Pop-up poet provides free verse on the spot

What is poetry?

Certainly, that’s a subjective question of a subjective art form.

But must one ponder each word? Or can they come in bunches and blasts, waves of words inspired by the moment?

Garrett Ammesmaki puts himself in a place where he doesn’t have much choice.

This summer, you’ll see him around the city with his little typewriter and a stack of postcards, inviting all inspiration.

Ammesmaki is a poet for hire.

On First Friday this month, he was set up at Parlour Ice Cream House, across the street from the Washington Pavilion.

You give him a word that means something to you. He creates a poem, based on your word, that means something to you both.

Parlour is the ice cream arm of CH Patisserie, the sinfully good confectionary on Phillips Avenue. It was CH Patisserie that reached out about the First Friday event.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” said Ammesmaki, 32.

A poet for hire is just one element of his larger mission of making Sioux Falls a “poetry city.”

He’s involved with the Blot Collective, a local nonprofit devoted to the spoken word. Ammesmaki and friends – including Sion Lidster of Full Circle Book Co-Op fame – have bigger plans toward that poetry city goal, including publishing local authors.

They come to this with some experience.

Lidster is a prolific poet and prophet of the form.

Ammesmaki is working on his fifth book.

The latest, “California Sober,” is built from poems inspired by a chance meeting with a woman at Full Circle. She was traveling from Philadelphia to Glacier National Park in Montana and stopped in Sioux Falls. They got along, so he went along.

It’s the kind of experience that informs Ammesmaki’s work.

“Most of my books, and most of my writing, is my attempt at writing down the journey,” he said.

Writing has been his outlet for more than 20 years, but it has been only a few years since his focus turned to the free verse.

“It’s a really long journey for me,” he said. “Poetry has kind of saved my life. It’s allowed me to express things that I have never known how to express before, how to truly get to know myself and share with others. I’m a closed-off person, and poetry is my way to be vulnerable.”

What is more vulnerable than taking one word from a stranger and turning into something meaningful.

While they watch. And wait.

That’s OK, Ammesmaki said. He was going to be writing anyway.

“It’s almost pathological. I write every single day. I never stop writing,” he said. “It’s hard work, but I’m willing to put in the work and just try to express something.”

So if you want a bit of verse that comes from a place in your life, have your word ready. And if you see a guy with a compact Olympia manual typewriter and a stack of postcards from Full Circle, give him a shot.

This was ours:

innocence

June melts,

a single ribbon

as minnows dart

in cold water,

the warm cicada night,

sticky fingers

Discover the poet

Garrett Ammesmaki’s four books of poetry are available at the Full Circle Book Co-Op, 123 W. 10th St.

• “the importance of relativity”
• “Over the butterfly”
• “Seasons”
• “California Sober”