Nationally, Cleveland State University is known for three things, according to literary aficionados: its men’s basketball program, its College of Urban Affairs and Education, and its Poetry Center.
While this might seem surprising to some, the CSU Poetry Center, which has existed since 1962, publishes two to five books a year with national distribution and maintains a backlist of more than 200 titles. Over the years, books it has published have received numerous awards, including one being named the best poetry book of the year by The New York Times.
Now, on the heels of shuttering WCSB, its popular community radio station, CSU is considering axing the Poetry Center’s publishing arm, despite the fact that it maintains a healthy budget and reportedly pays for itself through contests and book sales. Critics say the move reflects a university that, after seeing enrollment drop from 16,000 to 14,000 students in the past decade, is making ill-conceived cuts in crisis mode, neglecting the liberal arts, and slashing programs like WCSB and the Poetry Center that make CSU a special place.
In the past year, CSU has made numerous cuts to balance its budget. In 2025, as part of a 2023-2025 restructuring plan, CSU discontinued 22 academic programs, suspended 14 programs, and reopened admissions to another four. CSU also cut wrestling, women’s golf and women’s softball.
A source close to the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing their job, said the loss of the Poetry Center’s nationally renowned press would be devastating. Initially called the Cleveland Poetry Center when it opened in 1962, the CSU Poetry Center has promoted poetry through free public readings and community outreach, including a monthly open poetry workshop. In 1971, the center expanded its mission by opening a nonprofit independent poetry press.
“The lifeblood of the [English] department is the Poetry Center,” the individual said. “It’s the best thing we do.”
Former Poetry Center director Caryl Pagel, who left her position last year but continues to teach at the university, agreed. “The CSU Poetry Center has published a wide range of award-winning, culture-shifting books that deserve to stay in print,” she wrote in a statement. Pagel has published four books of poetry, cofounded the independent publisher Rescue Press, and recently was awarded the Lorine Niedecker Fellowship, which supports research into the 20th century poet’s life and work.
“In the last decade alone we published such impactful work as the selected poems of Cleveland Arts Prize winner Russell Atkins and the English translation of Maya Abu Al-Hayyat’s novel No One Knows Their Blood Type, which won the Palestine Book Award for translation. Books published in Cleveland are making their mark around the world. The closure of the press would be a loss to the city, students, and contemporary literature,” she said.
Philip Metres, a professor at John Carroll University and author of 13 books, including two published by the CSU Poetry Center press, said the loss of the press would hurt Cleveland’s literary community.
“The press has been an absolute stalwart, it’s become one of the touchstones of Cleveland’s literary community,” he said. “And all of that has ceased, more or less, and there’s this attempt to repackage it as something not related to the press. They’re making a choice to change priorities and it’s very disappointing. I wish Cleveland would still have that press alive. It’s hard to know what’s lost in the disappearance of an institution, but for those of us who have experienced its support, we feel it at a gut level.”
Potential closure
In addition to publishing books, the Poetry Center has historically run the Lighthouse Reading Series, which brought nationally known writers to Cleveland for free public readings and talks; operated the Anisfield-Wolf Fellowship in Writing and Publishing, awarding one fellowship annually to a rising writer; hosted and curated the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts (NEOMFA) Writers and Work colloquium, providing students opportunities to hear from working writers; offered graduate assistantships; and partnered with community organizations while maintaining a blog.
Cuts to the Poetry Center have been in the works for at least a year, internal documents show. According to a July 2025 letter obtained by Scene, Andy Kersten, dean of arts and sciences at Cleveland State University, directed Department of English Chair Adam Sonstegard to develop a new plan for the Poetry Center outlining “how the Poetry Center needs to change.”
“Designing the next iteration of the CSU Poetry Center needs to adhere to some key principles,” the memo states. “First, the Poetry Center needs to operate on a balanced budget that does not utilize carry forward dollars. Second, the Poetry Center must have clearly identifiable outcomes that align with the Strategic Plan for CSU. Again, I suggest that the Poetry Center focus its work on students.”
The memo states the Poetry Center will close in June 2026 without an approved plan.
CSU responds
CSU issued a statement denying it plans to close the Poetry Center, noting that the Poetry Center is the university’s oldest research center. Kristin Broka, associate vice president for marketing and communications, said by email that CSU President Laura Bloomberg, College of Arts and Sciences Dean Andy Kersten, and English Department chair Adam Sonstegard were unavailable for comment.
“As a research center, the Poetry Center is meant to be financially self-sustaining,” the university said in a statement. “The Poetry Center’s current independent press operations are not financially sustainable, prompting a review of the program’s long-term structure and future direction. As such, we are exploring a variety of options such as outsourcing distribution and printing-on-demand to achieve financial stability allowing for continuing publication. We are in the early stages of this research.
