Following the Mystery: Alexcia Panay on Poetry, Tea, and the Typewriter Life

Interview with Alexcia Panay, a poet and typewriter ambassador.

 

 

 

Your poetic journey is described as unplanned, a spontaneous unfolding. Can you share the moment that first opened the door to poetry for you?

 

Alexcia: It began one week after a near-death experience, which is another story of its own. I was at a friend’s birthday party in Los Angeles, and there was a typewriter sitting on the table. I asked for paper… and began to play. Friends would sit with me one at a time, offer three words, and I would write. Something opened in that moment, simple, innocent, and yet utterly life-changing.

 

 

You often invite people to give you three words as the seed for a poem. How does this practice shape the connection between you, the audience, and the words that appear?

 

Alexcia: I’ve always loved the number three; it feels complete. There’s a line in the Bible that says, “Where two or more are gathered, I am there,” and that presence, Spirit, God, Connection, whatever name you choose, showed up every time we sat together like this. With practice, that doorway strengthened. I trust it now. Three words create a portal for communion.

 

The typewriter has become your creative companion and conduit. How does this physical medium influence the way your poetry flows?

Alexcia: My typewriter is an instrument. It offers rhythm, sound, and physicality, unlike anything else. It’s an object of enchantment, a little time machine. The sound does something to people, whether it evokes nostalgia or feels otherworldly in our digital age. For me, it’s a portal of connection… a friend… a companion in mystery.

 

Your Tea & Poetry gatherings are rich in atmosphere: candles, tea, and typewritten words. What do these rituals mean to you, and how do they support your creative philosophy?

 

Alexcia: Poetea is a natural merging of two practices I love. Tea entered my life at a moment when I needed a simpler, deeper way to listen to myself and to life. Tea alone is a profound, never-ending path, and I’m very much a humble student of the leaf.

Tea brings people into presence with such elegant simplicity. It evokes gratitude, warmth, sensuality, and wisdom.

And automatic writing is one of the fastest ways I know to channel the inner voice, especially in a circle. Something extraordinary always happens across ages, languages, and lives.

I especially love it when parents and children come together. It reveals the inner artist within each of us. We are all artists of our lives, co-creating with existence. The more spaces we create to remember that together, the more connected we become.

 

 

In your live performances, you weave poetry from collective suggestions, channelling a shared voice. What does this experience of co-creation teach you about art and community?

 

Alexcia: It reminds me that storytelling is our nature. We’ve always gathered around fires, in sangha, through dreams to share messages from the beyond. We are all messengers for one another.

The feeling of creating together or witnessing creation in real time is ecstasy. My friend Sawyer calls these collective poems “artefacts of awe,” and that’s exactly what they are: a hand-typed snapshot of truth, of connection, of the moment itself.

 

 

You’ve carried your typewriter with you across places like Mexico, Los Angeles, and Ibiza. How do different landscapes and cultures transform or inspire your poetic voice?

 

Alexcia: I’m inspired easily. I just have to pay attention. Each culture carries its own codes: colours, humour, beliefs, music, and food. I love exploring what unites a group of people.

But just as deeply, I’m inspired by land and nature. I’m obsessed with water, how it tastes different everywhere, how it carries memory, how it cleanses, how we ourselves are liquid beings. Water teaches me endlessly.

 

Your poetry is often described as an immersion in the mystery of the moment. What role do presence and surrender play in your creative process?

 

Alexcia: They are everything. Presence and surrender are the pillars of my work and my life.

During my near-death experience, I was driving on the 405 when another car hit me. My car flipped twice. Everything went black. I heard the question, “Am I dying?” And then: “No. Surrender.”

That command, that presence, kept me here. My body relaxed instantly. The car was destroyed; I walked away with only a small scratch.

A few days later, still in this altered state of awareness, I found the typewriter. And the rest is history.

 

 

How do you balance spontaneity and intention in your work? Does that balance reflect a broader philosophy in how you live your life?

 

Alexcia: I try to check in with the Creator, the source of creation, and let it lead. Sometimes I get stuck and have to return slowly through practice and patience.

I’ve lived as much outside “the system” as I can. All the “supposed to’s” of society feel like pressures to conceal our true essence. It’s ongoing work, but I don’t know another way to live now.

 

 

You are described as a poet, healer, and performer. What thread ties these identities together, and what purpose do you feel you serve through them?

 

Alexcia: Mythic living, ritual, and authenticity. These threads weave everything I do. My purpose is to serve as inspiration to help people remember the creative power that breathes through all of us.

 

 

Looking ahead, what new creative landscapes, whether inner or outer, are you called to explore, and how do you imagine your poetry evolving in the years to come?

 

Alexcia: I feel I’m entering a new era, more intimate and more expansive at once. I’m being called toward the sea in a deeper way: to live with it, listen to it, let it shape me. I feel poems coming that are not only typed but embodied, performed, ritualised, lived.

I’m exploring the intersections of myth, ancestry, and personal memory, where land, presence, and story converge. I’m stepping into new realms of collaboration film, ritual-theatre, poetic gatherings, sailing residencies, and spaces where others remember their own creative fire.

In the coming years, I imagine my poetry becoming even more raw, more spacious, more surrendered, woven with the voices of the body, the land, and the unseen. I want to let it surprise me. To let it grow beyond what I can currently imagine. The poems know where they’re going, even before I do.

Ultimately, I will keep following the mystery, saying yes to whatever door opens next.

https://www.alexciapanay.com/

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