Dr Warren Mortimer, who holds three degrees from Lancaster in English and Creative Writing (and is a current member of staff) tells how he has helped to develop a social media site combining poetry and photography.

“There was a time – in the not-too-distant past – when social media was a sanctuary for like-minded souls to express themselves without fear of judgement. And if there wasn’t, there ought to have been. I founded SoPoet to reopen the doors to that digital Eden.

Bang on the day I completed my PhD in Creative Writing, my brother messaged me to ask if I fancied developing a social media site which looked to merge poetry with photography. Like all of us, he’d become disenchanted with algorithms, ads, and ‘doomscrolling’ (was that a word in 2022?). We decided quickly that what the internet needed was a space of social comfort, where ‘meaning’ was the only currency in town. There was talk of posts being poetgraphs, sparks for likes and glosses for comments. I told him how hard it had been to get my students to write a single poem – he told me that was exactly the challenge.

As both a student (BA, MA, PhD – royalties awaiting) and then a teacher and marketer at Lancaster, I’ve lived by the law of economy – saying more with less. The only question that’s important to me is why should anyone want to read the stuff I’ve written.

In the social media world – the opposite holds true. We all know it, and most of us (me included) contribute to it. At its core, what SoPoet looks to remedy is the idea that our online selves are unaccountable for the things we say and how we say them. Our aim is to rewild the social media landscape. We want a place of measured calm – and for us, poetry is the best vehicle for bringing about that change.

Lancaster has been a huge part of SoPoet’s story. In a more obvious sense, studying here was where I first fell in love with poetry. Outside of the GCSE syllabus, I don’t think I’d ever read a poem – or wanted to read one – in my pre-university life. Then a couple of top-tier poetry lecturers showed me how you can open a whole world in four or five lines. It was a revelation to me that a few words in the right order could hold a mirror up to my childhood, leaving me feeling like I’d had my palm read.

But there were other gifts that Lancaster handed me, and these helped mould the ethos of SoPoet – a sense of how I want the world to look, and how I might go about it; a drive to bring communities together; a belief that everyone can express themselves in words if given the right motivation and advice; an old-school confidence that my meagre past wouldn’t define me. It’s this radical positivity my brother and I hope to colour the future of SoPoet.

I’d be over the absolute moon if you could check out our platform at sopoet.co.uk. We’re also recently on the Google Play store – the app and signup are both 100% free. Thank you so much – I can’t wait to see your first poetgraph.”