In this episode, we talk with Anis Mojgani, who served as Oregon's Poet Laureate from 2020 to 2024, about the complex relationship between poetry and politics. Recorded live in Portland in January 2025, this conversation between Anis and host Adam Davis examines the unique role of the governor-appointed laureate and the nature of what makes something—a poem or a piece of art—"political." Anis and Adam also read several poems that they'd selected for the evening, and Anis responds to questions from the audience.
Show Notes
Poems shared in this episode:
"In the Garden" appears in Anis's collection In the Pockets of Small Gods.
"Cardamom and Snow" is in The Tigers, They Let Me.
"Forward" was commissioned by the Oregon Community Foundation.
"Letters to the Local Police" is by June Jordan.
"There Are Birds Here" is by Jamaal May.
Learn more about the Oregon Poet Laureate, including the current laureate, Ellen Waterston, who began her term last year.
Listen to our October 2023 episode with Anis Mojgani, where we discuss his informal and highly popular series, Poems At Sunset Out a Window.
Transcript
Anis Mojgani:
Sometimes I would lay in the garden and I would pretend that I was a carrot.
Sometimes I would curl under the leaves
and I became a head of lettuce.
Sometimes I would bury my soft paws
in the softer earth, and I was a rabbit.
Sometimes
in the garden I was a rock.
Sometimes two rocks.
Sometimes becoming three rocks
sometimes in the garden.
As a rock, I was picked up and held
cool and smooth in a palm
or warmed by some sun from above.
Sometimes in the garden
night would arrive
with a full moon
glowing like the skin of an orange-skinned woman in a more orange dress
and the night would use that moon to say to me
look, you are like how I am
see how bright my body sometimes becomes
Sometimes I wait for spring
Always I am waiting for spring
And for my love
to return
like out of the cold
and with flowers on their fingertips.
Adam Davis: That was Anis Mojgani reciting his poem “In the Garden” at the start of a live recording of The Detour in January 2025 at the Tomorrow Theater in Portland, Oregon. From May 2020 to May 2024, Anis was the Oregon Poet Laureate.
What, you might ask, is the Oregon Poet Laureate? Is that a poet crowned with leaves or a poet on a throne? Not literally, it isn't. The Oregon Poet Laureate is a position appointed by the Governor that serves both to recognize one poet for their exemplary creative production, and also to support that poet and bringing poetry and related activities to people in all corners of Oregon. Oregon's current poet laureate is Ellen Waterston, and previous laureates include Kim Stafford, Elizabeth Woody, Peter Sears, Paulann Peterson, Lawson Inada, and William Stafford, among others. There's also a National Poet Laureate, currently Ada Limón, and sometimes there are poet laureates of cities and towns too.
This episode is not intended to be a treatise on the position of poet laureate. Instead, we explore the relationship between poetry and politics, and we thought it would make sense to talk with Anis about his sense of this relationship because the position of Poet Laureate necessarily represents an interesting and complicated mix of politics and poetry.
Maybe it's worth saying that politics and poetry often don't mix. Or mix only at unusual times. Brief appearances at Inaugurations, for example. Or in combustible ways: poet criticizes politician, say, or politician censors poet. Anis became Oregon poet Laureate about five years ago, which was quite a political moment in Oregon and in the nation.
And because he's no longer in that officially nominated and state funded political poetic position, but has returned to poetry as a civilian, we wanted to understand the connection between politics and poetry. As Anis sees it, we start by looking back at Anis’ first months in the role.
So if I think back to May of 2020...
Anis Mojgani: Yeah...
Adam Davis: I hear some laughter starting.
Anis Mojgani: Laughter in misery.
Adam Davis: May of 2020, in the summer of 2020 in Portland, in Oregon and in this country...
Anis Mojgani: Yeah, it was hot.
Adam Davis: That's when you started, in May of 2020.
Anis Mojgani: Yep. Yep.
Adam Davis: There was tumult of all kinds, a lot of political tumult among other things. You were the new poet laureate.
Anis Mojgani: For me, I remember when the George Floyd responses started popping off. I felt very broken inside of me and I'd go into the garage of the house, I was home, and tried to do work. That work was largely trying to make sense of this country's obsession with hunting down black people. That was a thing that was bringing up a multitude of different conversations inside of myself as a person of African descent who does not present black. Resurfacing conversations of what is my relationship to action and conversation reflection about this.
What are the ways in which for me to engage with this, with myself and to the communities around me? And also just like as an artist, as a Black American, like what is the response inside my heart? So at that juncture, I think that there was definitely a want in me and a need, as in many of us, to speak.
And it, I think it was definitely like weird for me, like in this new role of what am I allowed to do? What am I not allowed to do? Also, like what does that matter? Is this a thing that will keep me from responding in the way that I would've responded in May of 2019 to something? And so that was something that I was like trying to figure out. Definitely.
