A fond recollection of obsolete technology reveals a meditation on an old-fashioned way of weighing words

One day I’ll fetch the Smith Corona from the cupboard, set it on the desk and unclasp its blue plastic shell to expose the nakedness of its baby-grand workings.

Remember the punch and peck words had in those days, the strain of Q in the little finger, the type head leaning out on its stalk from its semicircular roost,

the angelus ting that marked the end of a line the slap of the silver lever that jerked time forward, the shift key that tilted the world on its fulcrum,

the grey formalities hedged by tabs and margins that turned language into geometry, the braille of the other side of the page under the fingertips?

What was struck here could never be unstruck, in spite of backspacing and xs, packets of Tipp–Ex paper and the vial of Snopake, its screw-cap gritted shut.

Not used to taking ourselves so seriously, we prodded at the ampersand tangled in its nest, the curly brackets aiming their bows in opposite directions.

Switch on the anglepoise lamp; outside the window it’s carbon-paper dark. There’s ribbonsmudge on your fingers and a new sheet of foolscap rolled into place on the platen.

This week, in a new, previously unpublished poem, Matthew Francis fulfils the performative declaration of the opening stanza: he fetches the Smith Corona, “unclasp(s) its blue plastic shell” and with judicious detail, precise but not overdone, gives us the look, function and feel of it. If you’ve ever used a typewriter, you’ll remember at once how it was. If you never have, you might marvel at the slightly gnarled complexity, and be rather glad you missed out.

Though the typewriter’s invention was commercially driven, Francis’s observation of its “baby-grand workings” may suggest lofty solo aspiration, creation rather than copying. It’s also a suggestive mechanical analogy. In fact, according to Wikipedia, Giuseppe Ravizza called the prototype he designed in 1855 Cembalo scrivano o macchina da scrivere a tasti (“Scribe harpsichord or machine for writing with keys”).

Listing the typewriter’s particular features, Francis begins with a direct, companionable appeal to his readers: “Remember the punch and peck words had in those days …?” This is nicely onomatopoeic, and perhaps contains a suggestion, a mere hint, that language itself might have been a different entity when muscle and metal were involved in its production. But even here, the tone steers clear of the siren-haunts of nostalgia; playfully insistent on mechanism, the speaker leaves it largely up to the reader whether to interpret “the punch and peck” as wholly affectionate.

The question of connection between the writing implements and the writing itself is a fascinating one. Henry James, in the novels he composed after rheumatism in his right wrist forced him to give up handwriting, can undoubtedly be overheard dictating those ever-rolling sentences to his typist. He admitted the effect himself, and noted that he eventually came to depend on the noise made by the machine as background to his creative flow. Francis reminds us that keyboards make demands that are literally digital, and may be painful (“the strain of Q in the little finger”) – at least for anyone aspiring beyond the horribly amateurish, but tempting, two-fingered approach.

Suggestive metaphors unroll: the “roost” of keys (those pecking birds, stretching their necks and ready to be fed), the inexorable “angelus ting” of the carriage called to meet its margin, no more to be challenged than the call to prayer can be disobeyed by the faithful. Francis is a poet of voyages, and this set of tercets is a voyage in miniature, noting the topological contrasts of typewriter island, from “the silver lever” to “the grey formalities” of the tabulator, and including that particularly magical change of perspective produced by “the shift key that tilted the world on its fulcrum”.

The typewriter key strikes deep, producing the raised effect of Braille on the wrong side of the paper. “What was struck here could never be unstruck,” the speaker reminds us, once again adding a warningly percussive sound effect. So we typists come unstuck, and face retribution. Typing, like sinning, may be exhilarating: the self-correction is contrastingly laborious. But the naming is fun, and Francis gives us both Tipp-Ex paper and Snopake (the cap inevitably “gritted shut”). Oh yes, I remember it well, and how it could live up to its name, encrusting the paper with solid-packed layers of white. And heaven help the author if, in a rush of inspiration, the keys were hit again before the snow was dry.

In the sixth stanza, Francis goes back to his core idea, the significance of type’s permanence. Using the first-person plural, his speaker unearths the ampersand and the curly brackets as if they were rare plants or insects. They might also denote a new, sophisticated metalanguage, symbolising modernism or some other refinement of textual nuance.

The final stanza is where the emotional connection between human and typewriter is unveiled. It’s an enclosed, atmospheric scene of lamplit concentration. New coinages catch the excitement. The night-sky is “carbon-paper-dark” and the speaker (now addressing himself, and us, as “you”) merges with the machine – which seems to have a new ribbon as well as fresh paper: “There’s ribbonsmudge on your fingers / and a new sheet of foolscap rolled into place on the platen.”

Do we own our words as we once did, when putting them down meant hammering them on to actual paper, adding our muscle power to the printed text? Do they excite us as much? Such questions only hover, of course, but they are in the air, and in this poem, waiting for the future to answer.

Matthew Francis’s most recent poetry collection is a lively retelling of the first four stories of the Welsh epic, The Mabinogi, recently issued as a Faber paperback. His most recent novel, The Book of the Needle, was published by Cinnamon Press in 2014.