Handwritten Poems by Nicole Lavelle

Handwriting blows my mind. Can you imagine how many kinds of "fonts" there are in the world? Think of all the people who have ever existed and what all their handwriting might look like. I would love to do an art project about that. I'm also a sucker for colloquial poetry. I like my poems quick and dirty. They need to feel effortless (even if they took seven straight days of toil) and sound like a glorified tweet. Does that make me shallow? I just can't handle poetry that seems too contrived. I guess maybe I should just say that I like good poetry. 

BFF lady friend Jeannette is a poet. I found out a year after graduation that she was a speaker in her college's graduation ceremony and performed a poem about life. She didn't even tell me. She took me to a poetry slam in Salt Lake once to hear her perform. Her poem was about trying to date a guy that everyone she knew approved of, but she personally didn't even really like. I ended up being a line in the poem. In that line she told me something I don't think she could have told me any other way. After that, I never pushed her to date this guy again. 

Want to hear something embarrassing? 

I went through a weird weird poetry phase in high school. I wrote poems about dumb teenage stuff that felt very real at the time. Example: boys. wanting freedom. feelings. more feelings. lots and lots of feelings. I was really bad at it. But I still love poems. 

Artist Nicole Lavelle writes poetry onto large sheets of colored paper in her one-of-a-kind handwriting. The best part is that you can commission her to handwrite basically anything for you. Example: your school's fight song, an old family saying, a really bad joke your grandpa used to tell, a list of every town you've lived in, and more.

PS: How often do I feel like this? :