Benjamin Aleshire is a poet who for many years has made a living by composing poems for strangers on a manual typewriter – on Royal Street in the French Quarter, as well as in Paris, Havana, Madrid, New York, London, Montréal, and San Francisco. He also has a background in photography, printmaking, book-arts, music, and theatre. Aleshire has toured internationally as a trumpet player, exhibited his letterpress broadsides in museums, performed in burlesque shows, and once ran away with a Mexican circus. At A Studio in the Woods, he worked on polishing an autofiction novel manuscript, POET FOR HIRE, which incorporates many of these experiences. He also be revised a poetry manuscript, FAKE NOOSE—a collection of (mostly political) poems written for strangers through the years. Photo by Clare Welsh.

“I was able to throw myself fully into revising my novel—what a joy to be able to focus on this meticulous work without having to keep an eye on the clock, without having to edit in fits and starts with whatever hours I can squeeze in between the typical demands of the day. In fact, by the third day, I stopped looking at the clock on my laptop entirely, and could reckon how long I’d worked by the slant of the sun as it moved from one side of the studio to the other.” – Benjamin Aleshire