TWO VIRAL BUTTON POETSSabrina Benaim, a writer and slam poet
from Toronto, Canada, is renowned as the
winner of the 2014 Toronto Poetry Slam.
Her poem “Explaining My Depression
to My Mother” was uploaded on But-
ton’s YouTube channel and now has over
eight million views. Her performances
began to go viral across social media and
jump-started her writing career. Button
published her collection Depression and
Other Magic Tricks in 2017.Rudy Francisco is a poet, writer, and
social advocate from San Diego. He is
arguably one of the most recognizable
spoken-word poets and has won several
national poetry-slam competitions. He
writes about love and the intersectionali-
ty among race, class, gender, and identity.
YouTube videos of his performances have
received more than three million views.
In April 2019 he performed his spoken-
word poem “Rifle” on the Tonight Show
Starring Jimmy Fallon, a follow-up to his
March 2018 performance on the show.littrends
Sewing a
New Era
of Poetry
by Tiffanie Vo
OFTEN WHEN I ASK people what they
think of poetry, their first thought is of the
famous poets we studied in school—Edgar
Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman.
That, plus the higher likelihood of scrolling
through their phones on social media rather
than reading a book of poems, makes many
people likely to miss the exciting new voices
in poetry. How we view poetry, however, is
changing, and Button Poetry (@buttonpo-
etry) is one agent of that change.
One of the fastest-growing poetry plat-
forms through social media and YouTube,
Button Poetry is an independent publisher
for performance poetry. The company high-
lights poetry performances across the Unit-
ed States through media, audio recordings,
video, local and national events, publishing
chapbooks, and scholarships. According to
Button Poetry’s vision statement, it seeks
“to broaden poetry’s audience, to expand its
reach and develop a greater level of cultural
appreciation for the art form.”
The company was founded by Sam
Cook and Sierra DeMulder in 2011 in Min-
neapolis, Minnesota, as a website and blog.
By 2012 Cook and Dylan Garity rebranded
Button Poetry to target audiences through
social media and their channel called But-
ton YouTube.
They soon launched their third album,
The Good News Poetry Tour, and videoed
more than fifty poetry performances at the
College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational
and Women of the World Poetry Slam.
Through this, Button YouTube grew expo-
nentially, reaching more than five thou-
sand subscribers. That same year, Button
released its first published poetry chapbook,
Aziza Barnes’s me Aunt Jemima and the
nailgun, winner of the 2012 Button Poetry
Prize. After broadcasting the 2013 National
Poetry Slam on its YouTube channel, But-
ton’s popularity skyrocketed, breaking four
million views.
Now with more than a million subscrib-
ers and 220 million views on its YouTube
channel, Button has published ten chap-
books and dozens of poetry books and pro-
vided a platform for young poets to speak
their truths to a global audience online.Tiffanie Vo is a WLT intern studying human
relations and sociology at the University of
Oklahoma. She is passionate about sharing
her Vietnamese culture and advocating
for Asian American rights. When she’s not
studying, she is performing spoken word
at local open mics and taking kickboxing
classes four times a week.Creative cross-stitch by Tiffany Marie inspired by Button
poet Neil Hilborn’s “Our Numbered Days”WORLDLIT.ORG 7