million views on TikTok. Behind this hashtag lies a microcosm in which users navigate between literary fandom and deeply personal reading recommendations. Circulating are short videos in which lines from the canonical poems Daddy and Lady Lazarus are recited, or in which yellowed collections and facsimiles of her handwriting are displayed like relics. Some content creators use the hashtag to post their own creative tributes (in a rap form: ‘She’s the baddest witch in the oven’), while others immerse themselves in hushed montages that invoke the melancholic atmosphere of Plath’s oeuvre.

Beyond their fascination with Plath’s work, and her poetry in particular, these TikTok videos have at least one thing in common: they provoke intense responses from many of their viewers. In the comments, numerous users claim that Plath’s poems have left a lasting mark on them. ‘Lady Lazarus shaped my little ginger me’, writes one, referring to the famous phrases ‘Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air’. Others describe her as an older sister or intimate confidante (‘I have all her books in order to have an older sister’) or explain how her poetry runs like a red thread through their thoughts (‘I think about it on the bus ride home sometimes, and it always gets me’). It is hardly surprising, then, that users regularly write that they would like to tattoo a line of Plath’s on their bodies – or that they have already done so – in order to carry the power of her words with them wherever they go.

Yet alongside this affective identification, which is often seen as characteristic of literary practices on TikTok, criticism also surfaces under the hashtag #sylviaplath. Plath’s representations of the Holocaust in particular spark debate, because some users feel discomfort at what they see as a too explicit parallel between the persecution of Jews and her own personal suffering. ‘Every time I read this I just have to ignore the n*zi part’, sighs one, while another states bluntly: ‘Plath’s obsession with characterizing herself as a Jew undergoing her own personal Holocaust turned me off of her poetry.’ Other themes ignite controversy as well. The aforementioned lines ‘Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air’ are dismissed by one user as a mere romanticization of suicidal thoughts – a reason for her to reject them outright. Undoubtedly, some will wave away such responses as overwrought misreadings, but they demonstrate just how poetry can stir intense emotions and how strong the impulse is to take a position.

Poetry between affect, interpretation and commercialism

The #sylviaplath phenomenon thus reveals the double nature of poetry on TikTok. On the one hand, there is deep identification, affect, emotion, recognition, consolation. On the other, less prominent but undeniably present, is criticism, rejection and the struggle over meaning. Poetry here functions not only as solace, but also as a focal point through which users articulate broader questions of representation.

In this sense, the way poetry circulates on TikTok dovetails seamlessly with the broader subculture around books and literature that goes by the name #BookTok. That mega-phenomenon has already amassed hundreds of billions of views and was the driving force behind the international success of romantasy, spicy romance fiction, and numerous young adult authors. In public discourse about reading cultures on social media, poetry may occupy a more modest position, but even hashtags like #PoetryTok and #poetry have garnered billions of views. While poetry still suffers from the cliché of being a struggling genre, confined to a tiny circle of elite readers, on TikTok it is anything but a curiosity. Of course, dance and make-up videos attract far larger audiences, but poetry too has its influencers. Take ‘Mexicana premed poet’ Celia Martinez (@powerhouseofthecel), with more than 2.5 million followers: her poetry paperback Diary of a Romantica (2023) has reached a readership many times larger than that of the average T.S. Eliot Prize laureate. Or Michaela Angemeer (@michaelapoetry), who entices her 800,000 followers not only to buy her poetry but also merchandise (tote bags, clothing). These practices are reminiscent of Rupi Kaur’s on Instagram: in the hypercapitalist ecosystem of social media, the entanglement of marketing and poetry is never far away.

A temple with blisters: the Dutch TikTok poet Lot Weijers

Regarding commercialism, things are relatively quiet in the Dutch-speaking world, yet here too TikTok poets sell their work in print. One particularly interesting example is Lot Weijers (@lot.music.official), a poet in her early twenties who for a long time posted her poems on TikTok under the motto ‘words and positivity’, and has now expanded her online presence to include her musical pursuits. Through her account, which boasts more than 15,000 followers and 400,000 likes, one can order her collection Hersensoep (Brain Soup), which Weijers self-published after repeated encouragement from her fans and followers.

Why are these poems so powerful that young TikTok users want to buy them in print? In the first place, it likely has to do with the intimacy Weijers creates in her poetry videos. In media studies, it has been repeatedly stressed that TikTok’s appeal for young people derives primarily from the (perceived) authenticity the platform offers: not the photoshopped, filtered reality of Instagram, but an unvarnished glimpse into the everyday lives of the teens and twenty-somethings who flock to it. Weijers’ recitations are filmed in her bedroom, with a red notebook in hand and often accompanied by gentle piano music, so that the viewer feels transported into the innermost world of this young poet, directly sharing in her thoughts.

Thematically, too, Weijers appeals strongly to affect and emotion: many of her poems centre on insecurity, self-acceptance and personal growth – topics that play a prominent role in the lives of young women in particular. Her texts are written in free verse, without hermetic constructions, but with an eye for familiar stylistic devices that help anchor the lines in the viewer’s memory: alliteration, assonance, rhythmic repetition.

