‘A caricature of words': Milwaukee man uses old typewriter technology to create new community connections with personalized poetry
MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — In a world where words can be typed, sent, and forgotten with the tap of a screen, one Milwaukee man is taking a slower and more intentional approach to putting them on paper.
John Contreras
John Contreras, better known as Johnny Types Ink, calls himself a community typewriter poet.
Over the last few years, he’s amassed a collection of 18 different typewriters and uses them to turn conversations with strangers into personalized poems.
“People message me all the time about them like, hey, I got a typewriter that I found in my grandpa’s attic, do you want this? And I’m like, maybe,” Contreras told CBS 58’s Ellie Nakamoto-White laughingly.
You can find Contreras at different events in Milwaukee, usually sitting behind a bright and colorful set up complete with fidget toys and knick-knacks.
But the process doesn’t start with a blank sheet of paper. Rather, it starts with a conversation.
“It feels like there’s this therapeutic process of just kind of expelling their own emotions and their own thoughts, their stories, their words, and I kind of capture it,” Contreras said. “It’s something that feels like a reminder of why having a conversation with another person is important.”
There isn’t a set topic either.
Instead, Contreras wants to learn about the person sitting across from him — and especially, what brings them joy.
“It’s a message that often times, we are holding within ourselves,” Contreras said. “It’s almost like a caricature of words. Emotion to the physical world to what’s really being expressed but in the most concrete way possible.”
From there, the person gets to choose which color of paper they want the poem typed on and then Contreras gets to work.
John Contreras
“So, there’s this intentionality where it’s not just a gentle pressing, like you have to commit to the letter,” Contreras said. “It’s a slowing down of the process of writing and when you look back and see the bigger message, the bigger poem or the bigger piece of prose, it just seems like wow, I made that.”
A few minutes later, the finished personalized piece is ready to take home.
“It’s wonderful wanting to see people reconnect and want to connect,” Contreras said. “For a mother, for a wedding, for an anniversary, for a birthday, for themselves, for new life partners, a new cycle in their life. And I just listen, I capture it.”
The subject may change, but his goal remains the same: creating something that makes people feel seen and heard.
“Seeing their reaction of like, this makes sense, this is me, this is exactly what I was feeling, I have tissues too because sometimes tears happen,” Contreras said.
And it’s those moments that Contreras said matter the most.
Plus, it’s fitting Contreras is sharing his talents in the city where the typewriter was first invented and patented back in the 1800s.
“A reconnection which is slowing down with the writing process that I feel like I lost at some point with technology,” Contreras said.
Now, more than a century after the machine helped transform the way people put words on paper, Contreras is using them to encourage others to reconnect with the words they already have inside them.
“This is how I like to connect with people and this is how I can transform what they tell me into a poem that’ll resonate with their heart,” Contreras said. “Knowing I’m able to contribute to that and add my own unique flavor to it, I just think it’s meant to be.”
