Publisher’s Blog

I’ve been taking advantage of my mini-vacation this week to do some things that I’ve never gotten around to doing.  I FINALLY got to check out the Common Grounds Coffee Bar tonight.  I thought this place was in Cleveland’s Ohio City district, but it was actually way out by airport, at the intersection of Lorain and Rocky River.  They are open 24-7-365!  How cool is that?  The place is small, but it could be made to work for a poetry show.  Cash only, no credit cards accepted, but that can be dealt with.  There was a Wallgreens across the street for access to quick cash.  The reason I walked out without getting anything and didn’t come back?  It was 12:30 AM and the place was full of kids.  Not a problem.  Many of these kids were likely minors, out violating Ohio’s curfew laws.  Okay, still not a problem to me, though I would be worried about the cops (who were out in massive force on Cleveland’s east side tonight) coming in to hassle them.  The big problem?  Damned near every one of these kids is smoking.  The place is full of smoke.  You can see it in the air, it is seeping out the doors.  To my knowledge, Common Grounds is NOT a hookah bar.

Yes, I voted for the smoking ban here in Ohio, and yes, I’d vote for it again.  The many bars that closed, claiming it hurt their business?  News flash: It was the economy, stupid.  Smokers are the minority, and now the rest of us can patronize bars and cafes that we would have previously avoided due to smoke.  If your establishment ignores the law and allows indoor smoking, you will not receive my business.  Period.  I will walk out and go someplace else.

(For the record, though, I have no issue whatsoever with bars and restaurants that built enclosed patios for smokers.)

Common Grounds can be scratched off the list of places I’d consider setting up a show at.  For that matter, scratch them off the list of places that I’ll attend someone else’s show at.  So disappointing.

The Poet’s Haven Celebrates Thirteen Years
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Massillon, Ohio, United States of America
October 13, 2010

The Poet’s Haven, publisher of an online literary journal and podcast series and promoter of live poetry and music events in northeast Ohio, announces the thirteenth anniversary of the press’s official launch and the upcoming event schedule.

The Poet’s Haven started out as publisher Vertigo Xi’an Xavier’s personal webpage on America Online back in late 1995.  Over the course of 1996 and early 1997, the small page began accepting and publishing submissions from other writers and artists.  By October 1997, it had grown to the point that it was relaunched at PoetsHaven.com and The Poet’s Haven made its official debut as an online press.  Today, PoetsHaven.com features over 6,000 pages of poetry, stories, and artwork, and has published work from more than 2,000 creators.

Celebrating the press’s tenth anniversary in 2007, the first “Saturday Night With The Poet’s Haven” open-mic event was held, recording the live performances for a podcast.  A second event was scheduled in April 2008, a third the following June, and from there the shows eventually became a regular monthly event.  “Saturday Night With The Poet’s Haven” shows are now held on the third Saturday of each month, rotating between Akron, Ohio and Cleveland, Ohio each month.

The Poet’s Haven has also taken over promotion of the poetry slam that is held during Canton, Ohio’s First Friday festival.  The show has been expanded to include featured poets as well as the open-mic and slam competitions.  Arts in Stark sponsors the poetry slam, with $50, $30, and $20 prizes going to first, second, and third place in the competition.

Saturday Night With The Poet’s Haven will be at Phoenix Coffee in South Euclid on October 16, featuring music from Nick Wilkinson and with featured poets Jill Riga and Lee McKinstry.

Nick Wilkinson began his music career sometime around his sophomore year of high school with a few friends. Playing bass and doing vocals, the punk-ish band was rocking the world, or at least small parts of Ohio. After that project dissolved, Nick began attending the University of Akron. Now wielding a beat up Johnson acoustic guitar and pretending he knows a thing or two about a thing or two, he writes and plays songs about those things or twos.

Jill Riga graduated in 2007 with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the first graduating class of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program. She is also a fairly decent dancer and smells good. Her favorite shoe is the left one. Her poetry has appeared in Moonlit Magazine and in the drug-induced visions of used car salesmen everywhere.

Lee McKinstry is a 19-year-old Cleveland Native who has been writing, doodling, and somehow marking up papers since she was five.  She is currently a student at the College of Wooster.  She has participated in Playhouse Square’s SlamU! program, and has been on Cleveland’s National Youth Poetry Slam team the past two years.  She spends most of her time in flannel, looking for lost pens.

