Doc Janning is the 79-year-old, actively involved, Inaugural Poet Laureate of The City of South Euclid, Ohio. He has created Ekphrastic Poetry for Heights Arts and for Cleveland Photo Fest. Doc is currently pulling together an ekphrastic event he has created and is hosting at the Museum of American Porcelain Art in South Euclid, Ohio, as a ticketed, in-person fund-raiser for the Senior Landscaping Grant Program of One South Euclid, a local 501(c)(3) organisation. It is a program which helps seniors in the community pay for lawn care and snow plowing.

Doc is the Creator-Host of Awenites, a reading and open mic on Zoom, a Featured Reader for poetry events around the world, is included in twenty-six anthologies, has had individual poems published on La Hermosa Bruja and on PoemHunter.com, and has videos on youtube from a variety of readings.

Artist’s Statement:

As Inaugural Poet Laureate of South Euclid, OH,, an Ekphrastic Poet for Heights Arts, where I was Literary Artist of the Month for March 2020, and Cleveland Photo Fest, as a Writer-in-the-Window for National Novel Writing Month in 2019, and Creator-Moderator of Awenites online monthly poetry event, and Featured Reader for many other events, I proselytize for poetry in South Euclid and the wider community. I have visions of poetry workshops and readings in our schools, in every library, at senior centers, in rehab facilities, and in  juvenile detention centers.

I enjoy communicating with other poets locally, regionally, nationally, and around the world, working toward these goals.

We all have within us a spark of creativity, sparks need to be fanned and fed if they are to become reality. Too many who have the impulse to write or have written are discouraged or disparaged by others, and never begin or never share what they have created. I want to engage, encourage, and enable poets and writers of every genre, young or old, new to the craft or well-seasoned. 

My intent: To be among those who fan and feed those sparks, that they may become flames.