On a given night, you may find artist and former Poet Laureate of Oregon Anis Mojgani reciting poetry out of his studio window in Portland’s Sunnyside neighborhood for an audience of up to 300 people.

People begin gathering outside his studio around 30 minutes before the poetry starts at sunset. If you’re lucky, you saw his handmade poster announcing the event hanging on the exterior door of the building, or caught his Instagram announcement he posted a day or two before the event. “Poems at Sunset Out a Window,” it reads. “B.Y.O.C!” it says, meaning “bring your own chair.”

The crowd sets up along the sidewalk beneath the window into the street and across to the opposite curb, stretching all the way to the fence of Sunnyside Environmental School’s playground.

This unsanctioned gathering began during 2021, after one of Mojgani’s friends, Jen, knocked on his studio window.

“It’s just like a funny window because it slides open and it just feels like, kind of like a weird sandwich window, you know? ‘Like, what do you want on your sandwich?’ And we just hung out through the window talking, and we were both like, oh, this is so much fun, we should do this more, we should be more people.”

He made a flier for two nights later and posted it on Instagram, inviting folks to come sit and listen to poems being read from a window. That first time, around 50 to 60 folks showed up and brought their own chairs. These days his crowds are much bigger.

As he recites poems out the window, the audience below expands with passersby who happen to stumble upon the scene.

Mojgani delivers each poem with exuberance and a rhythmic cadence, transforming the reading into an immersive performance. Sometimes he wonders, “Are the cops gonna show up? Is somebody going to start yelling? What’s that bird doing?”

There’s a swarm of different things that could happen when you are in public spaces. But what he enjoys the most about speaking his poems out loud is when something unexpected happens: “That’s always just like a nice sweetness or a surprise when there’s just something unexpected that shows up. You know?”

This evening, a man dressed in a cape with the head of a hamburger walks back and forth through the audience. After one of his poems, Mojgani yells out, “The burger!” The crowd laughs.

A child at play on the school grounds across the street screams back, “I need to see this burger!”

Mojgani yells, “We all need to see this burger!” The crowd laughs even harder.

He approaches each reading without expectations, allowing the performance to unfold differently each time.

“Here’s this box that I made, and I’m gonna put it on the stage, and I’m gonna turn it on. And even though I made it and I’m familiar with the sounds that might be coming out of it, I’m here in this moment like you are, and I don’t know what’s gonna happen. Maybe the barometric pressure is different today, and that affects the box. Maybe I got a call from my mom just before, and that affects the box—or rather, affects everything around the box.”

For him, that sense of discovery is central to the experience, not only for the audience but for himself. “Every poem, I think, is asking to be said aloud.”

Between poems, Mojgani talks to the crowd and his enthusiasm spills over into jokes, stories, political reflections, observations about whatever is unfolding around them, all the while beaming with what can’t be described other than care and love for his audience. In return, they wear permanent smiles, basking in his warmth throughout the reading.

“This city is so fantastic. It’s like a, it’s like a goddamn paradise here, you know, like the sun was just like beaming. There’s days in Portland where the sun arrives so perfectly and the air arrives so perfectly you know. Being in this city is a really special gift because we live in a city and a place that is filled with so many people who care about other people and who care about all the fires that are burning right now and that’s like a really beautiful thing.”

“YOUR BACKYARD WILL ALWAYS BE A PLACE OF PEACE”

Mojgani has been calling Portland home since 2004. He gushes over the city, its beauty, its nature, people and all it offers.

“I love that, you know, Portland, to me, feels like a city that means greenness, you know? That it’s so rife with, depending on the season, blossoms and petals and leaves and green and birds and, and so it’s just really, really beautiful and lush.”

He works and lives in the Sunnyside neighborhood. “I love its walkability. Walkability in that I want to walk through it. I get to live blocks from friends that I see every day. I live five blocks from my studio. My bookshop and my coffee shops are also walkable. It’s an eight-minute walk to my library. I love that I get to live in a village.”

Born and raised in New Orleans, Mojgani studied visual art, with a focus on comic book illustration at Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. While there, he also developed a passion for painting and writing poetry, particularly performing and sharing poetry aloud.

After graduating, he moved to New York City and joined the spoken-word poetry scene. He traveled across the country, performing and competing in slam poetry competitions. He became a two-time National Poetry Slam champion and a winner of the World Cup of Poetry Slam.

In 2020, Mojgani became the 10th poet laureate of Oregon, serving two consecutive terms. “I live in a state where I’ve been woven into its fabric as a poet laureate. And as a poet laureate of African and Middle Eastern descent in a state that has so many challenges and so many racial reckonings. And yet I get to be myself, and I get to be an Oregonian, you know, and that feels good.”

He embraced his two-term role by fostering, developing and supporting Oregonians in the conversation of poetry, and finding creative ways to make that happen.

”Poems are all around us, whether we know it or not. They are around us and are constantly inviting us to be in observation with them. And I think the reason they are constantly asking us to be in observation with them is because ultimately that arrives us in being more in observation with ourselves and our humanity and the humanity of others."

“CHALCEDONY”

Do you remember when

after we had been eating chicken and rice

and I said to you that I always love you

Best today, right now, 

I’m in love with you?

and you smiled sheepishly

and sweetly and at the same time
and I said to you

That your face looked like an ocean agate, glowing.

Do you remember this?

Surely, my love you must. It was just last week.

And it was such a very sweet thing for me to have said to you.

And such a sweet way for you to have made me feel.

So sweet I had to write it down. Here.

For you. For me. For us both.

Anis Mojgani is an artist and poet. His poetry has been featured on HBO and NPR, the Academy of American Poets and The New York Times, among others. He is also the author of five books. You can learn more about him on his website.

Follow Anis Mojgani’s Instagram account to learn when he will be performing Poems at Sunset Out a Window.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/08/28/oregon-former-poet-laureate-anis-mojgani/