November 20’s Saturday Night With The Poet’s Haven event will be at Angel Falls in Akron, with featured poets Steve Brightman and Eric “Verbal Influence” Odum.

Steve Brightman is 1/4 cup dijon and whole grain mustard, 1/4 cup honey, 1/4 cup ground coffee, and 1/4 cup deep dark molasses. He lives in Kent, Ohio, with his pionus parrot and thinks that PNC park is the finest cathedral in North America. His poems have been featured in “Pudding House,” “Kansas City Voices,” “Origami Condom,” “My Favorite Bullet,” and he was included in the Ohio Bicentennial Anthology titled “I Have My Own Song For It: Modern Poems about Ohio.”

Eric “Verbal Influence” Odum is a 20-year-old poet hailing from Cleveland, Ohio. He has been part of Playhouse Square’s SlamU! program for the past five years. He is a peer mentor, running workshops and working on a personal level with teens on performance and writing. He was part of Cleveland’s National Youth Poetry Slam team for the past three years. He also runs a poetry group called Spit Poet Spit, which performed at Urbean Joe’s Coffee this past September. Eric is the founding member of an after school poetry group called New Age Poets. He started writing at the age of nine and began performing at fifteen. He has released one chapbook, “Unspoken Declarations,” and has a CD in the works called “Verbal Therapy.”

Canton’s First Friday Poetry Spectacular will feature Trenchcoat Manifesto on November 5 and Robert Miltner on December 3.

Trenchcoat Manifesto is poet Tom Adams and artist/musician Richard Hearn. Adams and Hearn combine spoken word and audio samples (both found and manufactured) with original music and multi-media art for spinning tales culled from just-beneath-the-surface of everyday life and the abstract and sometimes bizarre depths of the human condition.  Tom Adams began developing his craft in the mid 1980’s and has performed his work at open-mics and organized poetry events around the Northeast Ohio area and beyond, including Mac’s Backs, Border’s Books, the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, the Barking Spider Tavern, Spaces Gallery, and Shakespeare & Company in Paris. Tom has published chapbooks of his work, including “Lament for The Fallen Soldier.”  Richard Hearn has been involved in the Northeast Ohio art and music scene since 1980, playing in local underground “alt.art” bands of note – Uzizi and Breakfast In India, and working in the visual mediums of painting, photography and mixed-media sculpture. In the late 80’s, Richard worked on more experimental audio projects, including cut-up assemblages of field recordings and an early collaboration with Tom Adams, before forming his own band, Angst Café (1989-1995) which released the EP “Sad Venus.” Besides performing at local clubs and regional festivals, Angst Café presented multimedia events at venues around Northeast Ohio that included performances by local poets and artists. During this period Richard also began to experiment with digital photography, at first by digitizing his 35mm film images for further treatment in PhotoShop, to working entirely in the digital realm, and later experimenting with analog/digital video loops.

Robert Miltner teaches literature and creative writing at Kent State Stark. He is the author of “Hotel Utopia,” selected by Tim Seibles as winner of the New Rivers Press book prize, and a dozen chapbooks, including “Against the Simple” (Wick chapbook award). Miltner has published poems in “Artful Dodge,” “Barrow Street,” “LIT,” “Diagram,” “Pleiades,” “Prose Poem,” “Sleeping Fish,” and “Sentence,” and short fiction in “Istanbul Literary Review,” “Apple Valley Review,” “Storyglossia,” “Ophelia Street,” “Perigee,” and “Christmas Stories from Ohio.” He is working on a novel, “Tempest,” and edits “The Raymond Carver Review” (http://dept.kent.edu/english/RCR/).

For more information on The Poet’s Haven and Poet’s Haven events, visit:
http://www.PoetsHaven.com
http://www.facebook.com/PoetsHaven
http://www.facebook.com/FirstFridayPoetry

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Starting with last night’s First Friday Poetry Spectacular, we have changed the order of things so that the open-mic now starts first.  It is about 8:00, and a kid (I’ll be nice and won’t identify him here) arrives and walks up to me.

“I was here earlier, but didn’t see the list.  Can I still go?”

“When were you here?”

“That guy was still going.”

“What guy?”

“The headliner guy.”

“You mean the featured poet?”

“Yeah, he was still reading when I got here earlier.”

“Hmmm. That’s strange.  ‘Cause he hasn’t read yet.”

“What?”

“Yeah, we changed the order.  The open-mic starts first now.”

“Oh, well, I guess I wasn’t here then…”

“You can still sign up for the slam, the list is over by the sign.”