Adam Davis: The poem that you started us with tonight, as I heard it and as I've read it, is not on its face, a political poem. And I've had the good fortune and preparation for this to spend a lot of time reading, listening to, and watching your poems, your poetry. Even in May of 2020, I remember reading and listening to your poetry and then going occasionally to your Twitter feed.
Anis Mojgani: They're very different on one level.
Adam Davis: And that's what I wanted to...
Anis Mojgani: Yeah.
Adam Davis: It felt to me like you were doing some very deliberate sorting between this is what I'm doing in my poetry, this is what the Twitter page is for. And that felt more political. So I wanted to ask if that was deliberate and what you were thinking in sorting between those.
Anis Mojgani: I think it's a deliberate engagement, you know, in that with Twitter, in spite of its current position and trajectory, it has been a tremendously important thing to global society on very small levels that it just simply provides a space that anyone can interact with anyone. And there's definitely like a lot of really harmful things that that come as a result of that.
But there's also really, really bountiful gifts, but on large levels. I'm not a person who travels physically between different timelines and spatial realities, so I don't know for certain, but I do not think that the Arab Spring could have happened, at least not the way that it did, without a platform like Twitter.
For me, Twitter has always been a place to explore what are the ways in which I'm able to engage with this thing from a poetic standpoint with regards to like, here's this thing that says you are only allowed 140 characters to disseminate something to the world. And as a person who pontificates far more than I desire at times inside of my head, versus what is coming out of my mouth like right now, that was like a beautiful thing to say to myself.
Like, ooh, let's see. What are the ways we can carve and craft things to put into the world, both from a poetic standpoint and a humorous standpoint. Also that Twitter was a place that provided me an arena to grow spiritually and to grow under realms of learning, becoming more expansive with realms and ideas of justice.
And so Twitter to me has always sat as a very sizable political tool. My relationship to writing poems and my relationship to my quote unquote politics is that there are many things in this world, as I'm sure is the same with many of you, if not all of you that anger me. I don't know if voraciously is the word, but voraciously and the shape that my anger is a prickly thing.
It is a thing that I am not trained to hold. The longer I hold it, the more I fear I will hurt myself or other people. And so I am tasked, whether that is like being taught by myself or taught by the world around me, that it is best to disseminate my anger away and put it down. Writing definitely is a tool that aids in that.
Writing is a tool that for me, processes my emotions. It ultimately then means that if my relationship to my anger is one in which I'm seeking to put it down as quickly as possible, my poems aren't able to like carry that anger. You know, if there's something that I am angry about, I want, I desire to know how to use my anger to be of use.
And if the poem's purpose for me is often to reckon with letting emotion go, then that's in conflict with each other. And so Twitter definitely provides a space where I'm able to just sort of say whatever I desire to say,
Adam Davis: Including the more explicitly political things. And the things that maybe express voracious anger. Right.
Anis Mojgani: Right.
Adam Davis: You just used the phrase, “to be of use,” which is, of course, the title of a famous poem, and it makes me want to ask if, as we're talking about what poetry is for and what Twitter may be for and what other forms of expression are for, is there a poem in your head?
Anis Mojgani: You know, with what we were talking about just now about that time, May of 2020, and what the relationship traditionally is for me, between me and my poems, I'd forgotten about this poem. And then earlier today when I was going through stuff, I was like, oh, what should I bring tonight? And this was one that I brought. It's a poem that is not political.
Is there somebody you love? Someone who loves you?
What if they called out your name? Called out for you to come?
Because they were in pain
because they knew
they were going to die
they knew a man
was killing them
If they called for you
and you could not be there
what would you do
after they were gone?
After they had been taken
and the ones who had taken them had stood still
on your beloved's neck
or back or chest
or soul or people
or love or life
or name or skull
or heart or body or breath or spirit or beauty of simple being
and pushed
until all of it was gone
and everything in the killing
field stillness
of a body that the killing man’s body had become
or always had been beneath this white
flag sky of a country
that has constantly and always surrendered
its ideals to its cavalier hunger
the hand of the killing a man in his pocket
with an unchanging face
as if turning a nickel over in the lint
while escaping another man’s life from under his bent knee
—what if all this was there to be seen?
On a video
in a picture a tweet
snuffed into a loop and had assuredly been laughed towards by some rewound even
to giggle at in repeat
your beloved
and this senseless person
pressing down on the neck of your beloved
kissing their face with concrete
grabbing fields of your beloved's hair by the fistful
for speaking
for drawing
a gun on them playing
a gun for jogging
because she was sleeping
fingers kissing triggers
like these killing men were sipping water
choking his heart for dancing in the cold
to get warm
killing your beloved
your child
your father your daughter
your mother your
grandmother
auntie
niece
nephew
your cousin
your uncle
your brother
your sister
your son
bright
and aflame
in their anguish
of leaving.
and if in the leaving your beloved
used
their last
sparking breath of body to call aloud your name for you to come
and save them
and you could not come
and save them tell me then
what wouldn't you burn in their name?
Adam Davis: That was “Beloved Summer.” Thank you. That probably felt like a political poem.
Anis Mojgani: Yeah.
