Poetry and Typewriters

On Thursday, October 21st, Monmouth hosted its Spooky Snail Mail social in Dunlap Terrace.. At the event, students were able to choose from three types of paper and choose a typewriter with colorful ink options. Elizabeth Hermosillo, a senior English and Educational Studies major, attended wearing a comma sign – a “walking advertisement for the Writing Center…The purpose of this event today is to bring awareness to having a more manual form of communication on campus, instead of just using things like phones and computers,” said. Hermosillo. “While writing on technology is immediate, using a typewriter is more time-consuming and deliberate.” “Having a typewriter makes you sort of sit there and consider your message more because it takes physical effort in addition to mental effort to do so,” said Hermosillo . Students were encouraged to take writing their letter one key at a time to learn how much pressure was necessary. The sound of the typewriters echoed across campus as students wrote each letter one at a time crafting their message on typewriters created long ago – one of which was made in 1963, according to Brad Rowe, a professor from the Educational Studies department and an event coordinator Professor David Wright, an English professor, wrote custom poems for students about anyone of their choosing – friends, partners, family members – and typed them himself on a typewriter while the students enjoyed complimentary spooky treats. “[This event is] getting exposure to the way we can make language and make language do things that we want it to do,” said Wright. “This is Professor Rowe’s thing, and I love something he said in my creative writing class which was that ‘when we face the screen, it’s pushing a lot of stuff towards us, but when we face the page and the typewriter, we’re the ones who get to push the language out.’ It’s fun to watch people just start from the page, not from something they’ve already read or be distracted by twelve different screens.” While the weather on Thursday was rainy and windy, students stopped by and wrote letters, received custom poetry, and learned about this not-quite-obsolete form of writing The event was sponsored by the Educational Studies Department, the English Department, and the Monmouth College Writing Center.