He walks over to put his name on the list for the slam, and I duck back stage so nobody sees me cracking up laughing.

The Poet’s Haven turns 13 this Halloween!  For a limited time, you can pick up special edition Poet’s Haven “13” shirts in this new CafePress store:
http://www.cafepress.com/PoetsHaven13

Again, these will only be available for a limited time, so get your order in ASAP!

I’m in line at the gas station earlier tonight.  There’s a gal in front of me picking up a few items.  I glance at what she’s buying, and have to force myself to keep a straight face.  She finishes paying and leaves.  As I place my coffee on the counter, I can’t help it anymore.  I burst out laughing.  The cashier asks, “What’s so funny?”

“That, there, was almost every man’s dream.”

She raises and eyebrow.  “What do you mean?”

“A chick who runs to the store to pick up cigarettes and condoms.”

“Oh.”  She chuckles.  “Almost every man’s dream?  It’s not your dream?”

“No,” I reply.  “Rule number one.  I don’t date smokers.”

Rimshot!  Exit sliding door left!

I’ve got some photos from First Friday and Chalk the Walk posted on Facebook.  They should be viewable to the public.  Others are posting more and better photos as I type this, so feel free to search and network. 🙂
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2070092&id=1201537293

TONIGHT!!!

A word of warning to everyone: THIS SHOW WILL START ON TIME!  That’s “REAL TIME,” not the “poetry standard time” so many of us have become used to.  Unfortunately, the venue’s hours are shorter than they were last time we did a show there, so time is precious.  You can sign-up for the open-mic at 6:30, and the features WILL start AT 7:00.  Trust me, you do NOT want to miss these features!

Attention all Canton First Friday Poetry people!  We need to assemble a street team for July’s event.  Literally.  See, July’s First Friday theme is “Chalk the Walk,” and I’ve gotten the okay to have a team of poets write haiku and short poems on the walkways of downtown Canton.

Some rules will apply.  Everything’s got to be all-ages appropriate, and certain areas will be off-limits.  (They’ll be marked off with tape, areas for artists to do their sidewalk art.)  Original material will be welcome as well as pieces from poets of all eras.

Let me know if you want to join the team!

Final plans will be announced once I know how many people are on board.  I would like everyone meet beforehand with lists of poems and haiku that they plan to use, so we can make sure nobody duplicates any of the pieces.  We can also coordinate things on the map, assign certain areas to each poet so that we can be sure to cover the entire arts district.  Chalk will be provided.

This is in part inspired by my friend Christina Brooks, who recently began chalking poetry on the sidewalk in front of her home near Detroit.  🙂

Anyone that wants to join in is welcome to do so, just contact me so we can coordinate everything.  Also, if you are unable to take part in the actual chalking, we could still use help gathering up short poems for this project.

Thanks!

–VX

Friday night’s Canton First Friday show went well. A HUGE thanks to Todd and Brennis from the Second April Gallerie for not chasing us out when we ran WAY past the time the show is supposed to be wrapped up. Vince Robinson delivered an awesome set to start the night. (I’ll have to get Vince booked for a Saturday Night show next year so we can get him in the podcast!)

Something new we’ll be doing: Since I started emceeing this show, folks have been asking if there is some way we can get a little more exposure for the slam winners. So, starting this month, we’ll have a camera rolling during the slam and video of the winners will be posted on YouTube.

This month, Kedric Wolfe placed third and first place resulted in a tie between Blu and February Luv. To try to break the tie, we had a POETRY DEATH MATCH. (Yes, that has to be all caps, it is a rule.) Unfortunately, the POETRY DEATH MATCH also resulted in a tie. Since we didn’t have time to go another round, it was decided that first and second place would be left tied, and the prize money for both was split down the middle.

Did I mention that Arts in Stark provides the prize money? And that BR Square sponsored the featured poet?

Anyway, here’s the video of the winners. Due to YouTube’s 10 minute time limit, the POETRY DEATH MATCH was uploaded separately, and can be viewed directly below this video.

Two new episodes of the Saturday Night With The Poet’s Haven podcast have gone online!

Episode 32 features the poetry of Tangina Stone, Debbie Goings, Crutch, The Dude, and Marlana-Patrice, with music by Ramona Stone.

Episode 33 features poetry from Tangina Stone and Cavana Faithwalker with a poetry/music hybrid piece from AURAL Heather.