Adam Davis: To everyone in here. And I'm curious from, as the maker of that, did it feel political to you? And if so, what makes it political?
Anis Mojgani: You know, like I think about that a lot. And over the years as a person who writes poems that aren't considered political while also coming largely from a community of poetry. Slam poetry--spoken word poetry--that has a very known relationship to what is considered a political poem. And you know, I was talking with different friends a few times in recent weeks, about language. And we were largely talking about things as connected to gender, to queerness and about how on one level, it's for me, as a person living in this world, it is very, very important to imagine a world in which we are not known by how we are defined to be. And at the same time, I do not desire a world with words that define what something is, to be removed from the lexicon. It is important for me to have definition as a person, but that there's an aspect where like that definition is allowed to grow and organically change over the course of my life.
And I bring this up because I don't think that that's a thing that's specific to that conversation. I want to be able to define something as being political, and at the same time that which we define as being political--for me, isn't actually what that is.
That like largely the way that we as a society hold space for that word, is connected to politics, but to me something gets reduced to being political basically when it stirs something in somebody else that they don't want to think about. And so by that manner, any Black person finding joy in a country and society that seeks to deny joy from their existence, if their joy is a present reminder to somebody who thinks opposite to that, simply them enjoying a slice of pie is a political act. I think it's always important for me to remember that and embrace that. But it's also hard to welcome that. Like I wholeheartedly believe in that truth. But at the same time, I desire to give space to what is anything trying to do, what is something attempting to do, a poem by June Jordan is a very different experience from a poem by Robert Frost.
But I also don't want to define June Jordan as simply being a poet who wrote political poems.
Adam Davis: You know, I have a June Jordan poem in this small pile of…
Anis Mojgani: We should all have June Jordan poems existing in small piles. Wherever we go.
Adam Davis: We should. But it's interesting that you said a poem by June Jordan is a very different thing from a poem by Robert Frost, because maybe in this room there is nodding at that.
Yeah, big differences. But it may be that in most rooms. Maybe especially in political rooms. June Jordan and Robert Frost, they're both poets writing poems.
Anis Mojgani: Exactly. For me, the heart of a poem is that one is speaking to their experience, like me sitting down to write this poem about things that I was feeling and thinking about with regards to the death of George Floyd. There's one part of that is seeking to communicate to other people that everything that has been built up should be fucking destroyed. All of it. If this is normal, if this is what we expect, if this is what happens-- if we do not have a visceral reaction to vomit tears and blood from our bodies, you know, like, yes, everything around us should burn.
A hundred percent burn. And so seeking to communicate that, but also to make sense of these ideas and feelings inside of me that are seeking simply to speak to myself about whatever it is that I'm feeling and experiencing. Me experiencing grief from the multitude of people that I do not know who have been killed by powers that be, both on our soil and on other people's soil, is part of my mapped experience just as much as me getting up in the morning and putting peanut butter on a piece of toast and making a smoothie and sitting there with KMHD on. Both of those, while very different and offering me different parts of myself, still are asking me to engage with both those situations of experience with honor and reverence. And so like that's what the poem is seeking to do. If it's a Robert Frost poem that's very pastoral versus a Diana de Prima poem that's like telling you to stockpile gasoline matches. They're very different poems, but they're also like seeking to do the same thing.
Speaking to what is humanity.
Adam Davis: Can I ask the question that you pointed to before and like what is a poem trying to do and what is politics trying to do?
Anis Mojgani: Hmm. I mean, I don't know. Politics is like so many different things that I think politics is trying to do, depending on whose hand it's sitting.
Adam Davis: What if I asked you figuratively to express what politics is trying to do,
Anis Mojgani: To me what politics is seeking to do is to just dismantle all of us from being part of each other. That politics seeks to build distance between us. Politics seeks to capitalize on the masses, the suffering of masses. That's what politics to me does.
I think seeking to be against that. Then it becomes a political act.
Adam Davis: So let me ask the same question about poetry. Is poetry seeking deliberately to be against that? What is poetry seeking?
Anis Mojgani: For me, I think on one level, poetry's not seeking to do anything. Poetry is existing around us. Always. I think poetry is doing something separate of me, separate of you, separate of all of us. And it's sometimes making itself known and asking us to engage with it, because ultimately, the poem is something that I am noticing in the world around me or in the world inside of myself.
And there's something about it that calls to me to with this. There is something here that I want you to know me through and by knowing me through it, even if it's just this little part of me, by you knowing this little part of me, I will know a little more of you and that distance becomes a little more bridged.
Adam Davis: I want to ask you about whether there's another poem in your head, either yours or someone else's, that this conversation is pointing you towards
Anis Mojgani: Not at the moment. Though I'm curious about the June Jordan poem that you have.
Adam Davis: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's polite of you to ask. It's called “Letter to the Local Police.”
