Sunday, January 12, 2014
Local poet has gained a large online following with his poems typed onto scraps of paper
Local poet has gained a large online following with his poems typed onto scraps of paper
Every day, Tyler Knott Gregson takes a few minutes at his antique typewriter to “spill” out a new poem on a scrap of paper.
Monopoly money, an illustration of a ship and an old map ripped from a book are just a few examples of what he writes his poems on.
He doesn’t rewrite or edit his poems, other than to occasionally type over a misspelled word — and he hasn’t missed a day since he started this “Typewriter Series” on March 28, he says.
He keeps the typewriter, a Remington Rand No. 17, on a standing desk and stands “Hemingway-style” when he writes the poems, which usually takes no more than seven minutes.
Once typed, Gregson scans the poems into his computer and posts them to his Tumblr website, tylerknott.com, which he says has more than 105,000 followers.
This holiday season, after numerous requests from fans, he decided to sell a few prints of his poetry — a single print for $20 or two for $30.
“Literally, I thought I was going to get maybe 20 people that would order,” he said on a recent sunny morning while sitting in the living room of his century-old house in Helena. “I just can’t keep up, I think I’ve sold over $10,000 worth of prints and they’ve gone to like 30 countries.”
He’s become a regular at Costco, where he orders his prints, and he’s had to buy a stamp printer and fine-tune his shipping process just to keep up with demand.
“The most frustrating thing is I’ll submit an order that’s like $100 worth of prints and it took me like an hour to get it set up,” he says. “And then I get home and there’s like 13 more. And it’s great, but then you have to start that whole process over.”
Continue reading here His latest poem here
Every day, Tyler Knott Gregson takes a few minutes at his antique typewriter to “spill” out a new poem on a scrap of paper.
Monopoly money, an illustration of a ship and an old map ripped from a book are just a few examples of what he writes his poems on.
He doesn’t rewrite or edit his poems, other than to occasionally type over a misspelled word — and he hasn’t missed a day since he started this “Typewriter Series” on March 28, he says.
He keeps the typewriter, a Remington Rand No. 17, on a standing desk and stands “Hemingway-style” when he writes the poems, which usually takes no more than seven minutes.
Once typed, Gregson scans the poems into his computer and posts them to his Tumblr website, tylerknott.com, which he says has more than 105,000 followers.
This holiday season, after numerous requests from fans, he decided to sell a few prints of his poetry — a single print for $20 or two for $30.
“Literally, I thought I was going to get maybe 20 people that would order,” he said on a recent sunny morning while sitting in the living room of his century-old house in Helena. “I just can’t keep up, I think I’ve sold over $10,000 worth of prints and they’ve gone to like 30 countries.”
He’s become a regular at Costco, where he orders his prints, and he’s had to buy a stamp printer and fine-tune his shipping process just to keep up with demand.
“The most frustrating thing is I’ll submit an order that’s like $100 worth of prints and it took me like an hour to get it set up,” he says. “And then I get home and there’s like 13 more. And it’s great, but then you have to start that whole process over.”
Continue reading here His latest poem here
