Welcome New Bloggers!

We have not one, but two new volunteers to join the clevelandpoetics blogging team!  In response to the "Help Wanted!  You wanna be a blogger?" post, two new people stepped up.

First, we'd like to welcome Lori Ann Kusterbeck to the team.

Lori is a native Clevelander, born, raised and educated in the Cleveland area (4th generation in fact!). She is also an adjunct faculty member who in her spare time teaches Philosophy, Humanities, and Bioethics. By day she juggles a full-time web content job for a large NE Ohio non-profit. With any remaining time, she's writing and submitting poetry and also maintaining her poetry website sincerelylori.com. You can also find her swing dancing, star gazing, spending time with her family and cheering for her son at soccer matches.
She writes -

Poetry is not a door. It is not a solid thing that closes the soul off to one side or the other. Rather, poetry is a door frame. It can give structure. It can be seen as an opportunity. It can be both the beginning (the first time you step through) or it can be the end (the last time you write about a loved one, the last time you write about a specific topic or write in a specific style). A door frame can come in any size, any material, or be painted any color. Ultimately, it represents an opening into somewhere else. I believe a great poem can transport you to a time or place, to relive an emotion or an experience. That's why I believe that poetry is a door frame, not just a door. A great poem can take you there and back again, walking back and forth underneath the "frame" of poetry. Really good poets will lead you through many different door frames. This is what I aspire to with my writing: that it will be said of my collection of work that I led my readers through many different frames, many journeys, and that they emerged richer in the end. 

 And, not to be outdone, we also welcome Catherine Criswell to the team. Catherine is a resident of Shaker Heights, and the mother of two daughters. She is a civil-rights attorney who enjoys writing poetry. She can be found performing her poetry at venues in and around the Cleveland area, such as Mac's Backs and The Barking Spider. For the past year, she has been the host of a new poetry & prose series titled "Mondays at Mahall's" at Mahall's 20 Lanes in Lakewood, Ohio (which still operates its vintage bowling lanes!). Her hobbies include running, hiking, cooking, reading, and travel.

• Back\words & For/words by Lori Ann Kusterbeck (Poets Haven Author Series, 2013)
• Growing Girls by Catherine Criswell (Writing Knights Press, 2011)