Small House Studio

About Laura Frantz, typewriter poet

I first saw typewriter poetry in July 2015, at a Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C.

How I got here

A group of poets sat with their machines, writing for whoever came up to them. I was transfixed, and I knew that one day I would try it myself.

It was seven years before I worked up the courage. My first morning typing poems at the farmer's market was scary and poignant and exhilarating all at once, and I have been honing the craft of custom poems on demand ever since.

I started Charlottesville Poem Store in 2022, after those seven years of thinking about it and one year of actually planning it, to bring together my love of poetry and my love of vintage typewriters. Since then we have written more than two thousand poems at more than a hundred events, for clients across Virginia and the Washington area. Among them are the Phillips Collection, the Virginia Festival of the Book, the Association of Research Libraries and the Botanical Garden of the Piedmont. We have written at weddings at Boar's Head Resort, Pippin Hill Farm and Vineyards, Potter's Craft Cider, Snyder Manor and Stables, Birdwood Mansion and Eastern Market, and we have held a years-long residency at the Speakeasy and Whiskey Bar at the Doyle Hotel.

The work

The work itself is simple to describe and hard to do. I roll a sheet of vintage paper into the typewriter and look up at my next guest. They sit down across from me and give me a topic: someone close to them, a cherished memory, something weighing on them, something that has needed release. A poem takes one to three minutes. I title it, roll the paper out, turn the page sideways to type my signature and the date, stamp it with my chop, and read it aloud to them before I hand it over. No digital tools are part of the writing.

At events I am asked the same questions over and over. How did you get started typing poems for strangers. Where did you find your typewriters. What is the best part of this work, and what is the worst. People are curious about typewriter poetry as an art form and as a business, and they want the insider version rather than the tidy one.

What Charlottesville Poem Store clients say

“She has a rare gift, and I’m so grateful for the time, energy, and craft that she brings to each poem that she writes.”

Nadeen Kharputly
Private poem commission

“Laura’s poems are so incredibly special. It’s the perfect way to mark a moment, and I’m so impressed by how she can write so personally for people she’s only just met!”

Emily Wool

“Laura is an outstanding poet, creating works that connect well with themed events. Her help with the family program brought added meaning, and her mix of creative and administrative skills makes her a great person to work with again.”

Alani Nelson
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Why the studio

Small House Studio is my answer to those questions. The workshops distill years of practice and hard-earned insight into three hours, in two rooms of a farmhouse at the end of a private drive in Greene County. Guests write poems for one another on my machines and take them home.

Charlottesville Poem Store is still running, and it is still how to hire me to write for your guests at your own event. That work does not happen here. The studio is where you sit down at the machine yourself.