Laura Frantz is a professional typewriter poet and the founder of Charlottesville Poem Store. She composes and types custom poems live at weddings, galas, corporate events, and private gatherings, working with a vintage manual typewriter, archival ink, and no digital tools of any kind.

Since founding Charlottesville Poem Store, she has produced more than 1,500 custom poems at over 85 events. Her clients include luxury venues and institutions throughout Virginia and the Washington, D.C. area, among them The Phillips Collection, Morrison House, Common House, Quirk Hotel, and the Virginia Festival of the Book.

The Poem-Crafted Cocktails® model, a proprietary collaboration between a typewriter poet and a lead mixologist, is an original concept developed and trademarked through this practice.

The work

A poem composed live at an event is a different object from a poem written at a desk over weeks. It is produced in real time in front of its recipient, with no opportunity for revision. The typewriter has no delete key and typos only add an exceptionally human touch to the analog experience.

Typewriter poetry is a viable luxury service in this moment. Not necessarily due to nostalgia for the typewriter itself, but because it produces an object no algorithm can replicate: a handmade, one-of-one document of a person’s inner life.

The business

Charlottesville Poem Store operates as a professional vendor. Bookings are managed with contracts, defined timelines, and direct coordination with venue staff and event planners. The aesthetic of the service is warm and personal; the administration is not.

Event planners who have worked with the service know what to expect: independent setup, professional conduct, a self-managed experience from arrival to breakdown, and a guest-facing product that reflects well on the event.

Past clients

Over the past three years we have written more than 1,500 custom poems at more than 85 events. Past clients include:

We have also held a years-long residency at Speakeasy & Whiskey Bar at the Doyle Hotel (formerly Bobboo at the Quirk Hotel), delivering a trademarked poems plus cocktails event called Poem-crafted Cocktails® on a bi-weekly schedule.