Gimme Five

5 Portland Record Labels to Know

Local music publishers with sharp taste and inspiring missions.

04/01/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

Homegrown Lit

Required Reading for the 2023 Portland Book Festival

Your syllabus includes six Portland-written books, covering fermentation to poetry, wolves to tigers, geopolitics to a shut-in retired librarian.

10/26/2023 By Matthew Trueherz

Profile

Oregon Poet Laureate Anis Mojgani Is Rewriting the Role

How do you promote poetry during a pandemic? Ask Oregon’s youngest-ever poet laureate (by decades), who is reinventing the dusty title.

07/19/2023 By Matthew Trueherz Illustrations by Lars Leetaru

Events

6 Can't-Miss Speakers at TEDx Portland 2022

An anonymous poet, a Meow Wolf cofounder, a stripper-slash-writer, jazz drummer, and plenty of others will grace the Moda Center on May 28.

05/24/2022 By Conner Reed

Poetry

How Oregon's Poet Laureate Launched a Poem Hotline

Anis Mojgani's project features a poem a day from himself and his predecessors.

04/28/2022 By Conner Reed

Books

American, Us is a Genre-Bending Chapbook That Explores Incarceration and Latinx Lives

Published by Morpheus Youth Project, the book—anchored by work from Emilly Prado and Andres Mendoza—is the Portland nonprofit’s final project.

04/13/2022 By Michelle Harris

Pomo Picks

Top Things to Do in Portland This Week: June 2–6

A curated, incomplete guide to the coolest stuff on offer in the Rose City.

06/02/2021 By Nick Campigli and Conner Reed

Poetry

The First Recorded Reading of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl Took Place in Portland. Now You Can Own It on Vinyl.

Two-time Grammy winner Cheryl Pawelski has headed up the restoration and release of the historic 1956 recording.

04/01/2021 By Conner Reed

Poetry

A New PCC Writing Residency Honors a Forgotten Oregon Poet

Carolyn Moore wrote thousands of poems in her lifetime. Most of them are about to be published for the first time.

02/26/2021 By Aurora Biggers

Year in Review

PoMo’s Top 10 Arts & Culture Stories of 2020

In a year that sent the arts scrambling, our readers clung to joy: a hometown opera success story, a sterling album from a Portland rap giant, the meaty tale of a museum in the Columbia Gorge, and more.

12/17/2020 By Conner Reed

Summer Reads 2020

"The History in My Blood" / "Something Sweet"

Excerpts from Mehta’s book Bad Indian, available now.

08/01/2020 By J. C. Mehta

Summer Reads 2020

City of Flowers

Oregon’s poet laureate ruminates on growth, rebirth—and swallowing bees

08/01/2020 By Anis Mojgani

Interview

Oregon's New Poet Laureate on Imagining a Better, Brighter Portland

“The ‘weirdness’ of Portland is that it is a city of strange dichotomy,” says Anis Mojgani. “It’s very inclusive, and at the same time, extremely exclusive.”

07/08/2020 By Conner Reed

Poetry

You Might as Well Write a Haiku About the Columbia Gorge for Poetry Month

We can't go there now/Instead, write of waterfalls/From a safe distance

04/09/2020 By Conner Reed

Pomo Picks

Things We Love That Have Nothing to Do with Coronavirus: Week of March 25

The Portland Monthly team shares the non-pandemic stuff that's getting us through the week.

03/25/2020 By Portland Monthly Staff

Art from Home

How to Stream and Support Portland Artists During the Coronavirus Outbreak

A rotating list of online events by Portland-area artists and the most direct ways to get money in their pockets.

03/20/2020 By Conner Reed and Fiona McCann

Music

The New Harry Styles Album Pays Tribute to... Oregon Poet Richard Brautigan?

Fine Line's second single might be an ode to a Tacoma-born, tall-hat-wearing, Eugene-living beat poet.

12/17/2019 By Conner Reed

Feature

Meet the Poets Who Defined a Portland Era—and Are Still at It

“Poets value relationships. They value falling in love. They value things that don’t have money attached.”

10/23/2019 By Leanne Grabel

Well-Versed

7 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month in Portland

From public-art verse to new collections and bookstore readings, here's how to fill April with poetry aplenty.

03/29/2019 By Jackson Main and Shayla Norris-York

Performance

A New Portland Performance Transforms Trauma Into Art

Anya Pearson's Made to Dance in Burning Buildings is a vivid choreopoem about rape, PTSD, and perseverance.

01/29/2019 By Fiona McCann