Ten Years Old!

Clevelandpoetics: the blog just turned ten years old, with the first post by Michael Salinger announcing the blog on July 17, 2008.

Happy birthday to us! There's been 1,181 posts since then-- oops, that's 1,182 now-- and it's hard to believe we're still going. Year 11, here we come!

Now, with that said, if we're going to survive another year, I have to say we need your help-- we've always needed your help, and we need it now more than ever.  The blog isn't a one-man show: this blog belongs to the Cleveland poetry community: this blog is your blog.  

So, we want you to contribute. Join the team!  We want you!  Write up what happened at a poetry reading you attended, or a slam, or an author reading! Tell us about your philosophy of poetry, or why poetry is dead (or isn't dead)! Tell us why Cleveland is unique! Tell us about a poet we don't know, or about a part of the Cleveland poetry community that we haven't been covering-- Cleveland poetry is a big, big tent, and we each sometimes only see our only little corner of it: show us where poetry lives in your community.

Please-- we need you! We don't want your money-- Clevelandpoetics: the blog has been free (and ad-free!) since the beginning.  What we want is your posts.

Want to join team? Want to just write a guest post?  We want you.  Write us at clevelandpoetics@gmail.com and volunteer to join the team now!

Help! New Bloggers Wanted!

Clevelandpoetics: the blog is a community effort.  We want you to help!

Really: we want your contributions.  We need your contributions.  We value your contributions.

If you've ever wanted to contribute, and were just waiting for an invitation: here's your invitation.  The blog is open to the community, and you are invited to contribute. Join the team!

Every year there are new voices in the Cleveland poetry community, and we want to hear them.

Do you have anything to say about the poetry community?  We're looking for contributors!  Do you go to poetry readings, want to make comments on the local poetry scene, want to share your opinions on contemporary poetry?  Join us!

We want you to tell us about writing, tell us about reading, tell us about the poetry scene, about your obsessions, who you like, who you hate, how poetry should be.  Tell us about writing in our sports-obsessed, poetry-infested, hot-blooded city, or about anything you think fits somehow in the Cleveland Poetics topic. It's as much work-- or as little-- as you like.  Write a post when you have something to say, or don't if you don't-- there's no minimum activity.  Know somebody else who you think would be a good blogger? Pass the invite along!

If you'd like to join the blogging team here at clevelandpoetics, we're open: leave a note in the comments.  Or drop me an email at clevelandpoetics@gmail.com and tell me you want to be a blogger.

Here's your chance to express yourself, and contribute to the community. Join the team!

Now We Are Six

On Thursday, July 17, Clevelandpoetics: the blog turned six years old.

Michael Salinger set up the blog and made the first post, "Welcome to Clevelandpoetics – the blog!" on Thursday, July 17, 2008, followed in quick order by posts from Joshua Gage, Sara Holbrook, Bree, Larry Smith, Steve Ferguson, and Mark S. Kuhar.

Happy birthday, Clevelandpoetics.

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)

Welcome to a New Blogger

A few weeks back, I'd posted a note asking for new bloggers, to add some fresh voices to clevelandpoetics.

 I'd like to welcome a new blogger to the team, Brandon Stroud.

Brandon is an Experimental Artist (Actor, Director, Poet, Event Planner, Entrepreneur) and Educator from Mentor, Ohio.

He writes:

As an artist, my primary medium is ‘Thought.’ My work allows me to be an explorer of the unknown depths of the human mind, traveling uncharted territories. My journey is never-ending [like ideas]. My discoveries are rich - often new forms of art or new modes of thinking.

I wish to be a pioneer  - probing the Last Frontier (The Imagination) - "adding to the stock of available reality," [R. P. Blackmur].

I am guided by the spirit of play and a sense of community. The essence of all my work is Simpleand Youthful,  Primitive and Ritualistic, Interactive and Multi-Sensory, Innovative and Experimental.

Don't think inside the box, don't think outside the box, think, there is no box.
 

Welcome, Brandon!

--and check out his site, experimental poetry, and his facebook page. 

Help Wanted! You Wanna Be a Blogger?

Help Wanted!

You wanna be a blogger?
We need you! Yes, you!
 You could be famous in the neighborhood! 

The clevelandpoetics blog needs new contributors.  This blog is not a one-person show, it's a collaborative effort of a raft of volunteers, and we're short on help.  We rely on you-- the poetic community of Cleveland-- to contribute.   Every year I see new voices beginning to speak in the Cleveland poetry community, and we need to hear what you have to say.  Join us!

You got something to say?  We're waiting to hear it!  You go to poetry readings, want to make comments on the local poetry scene, want to share your opinions on contemporary poetry?  Join us!  You think that the blog sucks rocks, and think you could do better?  We'd like to see you try!

We want you! We need you!   We can't live without you!

Tell us about the Cleveland poetry scene, about your muse, about trying to write in a cold-blooded city, about asphalt and poetry; tell us about our sports-obsessed, poetry-infested, hot-blooded city,

Do I need to say it again? Well, we want you! Yes, you!  You know who you are.

If you'd like to join the blogging team here at clevelandpoetics, we're open: leave a note in the comments, or drop me an email and say so!

No pay, just glory, and the chance to express yourself. Join the team!

Bloggers wanted!

We need new blood! The clevelandpoetics blog-- yeah, this here blog, the one you're reading right now this very second-- is looking for some new contributors. It's been three years since we last added any fresh names to the blog team, and, well, ya know, so maybe we're getting a little stale. I've seeing a lot of new faces in the Cleveland poetry community, and it's time we opened up the blog to some new voices to see what you have to say.

You got opinions about the Cleveland poetry scene, about poetry, about writing, about our rust-enshrouded, poem-encrusted city? Or, maybe you hate what you see here, and tell all your friends "I could write better 'n that, why don't they let me in?" You think you might wanna join the quixotic collective of lovable misfits that we call "the clevelandpoetics staff infection"? Well, we want you! Yes, you! Now's your chance! Let's see what you got!

If you'd like to join the blogging team here at clevelandpoetics, we're open: leave a note in the comments, or drop me an email at clevelandpoetics@ironangels.net and say so!

No rules, no hours, no salesman will call, no pay. Join the team!