There’s a Poetry Hotline You Can Call at Any Time of Day to Hear Beautiful Words Recited

An inventive way to listen to some of Oregon’s most beautiful words began with a porta-potty.

At least, Anis Mojgani thinks it was a mobile toilet he spotted while on a stroll at dusk during the early days of the pandemic. Whatever it was, the small, blue structure that was clearly built for an occupancy of one made Oregon’s poet laureate think of a phone booth—as well as a method for sharing his art with others during a time of isolation.

“I would walk around in the evening and ponder on ways to engage with poetry on a community level,” says Mojgani, who couldn’t fulfill the traditional poet laureate duty of traversing the state. Spotting the boothlike shelter sparked an idea: “What if someone could pick up that phone and hear a poem?”

Nearly two years later, Mojgani launched Oregon’s Daily Tele-Pomes Telephone Line. Every day last April—National Poetry Month—anyone could call a number and listen to recordings of Mojgani and three previous poet laureates reciting their favorite works. He says finally bringing the project to fruition helped him reconnect with his own creative spirit following a particularly bleak winter.

Apparently, the programming was a service to others, too—a source of soothing words in troubling times. In the first week alone, the hotline racked up about 1,000 calls from 12 different states, Canada and Mexico. At least some of that enthusiasm, though, wasn’t just for the content—at least not initially. Mojgani had gone and reintroduced the element of (a pleasant) surprise.

“A lot of the response seemed to be very much rooted in excited curiosity,” he says, harking back to the pre-cellphone, pre-caller ID era. “For me, it stirred up feelings that I associated with the telephone, like you’re not quite sure what you’re going to get when you pick up the phone. Getting that fresh shiver of excitement, calling the number and not knowing what was going to happen, was something people were really drawn to.”

You can still dial 503-928-7008 and listen to a reading, but there’s no new content. It currently plays the final poem recorded in April.

“Hopefully, at some point, it’ll go back into a functioning new poem situation,” says Mojgani. “It’s sort of been sitting there for whoever might call. So one can still get a poem if one needs one and wants one.”