Dear Sirs:
I have been enjoying the law and order of our
community throughout the past three months since
my wife and I, our two cats, and miscellaneous
photographs of the six grandchildren belonging to
our previous neighbors (with whom we were very
close) arrived in Saratoga Springs which is clearly
prospering under your custody
Indeed, until yesterday afternoon and despite my
vigilant casting about, I have been unable to discover
a single instance of reasons for public-spirited concern,
much less complaint
You may easily appreciate, then, how it is that
I write to your office, at this date, with utmost
regret for the lamentable circumstances that force
my hand
Speaking directly to the issue of the moment:
I have encountered a regular profusion of certain
unidentified roses, growing to no discernible purpose,
and according to no perceptible control, approximately
one quarter mile west of the Northway, on the southern
side
To be specific, there are practically thousands of
the aforementioned abiding in perpetual near riot
of wild behavior, indiscriminate coloring, and only
the Good Lord Himself can say what diverse soliciting
of promiscuous cross-fertilization
As I say, these roses, no matter what the apparent
background, training, tropistic tendencies, age,
or color, do not demonstrate the least inclination
toward categorization, specified allegiance, resolute
preference, consideration of the needs of others, or
any other minimal traits of decency
May I point out that I did not assiduously seek out
this colony, as it were, and that these certain
unidentified roses remain open to viewing even by
children, with or without suitable supervision
(My wife asks me to append a note as regards the
seasonal but nevertheless seriously licentious
phenomenon of honeysuckle under the moon that one may
apprehend at the corner of Nelson and Main
However, I have recommended that she undertake direct
correspondence with you, as regards this: yet
another civic disturbance in our midst)
I am confident that you will devise and pursue
appropriate legal response to the roses in question
If I may aid your efforts in this respect, please
do not hesitate to call me into consultation
Respectfully yours,
Anis Mojgani: That's so good. That's so good.
Adam Davis: Political?
Anis Mojgani: A hundred percent, but also not.
Adam Davis: You said a hundred percent, but also not. What do you mean?
Anis Mojgani: Just some poetic mumbo jumbo to say. It kind of speaks back to a thing that I was talking to a moment ago about how to both carry definition into a future while also welcoming a future that relinquishes us of such. Any individual that is marked by society because of who they are, what they look like, how much money in their pocket, who they love, who loves them.
Anybody that is marked by society to have societal transgressions laid upon them, desires not to be categorized by those things that welcome transgressions across their body. We don't want to be known by those things. And at the same time, of course, we want to be known by what we are like, we should all be fortunate enough to live in a world where any one of us is able to yell into a room and say, ‘this is what I am.’
Everyone in that room be like, yes, this is what you are. And then somebody else getting to this is what I am. And everyone's saying, ‘yes, this is what you are.’ And it being something that is celebrated and honored versus cause to separate or judge or assume. And I don't know how to arrive at that place where scientifically that doesn't seem like a possibility.
In the world that we live in, like the actual physical world that we live in, how does one carry definition and also become without it? I don't know. That's what I think. And when I say that poem a hundred percent is a political poem and also is not, you share that poem and people laugh, myself included.
And the reason why we laugh is because we all know how ridiculous the idea of order trying to be instilled upon that which delivers beauty to all of us. Also there's aspects of order that we need in our lives and want our lives. There are ways in which that's like the ongoing conundrum of being a human being.
There's like this aspect to ourselves that I believe is unseen. The interior universe, the spirit. And that spirit has to exist inside a physically material world and the physically material world of our own selves has to engage with that, which is intangible. And how does one reckon with those two things, having to coexist always.
Adam Davis: First of all, I think you just said a lot.
Anis Mojgani: I'm so sorry.
Adam Davis: In a good way. In a good way. Not to apologize for. It made me think of three ways to think about the distinction and overlap between poetry and politics. And I don't know if any of these are right, but it's what I heard in there. One was you talked about order and beauty and like if you were oversimplifying, you might say politics is a little more about order, poetry is a little more about beauty. Another is, you talked a little bit about the physical and the interior. Politics seems it's a little more about the physical poetry, seems like it's a little bit more about the interior. Then the third one, and the one that makes me want to see if there's more positive potentially in politics, is I loved what you said about looking into a room and saying, ‘Hey, like this is me. This is who I am.’ And someone else saying, ‘I see you. This is who I am.’ So that there's something about that pronoun, the singular, ‘The ‘I’ I am sharing what's in me with you. Hopefully you can do the same with me.’ But I think the argument for politics, and this is present in our founding documents, is it's trying to create a we.
So it may push that your way. What do you see as positive about that attempt to live and create a shape? Not just the I but the we. Yeah. That politics seems in all its flawed ways to be struggling towards,
Anis Mojgani: I guess capital P politics is something that like, is abhorrent to me, but small p politics, what it's actually rooted in, like that's that aspect. I think you're speaking to that politically. We are seeking to try to establish some sort of world that allows all of us to live inside of, but like political systems aren't seeking to do that. Political systems are seeking to keep things in boxes. This idea of the ‘we,’ of course, it's something that's terribly important to me.