“The CSU Poetry Center is more than just an independent press – it is a hub to advance creative writing in Northeast Ohio whose literary programming has earned local and national prominence. There are no plans to close the CSU Poetry Center. Moving forward, the Center will continue to focus on community engagement and student-focused activities, hosting guest poets and writers and special events.”
As word has begun to spread about the Poetry Center’s possible closure, CSU has begun issuing a similar statement to CSU faculty members and colleagues.
Contradictory claims
Despite these assertions, documents obtained by Scene make it clear that CSU intends to shutter the Poetry Center’s publishing arm.
English department chair Andy Sonstegard wrote on April 13 to faculty in the English Department at CSU: “Our colleagues in the Poetry Center provided unique and beneficial learning experiences for graduate students, interns, and volunteers that made them fully aware of the expectations and experience of professional publishing. It was work that made them better readers and writers, and that helped them transition to professional lives. Regrettably, CSU’s decline in enrollment and its subsequent revenue losses have made support for the Poetry Center difficult, and it must now re-align itself with the university’s mission.”
“We will have the chance in coming years to re-conceive poetry, less as a thing published on the page, and more as an experience we can teach our students, perform in readings, dramatize on the stage, and model in the University- and broader communities.”
Former Poetry Center associate director Hilary Plum, who resigned from her position last fall but continues to teach at CSU, said via email that cutting the press would effectively gut the Poetry Center, noting that many programs, including the Lighthouse Reading Series and the Anisfield-Wolf Fellowship, have already either been eliminated or gone dormant. According to the Poetry Center website, submissions for the fellowship are closed and no Lighthouse Reading Series events have taken place since 2025. The Anisfield-Wolf Fellowship is named for and supported by the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards at the Cleveland Foundation.
“The CSU Poetry Center was placed into a state of suspension in summer 2025,” Plum wrote. Plum is a celebrated writer who has written novels, poetry books, and essay collections, co-edits the Open Prose Series at Rescue Press, and co-hosts a podcast. “The Poetry Center’s last remaining open contract from 2025, for a book scheduled to be published in fall 2026 [Gold Country by Venesha Pravin], is being fulfilled by its distributor, the Ohio State University Press. The Poetry Center won’t be editing or publishing this book itself – even though the CSUPC’s former editors selected this exceptional manuscript from almost 900 submissions.”
“A press that isn’t publishing its own books anymore would usually not be considered operational,” she added.
Finances and internal disputes
Despite CSU’s assertion that the center is losing money, critics maintain the Poetry Center self-funds many of its programs, including its publishing arm.
Plum wrote in an email that, according to a budget statement from July 2025, the Poetry Center had more than $100,000 in available funds, in addition to an endowment of more than $70,000. She described this as a “healthy budget.” It is not clear what would happen to the endowment if the press closes.
“For a small literary press with modest expenses, this constitutes several years’ annual budget in reserve,” wrote Plum. “The CSU Poetry Center funds its own books and programs. The university supports labor at the Center, but historically CSU does not pay for the Poetry Center’s book publishing – that’s funded by the Center’s independent, self-sustaining budget (which receives income from book sales, reading fees, occasional small grants and gifts).”
“If they [members of the CSU administration] are asserting that the press is not financially sustainable, to my mind that is the only thing they can mean: that they find the expense of faculty and staff working there to be unsustainable,” she added, noting that the costs of staffing the Poetry Center add up to “less than the cost of a single full-time faculty position at CSU.”
“CSU admin can of course change their mind about whether they can afford or would like to pay labor costs,” added Pagel. “The press’s finances were robust.”
Plum said members of the English Department have proposed multiple changes to the Poetry Center over the past year, all “aimed at staffing it sufficiently at an efficient cost, increasing undergraduate-facing programs, and maintaining a balanced budget,” but the university denied those requests. After Plum and Pagel left, the administration appointed English professor Mike Geither, a playwright with no experience running a poetry press, as interim director.
University spokesperson Kristin Broka did not respond to follow-up questions seeking documentation on how CSU is losing money through the Poetry Center, leaving the university’s rationale unclear.
“A death spiral”
Both Plum and Pagel told Scene they left because they were not given adequate administrative support. Pagel alone was reading about 900 books each spring, evaluating them for possible publication by the Poetry Center press alongside book production, training, and directing responsibilities. Time worked exceeded hours compensated across all three (part- or quarter- time) positions, she said. Unlike previous-to-Pagel years, no full-time position was connected to the Poetry Center.
In an email, Plum stated: “The Poetry Center is essentially no longer functioning other than to sell the books it has already published. Its staff has been dramatically reduced. There is no real plan, as far as anyone can tell, to resume publishing books. The press is now seemingly cut off from two of its major income sources: sales from newly released books and reading fees from submissions. For a small business, this kind of situation is a death spiral.”
