When his name is announced, the crowd erupts into cheers and applause.

Some 50 people were crammed into downtown Spokane’s tiny Neato Burrito for its weekly Broken Mic poetry readings, at which Travis Naught is a regular reader.

Naught maneuvers his electric wheelchair to the makeshift stage, which consists of no more than a microphone illuminated by a single white light. He clears his throat and begins reading a poem he wrote about visiting a strip club and what it felt like to be touched by a woman — an experience, it is clear from the poem, he does not have very often.

Naught is a bespectacled 32-year-old former Eastern student who has been making waves in the Spokane poetry scene for several years. He has seen poetry events spring up and either succeed to become fixtures of Spokane’s literary arts arena or fade into a quiet death. Through Eastern, Naught found an audience and a community of poets that embraced him with open arms.

“I started in the Spokane poetry scene in the fall of 2011,” said Naught. “I had been working with the men’s basketball team at Eastern Washington University and one of our former managers and friend of mine, Michael Bethely, was hosting an open microphone night at Brews Bros coffee shop downtown.”

Soon after that, local poets Mark Anderson and Tim Johnson hosted an open mic night that rapidly turned into a weekly event, and Broken Mic was born.

“I attended almost every week from November 2011 until November 2014 before I took a three-month hiatus,” said Naught. “In those three years, Spokane Poetry Slam took off. Isaac Grambo rejuvenated the slam scene in May 2012 and I competed in my first poetry slam in June 2012.”

Although Naught witnessed the birth of Spokane’s thriving poetry community, he began writing poetry relatively late in life.

“I found out I was writing poetry when I turned 25 years old. For years before that, I had been writing little statements and saving them as individual pieces of writing, but I never would have called them poetry,” said Naught. “The reason that I would write those statements, those emotions, was a personal form of therapy. My undergraduate degree from Eastern is in psychology and I very much understand how important it is for a person to deal with all of their emotions in a healthy way.”

Naught says the beat poets hold a special place in his heart, particularly Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

“My favorite thing about all of their work is the way they employ sound and their willingness to break rules,” he said.

After graduating in 2005, Naught immediately went into the sports psychology program at Eastern. He spent six years in the program, but was unable to finish his thesis. Naught decided to put his energies into compiling his writing and in 2012, Naught published his first collection of poetry, “The Virgin Journals.”

The next year Naught published a second book of poetry entitled “Still Journaling.” Over the years, Naught’s work has appeared in over 25 different publications. And yet Naught is unpretentious, said Jonathan Johnson, Ph.D., of Eastern’s creative writing program.

“Being in his company reminds me of so much that I love about our art, how the page gives us a home and companion we carry with us and how it makes us more fully engaged with the world,” said Johnson. “And Travis is up for just about anything, which is always good in a poetry friend. We’ve taken a couple semi-literary road trips recently, to Seattle to see Dylan and over the North Cascades Highway to see the countryside that inspired Jack Kerouac’s novel ‘Desolation Angels.’ Travis knows more about Kerouac and the Beat Generation than anyone I know, which adds to his merits as an on-the-road buddy.”
Naught said his inspiration comes from everywhere.

“Mostly I am autobiographical,” said Naught. “Frequently I am considered shocking because I take advantage of the entire lexicon of English language and life’s experiences, desired or partaken in. People are often fucked up in life and my poetry goes there.”

Recently, Naught has been exploring more performance poetry, including slam poetry. A poetry slam is an event in which poets perform original work often consisting of poems that are meant to be heard rather than read.

“In May 2013 and 2014, I was able to compete on final stage against seven other local poets for an opportunity to represent Spokane in the national poetry slam,” said Naught. “At the end of each season, the top eight competitors go against each other to try and earn one of four spots to represent Spokane at the national level … I failed to make it in my first two seasons, but am trying hard to better my finish this year. Those competitions are judged by random audience members, so all I can do is perform my work to the best of my ability and pray some random strangers like it.”

In the meantime, Naught posts regularly on his blog and keeps nearly 300 Facebook followers up to date on his poems and books in between poetry events.

“Bottom line is, there’s a lot of work on the market and just so long as someone is reading poetry, they are probably doing something right with their lives,” said Naught.