Again, I think it's like part of that ongoing conversation of self of that which is on the outside and that which is on the inside, that it's like the same thing. Like it is so important for all of us to be able to be afforded the space, both from others and from ourselves to be on our journey towards that, which is like most making us whole as an individual human being.
Part of the reason for doing that, and part of the way to do that, is by the fact that we need each other. And there's nothing wrong with needing each other. We should welcome needing each other. We should welcome wanting one another. You know, loving the ‘we’ makes loving the ‘me’ easier, and vice versa. The more that I'm able to love myself, the greater I'm able to love the people outside of myself that I love.
Adam Davis: As you were talking, it made me think of something that you do fairly regularly, about a mile north of here, which is intermittently open a window that's about a story up from the ground and share poetry with spontaneously forming communities.
And as we've been talking, I've been thinking about like, how political is that?
Anis Mojgani: To me, it feels fairly political. You know, fairly...
Adam Davis: Moderately political?
Anis Mojgani: A hundred percent political, and also not. I think that there's aspects of that which is political. Yet it is dodgy in the woods. You think you know what it is and then it's like, wait, maybe I'm something else.
Oh wait, maybe I am the thing that you thought I was, oh, maybe I am something else. Or maybe it's just like my Gemini myself, wanting all the things at the same time, you know? But I think it's a political act, because there's a void, a way in which that I desire to both engage with the community around me and also the way in which I desire the community around me to engage with itself. And there's perhaps a way in which that thing is not existing in my neighborhood, in my city, in my country. And I want it to exist because I believe that this is an important thing. Not necessarily like the thing itself, but what the thing is seeking to do.
It's trying to exist inside of a system that seeks to not have something like it exists. It becomes a political act, but it also is like not a political act, because I'm simply seeking to live the life that I want to live. One that people come down to listen to some Yahoo read poems at the start of evening.
[A recording of Anis reading out of his window to neighbors]
Good evening, everybody. How are you? Good. Good, good, good. Thanks for joining this evening. So my name is Anis and this window is the window of my art studio. This is my neighborhood. Um, this is my city. And, uh, my, my hope for this is, I mean, like the original hope was simply being able to find new ways inside of this pandemic that we might be able to gather and experience things together and to gather together. And for myself personally as an, as an artist, finding ways to get to share my work with people in ways that I love doing such.
That's still the hope, but also I think like the hope is trying to find for all of us new ways of interaction.
This is called “Snow and Cardamom.”
What a powerful tree it was.
So green its young and becoming leaves were.
And still turning greener. There were birds flying towards it.
I will work to leave the tree where it was. Even if we are not there,
the birds will one day arrive. It is okay if there were times we believed
we did not plant it. I know your hands were there in the dirt with mine.
It will one day be okay that we had to leave to wash our palms.
It will one day be okay if we had to trade our arms for the soap.
I know that we love the warm smell of this earth. I know the bodies
we are given, in some parts of our lives are harder to carry
than in other parts. It will be okay if we alone do not ever again
travel through that land where in the gray and singing wind
this tree sways softly. I know it sways. I know the rain falls there.
I know the sun touches the dark clouds and the seasons pass through,
each one visiting the tree's quiet body for a short spell
of cardamom and snow. It will be okay if never do we see
what fruit still grows from its heart. I know
our trees will be here a long time.
Longer than we or I or any of us will be.
Like the light falling out the stars, soil
shifting through our bones
the eternal machine of night
and day keeps turning—
the cherry pit split
cracking open orchards
into a quietless world.
And amongst the noise
of their fruit falling like a gift
their shape taken
over time giving shade
from the sun to any of us
who ever might need
to sit and rest our heads
and in the bright light
open our eyes.
Adam Davis: You are listening to The Detour with Anis Mojgani. That was audio from Anis’ July 2023 performance of Poems at Sunset Out a Window. To hear more, check out our October 2023 conversation with Anis about the event series.
I've been a few or several times. It feels like one of the most civic experiences I've ever had, but it doesn't explicitly call attention to itself as civic or political. And when I look around, I see people looking at each other in ways they often don't and laughing together and taking a breath and looking at each other.
And so it's interesting to think about how it can't help but be political.
Anis Mojgani: Yeah.
Adam Davis: It's like building the city that we would like to have. But it doesn't say, ‘This is what we're doing, we're building the city we would like to have.’
Anis Mojgani: Well, I think one of the gifts of the pandemic has been that there's a way in which all of us have been forced to address either in ourselves or the world around us, the ways in which the world does not, one, give to us the things that perhaps we need, but also like invites us to perhaps think about and envision what is the world that we want. And there's an aspect where all of us, whether we accept the invitation or not, have have been offered the opportunity to think either I didn't know or I did know, but now I have proof, or like I didn't know, but I didn't wanna believe that there's aspects of this world that not even don’t they work, but like what I thought was like a way in which the world operates was a thing that was created.
You know, policing is a thing that was created. It's not photosynthetic, you know, it's not a law of nature. It can go away and we can figure something else out. And so it's like all these things that we thought were concrete, disappeared. Some of them came back, some of them just went quiet. But like some of them have not come back.
