Come to East Cleveland Public Library's poetry reading and open mic!

March’s featured reader is Chuck Salmons, a poet that has served as part of the leadership for the Ohio Poetry Association for more than a decade. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Chiron Review, Pudding Magazine, The Fib Review, Evening Street Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices. Chuck is a recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for poetry, and he performs with the poetry trio Concrete Wink.

April’s featured reader is Ali Black, a writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of We Look Better Alive (Burnside Review Press, 2025) and If It Heals At All (Jacar Press, 2020), which was selected by Jaki Shelton Green for the New Voices Series and named a finalist for the 2021 Ohioana Book Award in poetry. Her writing has appeared in The Offing, jubilat, Literary Hub, Muzzle Magazine, The Adroit Journal and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Balance Point Studios, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making, teaching, and sharing art.

May’s featured reader is Dr. Rosary-Joyce Kennedy, a local poet and an Adult Basic Education and Literacy practitioner from Cleveland, Ohio where she currently resides. She teaches English as a Second Language at a local non-profit. Dr. Kennedy has worked with various types of adult learners including educators, single teen parents, English Language Learners, the justice involved, and restored citizens in diverse settings including the carceral, school systems, community colleges, and non-profits. Her first poetry collections were Afro-Dei-She-Act, 1997, and herstoryinthemaking (copyright 1999), but The Journey of Other Sons is her first published chap book.