West Virginia Poet Added to Junior High Wall of Fame

Internet poet and cult-figure William F. DeVault has been honored with placement on a Junior High Wall of Fame in West Virginia.

"The Romantic Poet of the Internet" was recently solicited online (where else?) by Julius E. Jones, Jr, a History teacher at Richwood Junior High School in Richwood, West Virginia. Mr. Jones keeps a wall of autographed photos of West Virginians who have achieved fame and success in their chosen fields of endeavor, to encourage and inspire young people in his classes to dream big and aim high. The poet and author has expressed a desire to visit the school sometime this fall, to meet the students and "make sure my picture is straight."

Mr. DeVault lived in the Mountain State from 1966 until 1982, and many of his best loved early works, including "I should have been imortal", "monument" and "tread softly" were written during this period.

The poet is best known for his near-ubiquitous presence on the web, where he was a co-founder of the Poet's Place on America Online, host of the Romantic and Erotic Poetry Group chats for the AOL Writers Club, and won the 2001 Preditors and Editors Online Poll for both Poem of the Year and Poet of the Year.

Mr DeVault was named in 1997 "the Romantic Poet of the Internet" by Yahoo! and noted the irony of this latest honor, as the website for the high school he graduated from, Morgantown High School in Morgantown, West Virginia, makes no mention of him in their list of accomplished alumni.