But like in, in that realization, I think, and I would hope that in many of us, there was a thing that suddenly said like, ‘Oh, if this world isn't what I thought it was and the parts of it that I thought were solid have now turned to vapor, what gets to go there instead?’ Could it be something else? And could that something else be something that I actually like, want, you know?
And so I think over these last few years, it's been wonderful to get to see the different ways in which people's imaginations have shown up to be like, this doesn't exist and I want this, so I'm gonna make it. This doesn't exist and I want it, I'm gonna make it. You know? And that's like a really, really beautiful thing.
It doesn't even have to be large things. Yes, I want a world without the tumultuous amount of injustice in it. And also I want really small things inside of that world.
Adam Davis: That makes me think of the poem you started us with. And it makes me want to invite you, and I'll stall by starting with one, but I want us to transition to inviting questions for you from this microphone here, but by way of both transition and encouragement, I'll read a poem, and I think this builds right off what you were just talking about. It's a poem called “There Are Birds Here” by Jamaal May. With a dedication.
Anis Mojgani: Just, I like Jamaal, and I like him as a person. I like his poems. And it's just nice to hear the name of a friend from many, many, many years ago.
Adam Davis: That’s great, I’m really glad to hear that. That's beautiful.
There Are Birds Here
For Detroit
There are birds here,
so many birds here
is what I was trying to say
when they said those birds were metaphors
for what is trapped
between buildings
and buildings. No.
The birds are here
to root around for bread
the girl’s hands tear
and toss like confetti. No,
I don’t mean the bread is torn like cotton,
I said confetti, and no
not the confetti
a tank can make of a building.
I mean the confetti
a boy can’t stop smiling about
and no his smile isn’t much
like a skeleton at all. And no
his neighborhood is not like a war zone.
I am trying to say
his neighborhood
is as tattered and feathered
as anything else,
as shadow pierced by sun
and light parted
by shadow-dance as anything else,
but they won’t stop saying
how lovely the ruins,
how ruined the lovely
children must be in that birdless city.
Anis Mojgani: There is something here that maybe is something to share and perhaps it is cruel to share a poem about summer when we have so many months to go before we get to it. But I don't know. This idea of not even necessarily like finding joy in the mundane. I mean there's that, but like seeking to just think about what are the things that, whether they're large or whether they're small, that we love and how to like pepper our days with them.
It's like why squeeze lime onto a taco? Like taco's fine without it, but there's something a little bit more. Both in the taste and also the act of doing. And so it's like what are the lime squeezes that both bring us joy and love, but also like what are the lime squeezes that are kind of like building and building and building a better and greater and bigger world that we want.
[reading]
Sun on legs. Legs on grass. Bike rides. The smell of food over fire. Jumping into the river Careening in air. Current kissing feet. Wet stones & collecting them. Rope swings. Light dancing on the water.
Traveling to the farther side of a state to hear trees. Traveling to the far side of the field to let the field do its work, recording your heart beat to play through the earth. Moving to follow the sun. Finding the shade. The book on your chest as you sleep. Sweat on parts you didn’t know existed. Shaking hips with strangers. Leaving home to hear music. Faces hurt from smiling. Too hot to fuck but doing it anyway. The mystery of each other being born & solved inside the same undressing. Giving over to another’s mouth, another’s song. Ice cream hands. Popsicle hands. Stoop sitting. Watching the sun become evening. Falling in love. Sticky bellies sticking. Loud laughs & soft ones. Learning another’s quiet. Your elbow’s crook becoming the color of night. My arms again the color of my ancestors. Returning to the sound of air around friends in a backyard. Hot sidewalks. Burning your soles & worth it to not pull the shoes on.
No plan but a walk to the store & then to see what happens from there. Things happening while letting them happen with me inside of them. Lolling to roll from one porch to another to another with no plan but smelling the jasmine in the air. Jumping off the bow into the still part of the river. Finding an island. Pantsless, shoeless, shirtless, heartful. Unbuttoning. Unzipping. Anything. Standing up crooked whatever we make. Setting fires for the sound. The lines the sun writes on us. Drives to the coast. Your chest kissing the waves. Falling asleep to ocean. Falling asleep after party, on a friend’s couch. Or heading out last. The bike ride home, the gang splitting into paths, like a library closed, alone with the stars & me one of them turning on my dark street. The flowers knowing my voice. Jeff inside the firmament. Birthday candles. Mine & those I’ve loved. Meeting up to do nothing. Melting into time. Coming out the movie’s cold into the warm air. The light in the leaves as we say goodbye by the car but stay past the crickets. Just that we might be the thing that they gather together inside the darkness to sing to.
Adam Davis: You are listening to The Detour with Anis Mojgani. That was his poem “Summer Approaches."
Can we do this? I want to invite courageous people or not courageous people to come up to this microphone with questions for Anis.
