Anis Mojgani

You really should read: Over the Anvil We Stretch

Portlander Anis Mojgani is the current No. 1 ranked slam poet in the entire fucking world, not to mention a two-time national champ. He's probably the best poetry slammer alive. The intellect, optimism and humility with which he speaks feel like proof of the relevance of "spoken word" as a genre. He processes the world in slices of beauty, frustration and sympathy, threaded together with the authority of plain, rhymeless language. TONY PIFF. Wordstock Superstar Poetry Slam, 9 pm Thursday, Nov. 6. Bagdad Theater, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd. $15. Tickets at wordstockfestival.com.

What's your personal writing ritual?
posting up at either opposable thumb on belmont or the SE albina press with my computer and sketchbook and making myself try to work until i feel insecure enough to believe the staff hates me for being there so long with just one cup of tea. that and going to the bagdad or to avalon in the afternoon.

What are your favorite themes to write about (or that you're most guilty of rehashing)?
themes i'm most guilty of rehashing: childhood, humanity's unrecognized but inherent nobility, and wolves.

The most beautiful word in the English language is:
joyous. and noble.

What authors made you want to pick up a pen in the first place?
my moms ran a children's bookstore when we were growing up so i think a lot of that initial inspiration came from that but in the form of drawing as opposed to yet writing, such as maurice sendak and chris van allsburg. but also roald dahl. harper lee and to kill a mockingbird. when poetry took hold it was first kerouac and corso and the rest of the beats. followed by jeffrey mcdaniel because it was so damn original and inspiring. his first book was my bible, rateared and edgetorned—freshman year of college it was my bible. bukowski because it was so achingly honest and beautiful. frank miller. mike mignola. richard brautigan. watermelon sugar is such a lovely inspirational piece of a book because it's so simple in its execution but it's like walking through a dream. maurice sendak. and frank stanford, an out of print poet from arkansas who in my mind is the greatest.

Name a book that you think is highly overrated. Be honest.
i don't know, great gatsby? but i was also 16 when i read it and didn't really care about it.

Dream project:
a book i've been working on, or rather was working on, that's essentially a graphic novel with these four or 5 stories intermingling. i like to think of it more as combining written poems with some poems that are written visually as opposed to textually, but essentially parts of it are a comic book, though some parts are straight prose. the stories involve a boy who searches for his missing father who has absconded with the family heirloom, a pair of magical boots; a pair of conjoined twins except one of the twins is 9 and the other is 25, they wake up in a forest that is ruled by a man in black who locks up all children in a tower; a silent story about a bird man who builds a family and home and a strange song he keeps hearing in the woods; a young man who works on a piano farm and the friendship he makes with the giant who comes to town and starts working with him; and a small boy who meets both a giant talking bear and a man that could be the boy grown up.

i just wanna get it done.

Most recent nightmare:
usually i have more emotional nightmares, like someone turning on me or losing them, but i just woke up in reno from having one with some monsters in it. in the dream the folks that i'm doing a show for here in reno tell me that my check wont be ready for awhile, there was a flub somewhere, but that they have two free rooms for me at this reason in town for the night. but when they give me in the info for it they also give me a gun, a silver revolver with a long barrel and tell me that there's also a problem apparently, the city has started having these strange scorpion like creatures popping up. it's not long before me and the folks i'm encounter them. they sound like falling water and they come out of the shadows and drop from the trees and look like scorpions that were birthed from a marriage of the creature from the black lagoon and the critters from the movie critters. they're fast and they're getting bigger and we still have to go get bullets.

Your cure for writer's block:
i don't so much believe in writer's block. maybe it's just how i work, in that much of my work isnt structured around a particular driving idea at the beginning but i don't think i'm alone in this. i do think that it's easy to get lazy and apathetic to the process of writing and that's what block us. and that if one goes through the motion and the machine of sitting down to start writing, whatever it is, eventually one's brain and imagination catches up. staying consistent in a routine as opposed to waiting to be inspired and solely writing when the muse says hello, is how to keep the interruptions at bay.

Pessimistic question: Will you keep writing even after people stop reading?
yes. i believe so.

Optimistic question: Kittens? Discuss.
boy are they fucking goddamn cute.

Please paste a short paragraph from a story, poem, article, blog post, etc., you're currently working on below:
i'm working on a book of persona poems about famous folks and this one is from the piece i'm working on about billy the kid:

take my boots off from my young young young young feet

Maw they buried me in em

I ran too fast

didn't we all

I learned to fall before I learned to kiss

I learned to shoot before I learned to love

Strip the belt off my skin

strip me of my bullets

my clothes

Jesus Silva and Vincente

they took my bones

naked of all sweat and fear

and put them in the pine box

I killed the men

but I prayed like you all

out of a subtle fear dressed in guilt

dressed deeper in faith

I dressed em myself

before bed

in the back night of my head

between its hairs

I clutched those prayers

whispering them when no one was looking

I never choked on their bones

but I prayed like a slow dance

full of jittery nerves at the thought of being held

laying my prayers out like clothes to wear the next day

dressing them up long in long black pants

held them up with a belt buckle big shine of mother of pearl

my prayers stood before me dark

WWeek 2015