Plum further responded that Mike Geither was appointed director without input from CSU faculty or a search process. Whereas Geither has no experience in publishing poetry, in the past, directors would have been hired through national searches. Plum offered to serve as interim director after Pagel stepped down, but the university did not respond. Plum and Pagel, who are both women, also raised concerns about equity, noting the job responsibilities were higher than for other faculty and pay was lower.
“It’s worth noting that CSU can close down its longstanding literary press but keep the CSU Poetry Center open in name,” Plum wrote via email. “That is, the administration can shut down the literary press that has been known for 50 years by the name CSU Poetry Center, but keep some sort of room open on campus that does very little, hosts an event or two, and call this a ‘Poetry Center.’ This way, they would not have to officially admit they were closing the Center, even though they had shut down all the activities for which it was known. As far as we can tell, this is exactly what is happening now.”
In a statement, Pagel also decried the university’s starvation of the Poetry Center for resources. “The fact that students, partners, and authors have not received communication about the backlist, contracts, or past programs from current leadership for most of a year might lead one to believe they are not taking the Center’s literary community seriously,” she said. “Authors especially deserve a plan of action concerning the future of their books and contracts.”
Both Pagel and Plum say they came to CSU to work at the CSU Poetry Center. “I love teaching,” Pagel wrote. “CSU students are smart, fun, curious and hard-working. They’re great writers and innovative thinkers. I wish they had been included in the process around the future of the press and center. My respect for their experiences – alongside the loss to authors and the Cleveland literary community – makes the future feel less certain for sure.”
CSU authors react
Recently, a group of authors sent a letter to the CSU administration expressing concern.
The letter reads, in part: “We are writing as CSU Poetry Center authors, literary citizens, and stakeholders in the literary publishing world at large. CSU Poetry Center is an important publisher, literary archive, and piece of poetry history. It has published some of the most significant names in American and international poetry, and has stewarded challenging innovative poetic works for over six decades, achieving a longevity rarely seen in independent publishing. The Poetry Center has been foundational to each of our careers, as well as our capacities to build literary community and engage publicly with some of the most crucial issues of our day. We’re writing today with some questions that we believe are in the public interest, as CSU authors: Our understanding is that the press has stopped operations and is being ‘revisioned.’ We’re hoping you can clarify further what this revisioning entails.”
The letter, signed by more than 50 authors published by the press over the years, asks whether the press is closing; how authors will be updated; what this means for their work; how contracts, books and other press business will be handled if the CSU Poetry Center closes or is paused; and how authors will be compensated if books go out of print.
CSU has not addressed those specific concerns, instead reissuing the same statement it provided to Scene, signed by Kersten, Sonstegard and Geither.
Rebecca Stafford, a professor at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, and author of the poetry book Vow, published by the CSU Poetry Center Press, said the Poetry Center is a national gem and its closure would be felt across the local, regional and national literary community. She said CSU should be treasuring the Poetry Center because it benefits the university.
“CSU is citing enrollment losses as making the Poetry Center difficult, but the Poetry Center is rare in itself,” Stafford said. “It has several years of its annual budget in reserve. That speaks to the fact that the university doesn’t recognize the jewel that it has. They should be touting the Poetry Center instead of wanting to put it into the bin.”
What comes next
An anonymous source said Poetry Center staff are communicating with authors about the possible closure and seeking a community partner to take over the press if the university eliminates it. The source said the most likely outcome is that the press will disappear and the university will maintain the Poetry Center in name only, as a reduced version of its former self, possibly continuing limited programming.
“The center might stay and the press might go somewhere else,” said the source.
The source said the situation reflects misdirected spending priorities and a lack of concern about the liberal arts. “It’s all about turning CSU into a job factory, just like the state of Ohio wants,” they said.
As for the future, the timeline remains uncertain, though the Poetry Center may have more clarity by September, they said.
The source said they do not see a path forward for saving the press at CSU and that the only hope is to transfer it to another nonprofit partner to operate independently. That remains to be determined, and neither CSU nor any potential partner has disclosed further details.
One potential partner is Literary Cleveland, a local literary arts nonprofit. Executive Director Matt Weinkam confirmed the organization was contacted by CSU about the press’s future, but said it has no plans at this time.
“CSU Poetry Center is an innovative publishing leader, and closing the press would be devastating nationally and locally,” he said in a statement. “Literary Cleveland has not made any commitments toward the future of the press at this time, but we will continue to partner with them in any way we can to support the broader literary ecosystem. The best way to ensure the Poetry Center’s future and legacy is for CSU to continue supporting this vital press as it has for more than 50 years.”
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