Question 1: Thank you. Hi, Anis, it's good to see you again. This talk made me think of this quote and I wish I could honor the person that said it, but I unfortunately can't remember who it was, but they had said, ‘We all long to write the poem that will stop this death.’ And I wonder if you felt that feeling before. I find myself as a writer feeling that often as I'm writing poetry. And if so, how do you honor that feeling, knowing that that poem is yet to come.
Anis Mojgani: You know, it makes me think about these last four hundred and fifty, sixty, seventy days of Palestinians being butchered simply because they breathe. So much of the early part of this year and of winter of 2023 was a lot of being inside of that.
You know, like as if there was like this puzzle, this equation to try to solve. Like if I can just unlock the right combination of words, all these things of which I have no power over, will grind to a halt. And I think that feeling, that idea exists in lots of different ways in ongoing situations.
Large ones of atrocity and small ones. Not even small ones of atrocity, but just of small pains. My best friend Jeff is someone that took his life. Now back in 2006, there's still this ongoing conversation that surfaces far, far less regularly in my life at this juncture. But it still surfaces that, like was there something that I could have created to have halted this?
That's a thing that I think like we are always being faced with, with lots of different situations. And the unfortunate thing is that one, probably not is the answer in most of them. But two, that's not a reason to not engage with it, because there are so many different ways the work that a poem is doing to ourselves, to others, to the world we are not privy to. And so the purpose and the intent of why we are sitting down to create something is not always necessarily what the actual purpose of its creation is for, and we might not know what its purpose is. And to me, that's something to honor. That's something that holds beauty for me.
And so that's something that aids me in continuing to show up and see what happens.
Question 1: Thank you. I appreciate that so much.
Anis Mojgani: Of course. Thank you for your question.
Question 2: My question was regarding the end of your poem, the one about George Floyd, where you say, ‘If that happened to your friend, what wouldn't you burn?’
So how do you get out of the rage? And the really, really deep emotions that we're all experiencing right now and put them into poetry.
Anis Mojgani: Yes. Thank you for that question. That's the thing that I'm still constantly trying to figure out. I think for me, the key to trying to do such...I mean there's a couple things, but like the thing that's most important to me, because it serves me as a person, not just me as a poet, is learning how to basically carry my anger to its desire destination. That it's not something that is simply like so hot that I have to let go of, but rather that it's something that like, it's hot because I'm holding it in the fires of a forge, and I'm staying with it and engaging with it and shaping it with intent to do a specific thing.
And if I become better at that, that serves me as a person, because we are all people with anger and it's not that anger surfaces and goes away. I'm a believer that all our emotions are existing with us all the time. Anger lives inside of me. Joy lives inside of me. And so that serves me as a person being able to know how to temper it and carry it.
It also serves me being able to engage with a poem that is asking for my anger. But the other thing that is easier for me and more immediate, is, and this is across the board with pretty much my process in general, is that there's the first part of the writing for me, which is just putting whatever on the page.
Like I'm not concerned with what it sounds like, what it looks like, what it smells like. I just need to put it down. And there's some shaping as it comes out, but there's also always a lot of going away from it and returning because whatever I felt when I was writing the poem is no longer the only steerer of the poem. And so that helps, particularly with things that I'm writing that are in response to rage. You know, there's another part of me that says, will say, all right, rage, just sit quietly. Let's see what you've given to us and see how we might be able to shape this towards something.
Questioner 2: Okay. Thank you.
Anis Mojgani: Thank you.
Caitlin Baggott Davis: What does politics need from poetry right now?
Anis Mojgani: Hmm.
Caitlin Baggott Davis: And what does, what do poets need from politics?
Anis Mojgani: The thing that poetry needs of politics is a greater knowing of the intent of what we are working on. Of course, like everyone's process, if you're a writer, it's potentially very different, you know, from any other writer.
And then there are ways in which we overlap and whatnot. For me, my process is very much about not coming to the table with intent. As soon as I have intent at the gate, my creative power ceases to be in communion with me. 'cause for me, part of creativity is the discovery, the learning. The intent comes later.
I think intent is a very important part of it. You know, I think poetry often is held, whether by the people that create it or whether by the people who hear the word poetry poem, poet, that it is this ethereal thing. Its purpose is simply to speak to things that we do not see. Things that are intangible.
And then I believe that that's part of it. But what is the poem doing? What is the poem doing for us? What is the poem doing for us on a day-to-day basis to bring us ever closer to one another? And while there's so many aspects of the political systems and structures in this country and this planet that are abhorrent to me, I do believe that there are ways in which we need to establish structures that are serving us collectively, that are doing the job that we can't do as individuals. And so what are the ways that poets are able to extrapolate that intent and that structure to bring that kind of order into poetry, vice versa?
The thing that I love about a poem, is that a poem invites us to honor all truths of being in existence, the large and the small, the beautiful and the ugly. I would want politics to engage more with that. It is the larger faults of the way that we have structured politics and political systems in this country that politics is only looking at this lens of what is happening at the top because it has spent so much time trying to figure out how to build this giant thing. The way that you build this giant thing is by starting at the bottom and building small things that go up that high. And I would love if that's what was taken from poetry to be put into politics, the honoring of a housefly.
