The best-selling Instagram poet Rupi Kaur helped boost sales of poetry to an all-time UK high last year, according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan. The Guardian reports that sales grew by more than 12% in 2018.

In total, 1.3 million poetry books were sold in 2018, adding up to £12.3m in sales, a rise of £1.3m on 2017. Two-thirds of buyers were aged under 34, and 41 per cent were aged 13 to 22. Teenage girls and young women were identified as the biggest consumers last year.

Rupi Kaur, a Canadian poet with 3.4 million followers on Instagram, led the bestsellers list, with almost £1m of sales. Works by Leonard Cohen, John Cooper Clarke, Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy and Homer were also popular.

Andre Breedt, for Nielsen, said that in times of political turmoil, more people turned to poems to make sense of the world, with phones and social media helping to spread the word.