Exemplary is the video Voor haar (For Her), which has been viewed more than 375,000 times. In this poem, Weijers describes a girl who ‘lets her feelings spread like a forest fire / and then extinguishes the flames herself’ (in Dutch: ‘haar gevoelens laat verspreiden als een bosbrand / en dan zelf het vuur weer blust’) – in other words, a young woman capable of intense emotional outbursts but also of regaining control. She regards her body – admittedly somewhat clichéd – as a temple, ‘not one with stately pillars and sumptuous ballrooms / but one with damage / with cracks and wounds and blisters’ (‘niet een met statelijke pilaren en smakelijke balzalen / maar een met schade / met breuken en wonden en blaren’). The beauty of that temple, Weijers asserts, lies precisely in the scars it has accumulated. The poem thus calls for acceptance of one’s own body, for making peace with who and what one is. At the end, the lyrical speaker admits she is not there yet, but the closing lines resonate with optimism: this poem is ‘for the girl I don’t know yet, am not yet / but might become’ (‘voor het meisje dat ik niet ken, ook nog niet ben / maar wel kan worden’).

Hundreds of Weijers’ viewers identify so strongly with that sentiment that they share their reactions with her. In keeping with social media conventions, there are countless hearts and brief exclamations (‘Who’s cutting onions here?’), but more striking are the deeply personal confessions. Some recall their time in a clinic thanks to Weijers’ poem; others claim the poet’s voice brings ‘calmness to the chaos in my mind’. One viewer from Italy even wrote that although she does not speak Dutch, she nevertheless watched the video with goosebumps.

Here the parallel with the hashtag #sylviaplath is inevitable. Once again, we see poetry on TikTok forming an affective community: users feel understood, find words for their own feelings, sometimes attach themselves to a text so strongly that they seek out others who share the same experience. In this sense, TikTok poetry has a therapeutic dimension, functioning – amid all those other fleeting videos of lip-syncs and trend-driven challenges – as a vehicle of solace and self-recognition.

Yet as with Plath, the reception of Weijers’ work also contains a more cognitive layer. Some users interpret her poems intertextually, pointing to connections with the work of Charles Bukowski or V. E. Schwab. Others ask for writing advice, or express bewilderment at the poetry they are forced to read at school, given that poems like Weijers’ also exist. This may not amount to in-depth literary criticism, but such reactions nonetheless show that TikTok poetry evokes more than mere likes or emoji-filled nods of agreement.

TikTok poetry as an opportunity for education?

For precisely this reason, opportunities exist to bring TikTok into the literature classroom as a means of opening conversations about poetry. Teachers who show their students how canonical poets remain very much alive on TikTok (alongside #sylviaplath, hashtags like #emilydickinson and #federicogarcialorca are also popular) demonstrate that poetry, even outside the classroom – and beyond the printed book – is a living cultural practice, a form of expression that resonates daily with thousands of social media users.

Moreover, both the videos and the comment threads accompanying them offer rich material for classroom analysis. On the one hand, teachers can highlight that poetry is not a static object confined to anthologies, but an art form in constant dialogue with readers across the globe – one that acquires a distinctly media-specific shape on TikTok. On the other hand, the very user comments quoted here make clear that interpretation is not a casual pastime. The debates around Plath’s Holocaust imagery, for instance, underscore how poetry touches upon ethical and historical sensitivities. By studying poems in the context of lived reader responses, poetry analysis could gain experiential relevance for students.

Still, a recent study into the sources of inspiration for literature teachers in the Netherlands found that even English teachers rarely draw on #BookTok as a resource for their lessons. It would hardly be surprising if the impact of #PoetryTok on education in general were even smaller. Of course, there are numerous drawbacks to bringing TikTok into the classroom, not least the dubious ethical standing of parent company ByteDance (and big tech more broadly). At the same time, the aforementioned merchandise of Michaela Angemeer illustrates that such issues can also be discussed through the lens of TikTok poetry. Indeed, perhaps they should be – for if we create classroom spaces to use TikTok poetry as a way of discussing the darker sides of TikTok itself, we can help teenagers recognise the many-headed monster that so many of them engage with daily.

Further Reading:

Delhey, Y., Dera, J., Janssen, L., Jentges, S., Koffeman, M., & Mekenkamp, M. (2025). Tekstselectie in het Nederlandse literatuuronderwijs: een enquêtestudie onder docenten Duits, Engels, Frans, Nederlands en Spaans. Stichting Lezen.

Dera, J. (2024). BookTok: a narrative review of current literature and directions for future research. Literature Compass, 21(10–12), e70012.

Dera, J. (2025). ‘Your voice brings calmness to the chaos in my mind’: exploring the uses of poetry on TikTok. Journal of Poetry Therapy, 38(1), 24–37.