Stay tuned, more episodes are on the way!

Random Observations

Wearing compression stocking with shorts, I probably look like a dork.  But wearing shorts in our first 80+ day felt great. (Or did it hit 90?  It was 88 when I drove through downtown, and that was after 5:00.)

I had been working on a little blurb about “you know its spring when the poets read without shoes.”  I even had a picture from last month’s Deep Cleveland of a poet reading barefoot.  Walking around Canton’s First Friday tonight, after the poetry show was done, I realized that you also know it is spring when drunk gals are wandering from bar to bar in skirts so short you can see what color panties they are wearing.  I suppose I should just be glad they were wearing panties at all.

It is sad that I’ve become the cranky old geezer complaining about chicks wearing skimpy clothes.

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When I was a kid, I’d go with my mom to the Flower Factory for art supplies.  The place was awesome.  They had a whole room filled with nothing but painting supplies.  A whole isle filled with brushes, every size and shape of canvas one could want, and five or six isles full of paint.  They had thousands of bottles lined up, just of t-shirt paint.  I could go there and pick out specific SHADES that I wanted.  I never had to mix paints to make a color, I could just paint right from the bottle.  (Before anyone asks, I would use tracing paper to copy splash-page images from comic books, then crayon on the other side of the tracing paper to make a temporary transfer, iron the image to a shirt, and then paint it.  I was pretty good at it, even eventually modifying images into original poses and designing backs and name logos myself.)  I’ve recently found myself in need of some art supplies and sign-making items.  Not having a Flower Factory membership, I first went to Pat Catan’s and Michael’s.  Walking through isles of paints and drawing supplies and sketchbooks and the like, I really miss being in an artist studio, drawing and painting.  That aside, not finding what I needed at multiple locations, I decided to try to get in to the Flower Factory.  Turns out, they’ll give anyone a membership now.  (You used to have to have a vendors license, which I did have at one point but didn’t renew when I realized I didn’t need one for the type of business I’m running.)  Unfortunately, the Flower Factory I remember from when I was a child no longer exists.  The store I found myself in looked like Dollar General meets a Michael’s that’s going out of business.  Their entire paint selection was half of one isle, and wasn’t even 20% of what the smallest Pat Catan’s I visited had in stock.  They also didn’t have the display sign items I needed, but what they did have in that department made even Office Max’s paltry selection look extensive.  Another memory of youth, down the drain.

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On a forum question-and-answer thing, I saw the question “What is a normal allowance for a 10-year-old?”  Replies were in the $15 to $20 range.  When the hell did this happen?  Has inflation gone up that much that a ten-year-old needs twenty bucks a week?  When I was that age, I got a dollar a week.  When my little sisters were that age, they got a dollar a week.  When comic books went up to $1.25 each, I still only got a dollar a week.  Hell, as a teenager, I only got paid $12 for mowing the yard, and we had a whole acre!  Being generous, and using that same “cost of a comic book” guide, a kid’s allowance should be no more than $5 a week.  Most comic books cost $3.99 each, so that’ll leave room for the next round of inflation.  Not that kids can ride to the corner store and buy comics any more…

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I think I have a thing for eyes.  Look at all the fliers I’ve designed over the past year.  Notice a frequent trend?  I tend to go for photos that highlight the featured poets’ eyes.  Even the pic of Tabitha Katt on the ad logo highlights her eyes.  I don’t know why this is, I just like it when the poets are staring out at you.  Perhaps something about the eyes, like a poet’s work on the page, being a window to the soul.  Then again, my definition of “soul” varies pretty drastically from what a religious or spiritual person will tell you.

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I got asked tonight, “Do you know of any other shows where I can read poetry?”  Oh, yes.  Do I!

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People need to start posting shows on neopoets.org.  It isn’t my personal calendar, people.  Share, share, share!

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My stack of poetry books near the computer has reached above eye level.  Methinks I need to get these things on a shelf.

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I think I need to do more posts like this.  I come up with random crap I wanna say all the time, but the most I can ever manage to do with it is a Facebook status update.  I need to start collecting these thoughts for blog use.

That’s all for now…

Tonight!  Come check out the First Friday festival in downtown Canton, OH!  I’ll be emceeing the poetry open-mic and slam at the Second April Art Gallerie.  The slam has CASH PRIZES for the winners!  $50 for first place, $30 and $20 for second and third places!  7:30 PM, don’t miss it!

