I chose to centre this website around the beauty of typewriter poetry. These scraps of paper scattered with letters hold some type of aura. Typewriter poetry is no different than words on a laptop or written by hand but they take on a genre on their own. In our fast paced world it is often refreshing to read simple black ink on a page speaking of beauty, pain or love. My decision to focus on typewriter poetry stems from a class discussion of photography and the aura and value of film because I felt it was mirrored in this practice of poetry.
| Tyler knott Gregson | Christopher Pointdexter | Aamina Muhsin |
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| Tyler Knott Gregson is a poet and photographer from Helena, Montana, Usa. He started to procure notoriety through posting daily haikus and typewriter poems on social media. | Christopher Pointdexter is a poet from Pensacola, Florida, USA. He has published two books of poetry and holds a large online following as well. | Aamina Muhsin is a poet from Colombo, Sri Lanka. She writes on a variety of several different topics but focuses on women's rights and experiences. |
This is my favourite poem because it is so simple but speaks eloquently to the beauty of everyday life and how inspiring the little things can be.
I think she finds hope
in her morning coffee,
the excitement for it
beginning
before her heads hits
the pillow.
Something about a
new start,
she said something about
erases
every bad thing
that came
before.
-Tyler Knott Gregson-
Back to topGregson doesn't really believe in the label of "writer," but rather sees creating poetry and taking photographs as means of finding internal peace.
"Honestly, I don"t even know what being a writer is supposed to be," he wrote. "I don't consider myself much of anything other than someone who has a lot of noise in my brain, and writing and photography just happen to be the ways I can make them quiet awhile."
One figure whose words played a role in leading him to write his own poetry was Walt Whitman.
"There are certainly poets and pieces of literature that have inspired me to write my own words, and I keep circling back around to Walt Whitman. His poetry was the first body of work that made me realize that there were people that saw the world as I did, that it was acceptable to find miracles everywhere and fall in love with the world. I still feel an immense gratitude to Whitman for that. I think I always will," Gregson wrote.
Perhaps no one is more surprised at the success of the Typewriter Series and Gregson's first two collections of poetry than Gregson himself.
"I have never written FOR anyone, only writing to quiet the noises in my head, and I never intended for anyone, anywhere to read what I wrote. I am blown away every single day that anyone cares to read it, that anyone shares it, that anyone pays attention. I feel fortunate and beyond lucky that people wish to see what I'm up to. I never saw this coming," he wrote.
While some might imagine it must be difficult for Gregson to find the motivation to publish at least one haiku on love and one poem for the Typewriter Series on a daily basis, he wrote that finding the words isn't difficult; Rather, it's sharing them that is more burdensome.
"The motivation has never been the problem for me. I've always said I will keep writing until the words just don't want to come anymore, and that is still true today.The only part that sometimes feels challenging is the physical routine that comes along with the writing... the actual typing, scanning the paper, uploading the photos to my website and phone each day. It's not the writing that's the tough part, it's the logistics of sharing those words with everyone," he wrote.
Most of Gregson's poems are written in the form of direct-address. In other words, he is speaking to "you." According to him, this can represent a variety of different people, both imagined and real.
"I think the 'you' has evolved, morphed, and grown over the years, and continues too. Some poems are certainly painted in the exact colors of real people, some poems are about the person that they will one day be, the person I will one day be, and some are about who I always knew I'd find and be willing to wait for," he wrote.
- Poet Tyler Gregson Discusses Typewriter Series with Katherine Logan for The John Hopkins News-Letter
Back to topI am an English and Creative Writing student at the University of Western Ontario. I spend a lot of my time studying older, precise and well thought out poets like John Donne, T.S. Elliot and Shakespeare. As much as I love those works I find the commitment and spontaneity of Typewriter poetry very romantic and alluring.
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