Michael Annis

Award winning Writer, Poet, Designer, Publisher in Denver, Colorado

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As a partisan continually accelerating the nexus of profound cultural revolution, Michael Annis is the founder/senior editor at Howling Dog Press, publisher of many of the greatest poets, writers, and artists of our time. Himself a poet, artist and designer, he's won numerous awards and fellowships, and judged several states' literary prizes. A co-developer of Heller Levinson's Hinge Theory, Michael's continuing passion is the dynamic relationships among language, life experience, quantum theory, music, anthropology, and mathematics. Michael has given many poetry performances nationally including three at West Point Academy where he read his work for US Cadets and visiting Russian military commando officers. Afterwards, he was decorated with medals by the Russians who compared him to Pushkin. Michael has been cited numerous times as "the most dangerous poet on the planet," for whatever danger can come of that, and the "William Blake of our time"; he brands himself as a "rogue nation of one," preferring the intellectually expansive over the aggressively pugilistic. Michael has coordinated many public events featuring a magician's brew of boxers, wrestlers, poets, tattoo artists, bikers, street hustlers, underground misanthropes and musicians. He is the Denver metro coordinator for the annual "100,000 Poets for Change" worldwide event.

Michael founded Howling Dog Press in 1981. Years into his work at Howling Dog, he is now even more impassioned and committed to redefining and recreating world literary/arts culture. He continually seeks and employs the force for the empowerment of language and culture. "When leaving a footprint in this human arena, leave it in language," he says, "leave it within the locus of the universal human psyche, where all revolution ultimately manifests. Language lives, breathes, reincarnates dynamism, velocitates orgasm; to ensure that her pleasure becomes yours, use the voice of your eternal duende--if you don't understand and experience that, you're chasing after a phantom muse." He reflects on the notion that perception is often a slave of belief, and the language commonly generated in this relational paradigm is language chained to superstition and ignorance. He "perceives" that his mission is to destroy the chains that enforce this humanly erected imprisonment, and coalesce with like minded visionaries in the rebuilding of human identity.

  • Work
    • HOWLING DOG PRESS / NAKED APE