Once, poetry was ink spilling spontaneously and consciously onto parchment, then wrapped in the folds of intimacy, passed hand to hand, tucked into books and kept in drawers for decades. Today, it is rhythm of fingertips against a glass screen — typing, backspacing, editing, and posting. From quills to keyboards, poetry has evolved — from private musings to public declarations, from personal journals to fierce posts.
The rolls of paper may have withered away by the ravages of time, but the verses linger even today, now carving themselves into the digital landscape — a space quite often of rebellion and solidarity. While the themes remain the same, what probably has also changed is the perspective. One of the striking shifts in contemporary poetry is the way young poets are redefining the portrayal of the timeless theme, love. Once bound by grand gestures — roses, candle-lit dinners, and handwritten letters — love in poetry is now complex, raw and defiant. It is not just about devotion but about absence, struggle, identity, and self-reclamation. Love, once imagined as a fairytale ending, is now a site of questioning: Who gets to love? How do we love? Is love only between two people, or can it be found in the smallest moments?
To explore this evolution, several poets and writers whose work challenges traditional ideas of romance, touch upon the facets of love poems. Their words paint a picture of love that is political, fluid, and deeply intertwined with personal and social struggles.
The new language of love
“Traditional romance is about grand gestures — lovely, but predictable,” says Shanaya*, a poet whose work delves into the tension between desire and ambition. “I like to think my poetry digs deeper. It’s about love that doesn’t just sweep you off your feet but makes you question where you’re standing.” In her view, contemporary poetry is shifting from dependency to collaboration: “It’s not ‘you complete me’ anymore -—it’s ‘I am whole, and you add to that’.”
For Mayur, romance is not just about lovers — it’s about perception. “Anything can be romantic — even the way you prepare your coffee in the morning,” he says. “It’s not always about eternal devotion. Sometimes, it’s about the fleeting connection, a moment lost in time.”
Love, in poetry today, is expansive. It is no longer confined to heteronormative ideals or structured relationships. As Hiba Zeinab Ashraf, a writer and journalist, points out, contemporary Indian poetry is seeing an increasing number of Dalit, queer, and Muslim poets breaking traditional notions of love. “There is no set definition anymore. Poets are challenging the way love is seen, the way romance is perceived — almost every day with their poems.”
The politics of love poetry
The act of writing about love may seem personal, but it is always political. Raiza Salam, a writer-filmmaker, believes that unconditional love — one of the core themes in her work -—is itself an act of resistance. “We live in a judgemental society. Since birth, every choice is scrutinised —your gender, your skin colour, the way you dress. What if we learned to respect the choices of others and love without conditions?”
For many poets, writing is a tool for survival, a way to process the injustices of the world. “Poetry and art are born in places of great pain. They act as a form of rebellion against hate,” says Raiza. She recalls how her own experiences - whether societal beauty standards, women’s autonomy, or even her battle with cancer - have shaped her art, turning personal struggles into political statements.
For Priyadarshini N, an illustrator and postgrad student, “poetry is inevitably chock full of intersectional advocacy. It’s not just about heartbreak — it’s about heartbreak tied into social injustice.” She notes that spoken word poetry, in particular, has been a powerful medium for resisting patriarchal and heteronormative ideas of love.
The history of poetry as resistance is long and global. Hiba draws comparisons to the works of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, whose love poems were deeply intertwined with political struggle. “There’s this notion that serious poets — those who write about liberation — shouldn’t write about love, as if love is second-class to activism. But Darwish did both. Love is political. We have honour killings, caste-based violence, religious persecution — all rooted in controlling love,” she says.
A double-edged sword
If poetry has always been an act of resistance, social media has escalated its reach. “Instagram has turned poetry into a conversation, not just an art form,” says Shanaya. “It’s like the digital version of the salons in Paris, except instead of smoky rooms, we have curated feeds,” she adds.
But not everyone is entirely optimistic. “A larger platform is great, but I fear poetry might become oversaturated and generic to appeal to a ‘gentrified’ audience,” Priyadarshini warns. Hiba agrees: “There are still obstacles. The algorithm demands digestibility. If a poem is too political, too heavy, people scroll past.”
Despite these limitations, social media has undeniably democratised poetry. “Before, there was a notion that you needed a certain level of intellect to write poetry,” Hiba explains. “There was a class and caste barrier. Now, anyone can write and be heard.”
Despite the shifts, poetry remains deeply personal. “My poetry is my catharsis,” says Priyadarshini. “I write to process insights from my therapy sessions, as a form of self-love, to remind myself that I will heal and grow.”
For all the poets we spoke to, love — whether romantic, platonic, or self-directed — is never just an emotion. It is an act of defiance, a statement, a reclamation of space. “Love poetry is a hop, skip, and a jump away from flipping off dominant oppressive structures. And that’s awesome,” says Priyadarshini.
New canon of poetry Are there poets today who blend romance with resistance? The answer is a resounding yes. Names like Meena Kandasamy, Rupi Kaur, and Nikita Gill often come up in conversation. Their poetry speaks of oppression, heartbreak, longing rage, history, intertwined with love.
A digital ‘Room of One’s Own’
In ‘A Room of One’s Own’, Virginia Woolf famously argued that women needed literal and figurative space to create. Today, a few may argue that that space has shrunk to the size of a screen — an account of one’s own, with privacy settings and limited reach. Poetry continues to thrive. It still spills out into captions, tweets, spoken word videos, and reels. It is whispered, shouted, archived, and reblogged.
Love, in the age of digital poetry, is about becoming — shaping oneself through resistance, through words, through the quiet act of carving meaning into the vast, indifferent space of the internet. And in that act, there is always poetry.