And coming in May, Arts in Stark and The Poet’s Haven present Canton’s First Friday Poetry Spectacular!  The show’s start time will be moved a half-hour earlier, to 7:00 PM, allowing us to include a featured poet.  Our first featured poet will be Vince Robinson!  A huge thank you to BRsq.org for sponsoring this show!

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who came to Angel Falls last night and made this our most successful show yet!  Standing room only, not only during Laraine’s feature and T.M. and Zach’s set, but well into the open-mic part of the evening. 😀

Just a note:  I spent some time today working through the submission queue.  One new story and 45 new poems have been added to the galleries.  There’s more for me to get through, but my mind is starting to turn into marmalade.  Not the best way to review poems and stories, so the rest will have to wait for another night.

After a few days of me chaotically bouncing around, trying to get too many things done at once, your patience is now rewarded. 😉

Two new podcast episodes are available for your listening pleasure!  Episode 30 features poetry from Jason Floyd Williams, Dave Meyer, Amanda DiDonna, and Dianne Borsenik.  Episode 31 features poetry from Parker Amsel, Terry Provost, The Fidget, Steven B. Smith, and Jill Riga.  Both episodes feature music from Ramona Stone.  If you’re reading this on my blog, you can download the episodes from the column on the right.  If you’re reading this on Facebook, you can stream the episodes off my profile page.  You can also subscribe to the podcast through iTunes at (http://itunes.PoetsHaven.com).  Please, if you use iTunes, do subscribe!  The more subscribers we have, the higher ranked the podcast gets, and eventually they’ll take notice and feature the podcast in the iTunes store.

I can now confirm that one of the features for April 17th’s “Saturday Night With The Poet’s Haven” show at the Root Cafe in Lakewood will be Vlad Swirynsky! 😀

Just a note, I can now confirm that April’s show will be at the Root Café in Lakewood. 😀

So, my internet connection has been sporadic of late.  As of right now, it works if we connect a computer directly to the modem, but the modem won’t connect to any of our routers, so only one computer can be online at a time.  I seized control of the connection yesterday, and spent the last two days catching up on a week’s worth of stuff.  Not fun.

I’ve also got some podcast work done.  If all goes according to plan, there’ll be at least one new episode up for your listening pleasure this week.  May’s show had some microphone problems, and tweaking the audio is taking a bit more time than normal, so no promises about a second episode.  I’m also going to try to get the audio from several more shows prepped for the podcast before I do more “block outs.” (That’s where I take all the pieces, written on little “blocks” of paper with the runtime logged on them, and plan what goes in to each episode.  Think how you’ve seen TV schedules planned out in movies.)  I know there’s material recorded in August that I’d like to combine with material from June and material from July that might go well with material from May and… yeah, you get the idea.

This coming Friday, March 5th, come to Canton, Ohio for the First Friday Poetry Slam!  Downtown Canton has a big art festival every First Friday.  There’s a poetry open-mic and slam competition, sponsored by Arts in Stark (and emceed by yours truly), at the Kathleen Howland Theatre, under the 2nd April Art Galerie.  You can sign-up to read or perform at 7:30 PM, with the open-mic starting at 8:00.  Also, come early!  The theater will be hosting a special reading of the poetry of Pablo Neruda at 6:30, organized by the Canton Symphony Opera.

Then don’t forget about this month’s Saturday Night With The Poet’s Haven event!  March 20th, we’ll be at Angel Falls in Akron.  The features are Laraine Seidl and T.M. Göttl with music by Zach!  This show is not to be missed!  (Saturday Night With The Poet’s Haven is NEVER to be missed!)

Okay, now I find it is an hour later than I planned to have this finished.  Time to call it a night!

Don’t forget, tonight is Saturday Night With The Poet’s Haven at Blue Arrow Records, featuring the music of Blackwell and the poetry of Miles Budimir and Azalea Tidwell!!!

Open-mic sign-up is at 6:30, with the features starting at 7:00.  There is NO COVER, but please spend some money in the record store.  FREE refreshments will also be available.  (PUNCH AND PIE!)

Blue Arrow Records
16001 Waterloo Road – Cleveland, OH  44110
(about a block away from the Beachland Tavern)

See you there!

–VX

Since I know I’ll never find the time to screen print the Poet’s Haven t-shirts I’ve been talking about for two years now, I’ve gone ahead and updated the old Cafe Press store with the new logo, and plenty of new merchandise.

http://www.cafepress.com/poetshaven

Check it out!