John B. Burroughs

John B. Burroughs served as the National Beat Poetry Foundation’s 2022–2023 U.S. Beat Poet Laureate. Burroughs previously served for two years as Ohio’s Beat Poet Laureate. His poetry collections include The Wrest of the Worthwhile: Unselected, Uncollected and New Poems, 1983–2023 (Far Queue Press, 2023), Rattle & Numb: Selected & New Poems, 1992–2019 (Venetian Spider Press, 2019), The Eater of the Absurd (NightBallet Press, 2012), and over a dozen small press chapbooks.

Burroughs has edited several anthologies and journals, including Fuck Poetry (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2011), Oct Tongue - 1 (2014), Oct Tongue 2 (2017), and Cheap & Easy Magazinei (2013), all published by Crisis Chronicles Press, which Burroughs founded in 2008. He also edited two Hessler Street Fair Poetry anthologies. Burroughs served as playwright-in-residence for the Ministry of Theater at Marion Correctional Institution. He has also volunteered for the Ohio Poetry Association and curated several regular reading series in the Lake Erie region.