new poet laureate

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WHAT TO DO—AND WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING—AS PORTLAND REOPENS.

JUNE 24-30

Q(UARANTINE) & A

Anis Mojgani

Oregon’s New Poet Laureate

WW: What have you been doing in quarantine?

Anis Mojgani: I don’t know quite exactly how I spent the last three months. There are patches of days where it seems as if it’s Friday, and the next thing I know it’s Tuesday, and I have no idea what transpired in those days in between. For me, the big challenge has been how to establish a creative routine. Even though I work for myself, I generally try to do my work outside of the home. Since quarantine has started up, I feel a bit more untethered than usual. A lot of the time is just existing and seeing how I fi t into this new space, and how this new space fi ts into me.

What does it mean for you personally to be poet laureate?

As a poet and an artist, it allows me the widening of my imagination, and the resources and charge to go out and see: What can you do with poetry that serves the people in the state you live in—that serves these communities and hopefully opens them up more to what poems and poetry can be? If there’s an idea I have of what it means to carry poetry to other people, I have so many resources at hand that allow me to make that happen.

You’re taking over this role at a pivotal moment in the history of this country. As poet laureate, do you have a responsibility to respond to that moment?

This is a very challenging time already with COVID, and it’s also a moment where we are seeing something we haven’t seen at least for a very long time in regards to the response to what’s happening. So there’s a responsibility I feel with regards to myself, with regards to being an artist and responding to the world around me—and also being a Black American, and how that connects me to this wider community of people. It’s a challenging aspect for me to reinvestigate, reconfront, re-ask and reconverse with myself. What am I doing? What are the ways that I need to be advocating for the things that are very, very dear to me? What are the ways that I take a thing I use to process my

interior space in this emotionally heavy time, and also a thing I use to connect with other people, and ideally connect people to other people?

There’s a perception that poetry is this archaic form, yet you host the Verselandia poetry competition for high school students. What does that tell you about poetry’s place in contemporary culture?

The overwhelming majority of our relationship to poetry is being handed a few poems throughout our schooling that were very old, very archaic, and probably didn’t speak to the majority of us, particularly if you were of color. With something like Verselandia, one of the things that’s beautiful about it is, it does allow people— not simply the youth who are involved but the audiences that come—to witness, maybe for the fi rst time, that poetry is a tool that is sitting there waiting for us to pick up, and that its relevance is only as large as our engagement with it.

Rap is the dominant form of expression for this generation. But you often hear people compare rap to poetry, and it’s usually meant as a way of elevating hip-hop, as if it needs to be legitimized.

Ultimately, if one is able to get a kid to open up their world to other artistic explorations and expression by showing them how rap can be in tangent with poetry, that’s amazing and incredible. But it also often rings of coded language. Like, if we take this thing that is urban, i.e., code for “Black,” and hold it up to poetry, which is largely code for white, suddenly we’re able to give rap credit and give it worthwhile existence. The reality is, rap and hip-hop have connected so many more individuals in the modern age to expression and to themselves than poetry has. So it doesn’t need to be qualifi ed by being in line with poetry. There’s a way in which those things can learn from each other, and sometimes they can be very similar or even the same. But when I need a poem, I don’t put on a Tribe Called Quest album, I don’t put on Mos Def. I go grab Lucille Clifton, I go grab Ross Gay. And similarly, if I need hip-hop, I put on Run the Jewels. I’m not going to my bookshelf to get this thing that speaks to a certain part of me. HEAR THIS

A Playlist for Your First Walk of Phase 1

The world is terrifying, unpredictable and constantly changing. It’s important to keep this in mind while also trying to keep yourself sane. It helps to remember that the world is beautiful place, and a nice walk is a great reminder of that. If you haven’t stepped outside in a while, throw on this playlist after putting on your mask—seriously, wear the goddamn mask—and enjoy an early summer stroll.

Actress, “N.E.W.”

The penultimate track on the British producer’s Stygian fantasy R.I.P. returns us to the blinding light of the surface world, as if stepping outside after many long months indoors.

Stevie Wonder, “Visions”

As guitars gently scrape together like branches in the wind, Stevie returns to one of his favorite subjects: the possibility of a parallel world, where the beauty in this one isn’t sullied by silly man-made problems.

Prince, “Power Fantastic”

Before he became a Jehovah’s Witness, Prince’s cosmology was much more abstract. He imagined a war between Power Fantastic and Spooky Electric (or something), and we can tell by his keening high notes who’s winning.

Bennie Maupin, “Ensenada”

This is about as solid a musical approximation of ghosts rising from a babbling brook as you’re likely to fi nd. We’re getting further from home.

Charles Mingus, “Myself When I Am Real”

Best known as a bassist and notorious grouch, Mingus brings out his soft side in this placid but emotionally ambiguous piano improvisation.

Alice Coltrane, “Turiya & Ramakrishna”

An island of calm in the middle of the ancient mystery of Alice Coltrane’s Ptah, the El Daoud—and a YouTube-algorithm sidebar perennial.

Space Afrika, “Sd/TI”

This Manchester duo makes cold-weather ambient music: all clouds and nebulas and distant interstellar transmissions.

Laraaji, “Ocean Flow Zither”

Alongside Brian Eno and Harold Budd, Laraaji is one of the original Three Musketeers of ambient music. Like those other two, he’s still going strong. DANIEL BROMFIELD.