John Burroughs

John B. Burroughs is a nationally touring northeast Ohio poet and publisher who co-founded the monthly Lix and Kix Poetry Extravaganza and yearly Snoetry: A Winter Wordfest. Named the 2022-23 U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate and 2019-21 Beat Poet Laureate for the State of Ohio by the National Beat Poetry Foundation, John is the author of The Wrest of the Worthwhile [2023, Far Queue Press], Rattle & Numb: Selected and New Poems, 1992-2019 [Venetian Spider Press], The Eater of the Absurd [NightBallet Press] and many chapbooks including, most recently, Awash [Pure Sleeze Press], Dogging Catastrophe [The Grind Stone], You Can't Trust It to Remain [Between Shadows Press], Loss and Foundering [NightBallet Press], Beat Attitude [NightBallet Press], It Takes More Than Chance to Make Change [Poet's Haven], Barry Merry Baloney [Spare Change Press], Water Works [Recycled Karma Press / Poet's Haven], and Electric Company [Writing Knights Press], as well as the collaborative books Oct Tongue -1 (with six other authors) [Crisis Chronicles Press] and Identity Crises (with Douglas Manson and Bree) [Green Panda Press]. John has also served as editor of Cheap and Easy Magazine, the anti-censorship anthology F#ck Poetry, the 2015 and 2016 Hessler Street Fair Poetry anthologies and two Best Cleveland Poem Competition anthologies.

Around the turn of the millennium, John served as a playwright and occasional music director in residence for the Ministry of Theatre at Marion Correctional Institution. In 2007, his blog (under the nom de plume Jesus Crisis) was ranked number 1 in several categories on MySpace. Since then, John won the first poetry slam he ever competed in, founded PoetryElyria and Lorain County Poets, hosted several poetry series, and has helped maintain the Cleveland Poetics blog and northeast Ohio literary calendar. Since 2008 has served as the founding editor of Crisis Chronicles Press, publishing important writers from Ohio and around the world. Since 2024 he has served as a vice president for the Ohio Poetry Association.