As 2024 was drawing to a close, I received an intriguing request. A potential client had heard of Olivia Dodd, known for enchanting members of the public with her typewritten poetry, and were looking for a local poet to do the same for their 1920s-themed company event.
What a cool challenge! I had actually experimented with typewritten poetry once before, at Whitley Bay Fiesta in 2023. A friend was organising a Poems for a Pound attraction, and invited me to take part, typing out poems commissioned on the spot by people attending the fair! It was great fun. A lot more grounded than poetry sometimes can be. I was asked to write a birthday poem and a poem about the sea, and the mechanical nature of the process meant every word had to be decisive and deliberate!
Back to the task at hand – I might have used one before, but where was I going to get a typewriter of my own?
Enter my dad, master of tinkering and with an eye for preserving old things (and infinitely more practical than I am), here to save my creative practice, and not for the first time! Not only did he know how they worked, but he had kept ahold of my great-grandmother’s typewriter – an original 1925 Corona Four!
And did it mention it was a 1920s themed party? Things couldn’t have lined up better if I’d planned it.
It did require a bit of TLC. It needed a new ink ribbon, and woodworm had gotten to the carrying case in the intervening 100ish years, so we had to improvise a new way of transporting it. The letter ‘m’ was a little faded. But overall it was a remarkable machine in remarkable working order! Not to mention the satisfying ‘ding’ sound it makes when you hit the carriage return.
As I practiced – getting used to the rhythm of the keys and the process of loading/changing the paper – it invited me to imagine how many people once used these every day. This particular typewriter was very old, but machines of its kind saw heavy used all the way up until the 1980s! Before Microsoft Word processor, proficiency with one of these was one of the main skills you needed for an office job. Just think how many novels, poems, plays and manuscripts took shape on mechanical keys like these ones. Big shoes to fill!
But I had a speakeasy to get to and a very bohemian job to do, so I put on my nattiest outfit and hit the town!
It was a great event. Swing dancing, flappers, the whole nine yards. I was stationed at a cute little writing desk in the speakeasy over the main bar, not far from where a silent film was being projected onto the wall. Throughout the evening I was visited by a number of partygoers, who commissioned me to write poems on topics from family pets and new jobs to dancing and video games. That last one might have been a little anachronistic. Each one was it’s own puzzle – I had to be smart with my questions to make sure I had enough information to craft each person their own bespoke piece! By the end I found myself admiring Olivia Dodd’s craft even more.
What I hadn’t realised until I got there was the history behind the venue itself. It was taking place at the Boiler Shop, a popular venue for concerts and parties located not far from Newcastle’s train station. But as the name implies, it wasn’t always a venue – it was once part of Stephensons Works, the first factory in the world to be purpose-built for manufacturing locomotive engines.
Whenever there was a lull in the party, I would sit there at my writing desk and learn more about Robert Stephenson and Company. I found myself wondering about the trains manufactured there, and how they must have changed the world. Travel, tourism, war, empire – rail travel made it all possible, for better and worse, and Stephensons Works was right at the heart of that pioneering history.
Some people might not think of the North when they think of Britain’s role in World War Two, but its industrial legacy is everywhere. Not to mention its scars! I had felt it at Lindisfarne Festival when I saw the concrete anti-invasion defences lining the coast, it fills Newcastle’s many wonderful museums, and it came to life as I ventured into the Victoria Tunnel while researching its history during Spooky Poem Month 2024.
So in-between the Roaring Twenties atmosphere of the party, the historical locale and the living relic I was using to type my poems, it felt like I had gone back in time in more ways than one! I’m so glad a took a gamble on the unusual request to bring a typewriter to a party. I never would have thought history would become such a lively part of my creative practice, and I can’t wait to see where it takes me next.