Thanks to hip hop, slam poet events and "Instagram Poetry" the written - and spoken - word is enjoying a renaissance, and David Stavanger and Anne-Marie Te Whiu believe poetry will only continue its rise with social media.

Solid Air: Australian and New Zealand Spoken Word features 118 different artists (three from the Illawarra) and is an "anthology" Stavanger had been dreaming of for a decade.

"It's a space where nothing had been done," he said.

"I kept seeing these amazing spoken work artists live ... the writing was really strong but it wasn't being represented in Australian contemporary poetry.

"There was a lot of marginalised voices that weren't getting heard."

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Te Whiu explained the medium went far beyond Shakespearean sonnets or Banjo Patterson classics and included an array of forms (like the above mentioned) as did music with genres like jazz, rock and classical.

She said venues were also realising there was an interest in the medium by hosting slam poetry nights - like Enough Said in Wollongong.

"Like you'll have comedy and you'll have your quiz nights, [there are slam poetry nights] because people want to go out and they want to gather and they want to share," Te Whiu said.

"If you look at book sales in the UK and the US, there has been a huge resurgence in poetry sales and it's driven by spoken word artists and Instagram poets," added Stavanger.

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Both said Instagram and Twitter had played a huge role in the renaissance though some may not realise. The funny meme you share, or the witty 140-character tweet you liked could be forms of poetry.

"Academic poets don't like it because it's probably viewed as simple, but it's also accessible and being accessible means you're going to have a broader audience - it doesn't mean it's not good," Stavanger said.

"It's probably becoming a more and more key way of communicating.

"We're in this time of distilled text like Twitter and the constraints of a poem it forces you to communicate a lot quicker.

"I think for a lot of generations coming thorough I think it's going to be more and more relevant."

Solid Air is released on August 6 through Queensland University Press. It will be officially launched at the Wollongong Writers Festival later this year.

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