Man, Verses, Machine

Sparks of Inspiration Transformed into Personalized Keepsakes

Words Janine Stankus | Photos Baptiste Despois

In a city where you can find music on every corner, why not poetry, too? Poems are not so different from songs, after all. At best, they uplift, inspire, evoke emotions; at least, they amuse. And the instruments of the craft are varied. For Noaa Rienecker and Adam Jones, it might be a 1937 Remington 5 or a 1939 Corona—vintage writing beauties on which they clack out clever, lilting verses for bystanders.

Noaa and Adam started Austin Typewriter Poets Collective after busking their writerly wares on South Congress for several years. Today, they’re hired as event entertainers: corporate, weddings, fundraisers, private parties. For Noaa, who’s also a musician, slinging poetry has been more lucrative than playing music on the street, for a few reasons. “You have more time to sink in with people. There’s more time to build a connection. It’s rarer,” he posits. “I’ve made people cry with a poem, which I don’t think I’ve done with a guitar,” he admits.

The poems, typed out on sheets cut from brown paper bags, germinate from a stranger’s prompt. Sometimes, it’s something broad like “love” or “grief.” Sometimes, it’s simply the word “ship,” or something refreshingly specific, like “a squirrel with a drinking problem.” In just a few minutes, several stanzas are released from the carriage into the hands of an eager patron. 

“I used to lean a lot more on just vocabulary… I’ve come to focus more on sensation and imagery and something happening.” – Noaa Rienecker

Noaa views on-the-spot poetry as a form of improv. With any form of improvising, there’s the source—the subconscious, the dao, whatever you wanna call it—and the material takes a particular shape. “It gets filtered through your patterns and your preferences and the tools, artistically, that you have at your disposal,” he explains. “Then you make different decisions….to defy your own tendencies.”

Noaa admits that starting Poets Collective has improved his “batting average,” so to speak. “I used to lean a lot more on vocabulary, which is like hiding behind guitar pedals. I’ve come to focus more on sensation and imagery and something happening,” he relays.

These small vignettes are written and performed for an audience of one. The work exists beyond that moment only in the client’s physical possession. It’s an intimate process—it’s a conversation between the poet and the patron. But it also surfaces the working artist’s perennial challenge: creating something meaningful to someone else and true to your own voice. 

“I just try to be as honest as possible,” says Noaa. “ I’m taking an element of their experience, and I’m projecting my own experience onto that as a human being… to try and make something that works for both of us. Because if it doesn’t work in some part for me as well as them, then it turns out as a f’ing Hallmark card or a lie.” 

Finding the Focus
A good prompt can make a poem. That’s why Noaa and Adam have developed techniques for narrowing broad prompts to create a focal point to build around. If it’s a newlywed couple looking for poem on “love,” maybe they’ll ask about a wedding gift that they actually kept—and suddenly a salad spinner becomes the central point of the narrative.

Contact:
booking.noaa@gmail.com
501 Pedernales St., Ste. 1a
austintypewriterpoets.com
@austin_typewriter_poets