A Sad Loss for Ohio...

A sad loss for Ohio: I just got the news that Vertigo X Xavier, proprietor of The Poet's Haven, just passed away.
His bio on Goodreads said

Founder/publisher/editor of The Poet's Haven, slamministrator of the Lake Effect Poetry Team, founder of Envelit (a subscription-box program featuring poetry chapbooks), 2016 Presidential candidate (on the Nemesis Party ticket), and would-be world-conqueror.

Vertigo Xi'an Xavier

--but Vertigo was more than that. He was the center of a whirlwind.  Carla Thompson once called him "the hardest working man in poetry", and, for a while, he sure seemed to be-- he was everywhere; organizing the poetry community in Canton and Akron with readings and shows and slams, driving all across northern Ohio to set up the man with the sound system at readings organized by others, publishing a series of poetry anthologies and chapbooks, promoting (and attending) other peoples' readings, selling books at the Cleveland Ingenuity festival and elsewhere, administrating the Lake Effect Poetry slam team, and above all, keeping his website The Poet's Haven going for decade after decade.*
Surprisingly, in a community filled with poets of enormous ego and even larger self-promotions, Vertigo all about promoting other peoples' poetry--he was tireless in setting up readings, but very modest about his own poetry-- on rare occasion you might persuade him to read one of his own poems (and some of them were quite good), but much more commonly he was out front promoting everybody else.
He loved poetry, and devoted his life to promoting it in every way he could.
He will be remembered.
He will be missed.

Some appreciations:

• Juliet Cook: "A Very Sad Loss" (also at NEOpoets)
• John Burroughs: "Fair thee well, Vertigo Xi'an Xavier"
• Chris Cicirella Vertigo
• Video bio at Writing Knights
• Clevelandpoetics (from 2013): "The Hardest Working Man in Poetry"

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*(I once heard somebody claim that The Poet's Haven was the second-longest-running poetry site on the web; but Vertigo corrected me on that: fourth-longest. I wonder what the longest running one is?)

2019 Cleveland Inkubator Week

It's time for the 2019 Inkubator, organized by Literary Cleveland. The Cleveland Inkubator is Northeast Ohio's largest free annual festival for writers and readers! This year the conference will be held in coordination with the Cleveland Public Library's 150th anniversary celebration. Join us for writing workshops, craft talks, panels, readings, and a resource fair featuring all the greatest local bookstores, presses, lit journals, writing groups, and literary organizations.

See the full schedule and register for FREE today at https://www.litcleveland.org/events-programs/inkubator-2019.