About

In 2017, I started a project. I’ve always considered myself a writer of sorts, but never had an outlet. Sure, I had personal blogs, and I even wrote for a gaming review site for a while, and as much as I loved doing that, It was never quite enough. So, I bought some stationary and started writing letters. I didn’t have anyone, specifically, to write to, so I wrote them to anyone — musings from my head to an anonymous listener. And then I started leaving them places. I’d hide them in restaurants, parks, city busses – all over town and in cities I traveled to.

I would stamp the envelopes with a duck stamp I had found online. I figured, at the time, that ducks were in parks, and people might find these letters in parks, so why not mark the letters with ducks.

Genius, I know.

I signed my letters with “Ducksy.” A sort of play on an old nickname and the name of the artist Banksy, and giving some meaning to the duck stamp; the idea being roughly the same: make physical art available, relatively anonymously, in public. And it was everything I needed, creatively, for a long time.

Enter Bill Keys. We had met maybe 6 years previously when he crashed on my couch during Austin’s SXSW. He was a street poet, conjuring up words on demand for a few weeks here, before heading home. It always fascinated me — most of my writing was (and still is), very purposefully, edited, and re-edited for a specific voice or structure, but his was so immediate; so volatile.

Two years after starting my own writing project, Bill came back to visit again. By this point I had landed myself in a sea of typewriters (as I am want to do with most hobbies, I get a little eccentric). He was here for mostly the same reason, and I thought it might be fun to try my hand at what he does.

Best. Decision. Ever.

We spent a weekend out on South Congress writing poems together for people that walked up. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. And I couldn’t stop there.

Today, I spend time on street corners and sidewalks writing poems for passersby. It’s a sort of real-time creative expression I’ve never been able to duplicate. I still write (and hide) letters, and I hope that people find and enjoy them.

Come find my words. Somewhere on the street.