The honoring of a lime squeeze, not simply the honoring of oligarchy.
Caitlin Baggott Davis: Thank you.
Justin Chin: Thank you for, uh, holding community here, uh, with us tonight. Adam and Anis, just thinking about the interplay of this conversation, very much like jazz music trading back and forth--we're riffing off of each other. We're exploring. We have a general set idea of things that we're doing here, but it's that in the moment spark that is magical here.
Question that I'd like to ask is building off of what was brought before, really thinking about what is the public service component that you view yourself holding as poet. Lower yet, especially here in Oregon, looking at things to come, hopefully not to come to fruition as poorly as they could be.
Anis Mojgani: I don't know.
Um, you know, there's definitely like an aspect of me and my person that desires little to no public engagement. Um, I like sitting at my home. I like, uh, uh, sitting at the homes of my friends. You know, I think particularly after offering over the last four years, so much of myself into this public space, there's this tendency in me to be like it’s time to reject all that. That was as I swing in this direction. But like, I don't know. There's also an aspect where the we is very important to me and engagement with the public is a thing that allows me to find the ways that I can contribute to serving, of arriving closer to the place that I want. To live inside of, not just for myself, but for others.
And it also pushes me to expand upon aspects of myself that I desire to change and grow in certain ways, you know? And so I don't know the public relation, whether that's like a large public or just like a small public that is important to me. I think it's something that, that all of us need to find some sort of engagement towards, and that there's like lots of different ways to do that.
If there's one avenue of that, that feels like too not in synch with what we do, that it's important for us to find the ways that we can be in synch. There's so many different ways for all of us to be part of that, to arrive to where we need to get to. I'm the same way that there's some things I'm just like, that's not a thing that I don't feel like what I have to offer is best suited to this, but maybe it is suited to this.
So I'll go do this. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you.
[Anis reads a poem]
You do not need to be fully formed to go fully forward
You do not need to fully go forward to go forward
You do not need to move, to go forward
How does the morning approach our waking by what slow rose does it color us in?
At which point does the dew arrive?
How does the night approach our arms?
At which point do the crickets begin
and the toads start to stir in their song
all while being where they were before they began?
Forward o forward go
whether quick heeled or in oak stillness
Forward o forward go in greening leaf
Forward in red leaf too
in orange amber glow of the end
––what end
––what finish
––forward into the dark go
forward go not as pioneer
no––go forward as seedling
go forward as guest
go forward not as the piper but as the notes blown
Neither settler nor leader
nor bearer of any flag––
if there is a flag in your hands
plough the dirt
dig a hole
not to plant a pole and banner
but to bury them both
Gather yourself only under whatever banner ripples invisible Bury any flag that your hands can touch
and see what might sprout then instead from those threads May new cloth be woven by way of work
woven by limbs threaded between
Forward o forward holder of hand
forward go you forager of forest and fellowship
You smile igniters you seed stirrers
What might your fists hold?
What might your fist open to?
Big wind and little gale
Carry what little things you carry
into a next field
into the gentle asking earth beneath our feet asking beneath us to be Go forward bare booted even when
thick soled
ground touching skin
Go forward here––where country becomes coast
Go forward and become water––what is forward to an ocean? What direction is progress––our shore or
the other?
Our inlet or the farther side? Neither, or both?
Move both ways
Go forward to places you know
Learn in the back and forth of it all
What will you bring between the traversing?
Lead with what you have to offer
Lighthouse your heart when you are lost
Be quiet when your body has the floor
Do not tarry to listen
Marry yourself to the joy that pulls at us unseen
Patience of action
––starling map yourself
Lead together
Be a beacon inside your own body
Be a newer knowing of a world already here
Eternal
Collapse any edges
Build low walls
Opposite of conquer
Be called by sunshine to warm what needs warming
Be warmed by what already is warm
Invite yourself to invite others to invite themselves to invite others What season sits inside you
––turn with it
The apple trees in our blood begin as seeds
––feed and sit beneath and feed again
In what direction do you step when the star directly over you calls
––is it calling you to it or is it pushing you, waves and current under the hull
Apostle of shovel and outstretched vulnerability go forward into the hour
Go forward into cutting the hour loose
Go forward not to go forward
––what new affection may brood between us when we do?
We may not know where we are until we are there
This is alright
This is okay
What corner of ourselves does the sky over us not touch? What together do we all sit under?
From here where might we go?
Thank you.
Adam Davis: That was “Forward” by Anis Mojgani. Anis is a Portland based poet and served as Oregon's tenth poet laureate. You can find more of Anis’ work at thepianofarm.com and in our show notes at oregonhumanities.org. Thanks for listening to The Detour from Oregon Humanities. Anna McLain is our producer, and Alexandra Silvester, Karina Briski, and Ben Waterhouse are our assistant producers. Thanks to Kyle Gilmer for additional audio engineering support. This is Adam Davis. See you next time.