Second Tuesday Poetry featuring 2023 Sixteen Rivers Press authors Matthew M. Monte & Joseph Zaccardi

We are so excited to feature Matthew M. Monte and Joseph Zaccardi for our Second Tuesday reading on April 11, 2023. 

Please RSVP to get Zoom link for reading:  https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUodeGrrzkjHdfBfZG3JJnhhyxHl8NFvfZ8

Hosted by Modesto poet laureate emeritus Stella Beratlis; open mic follows featured poets. (Open mic sign-up.)

MATTHEW MONTE

Matthew M. Monte grew up near San Francisco, California and went to the University of Hawaii-Manoa, where he studied botany. His fiction, poetry, book reviews, music reviews, journalism, and essays have appeared in Sidestream, Creosote Journal, Transfer, Ashcan Magazine, The Snackbar Collective, iNaturalist, Panorama, and the Poets 11 Anthologies (2014 and 2016). He lives in San Francisco with his wife and son. His debut collection, The Case of the Six-Sided Dream, won the 2017 Blue Light Poetry Prize.

https://www.matthew-monte.com/

All Tomorrow’s Train Rides is an odyssey of reading and poetic memory. What begins as a single day in a worker’s commute morphs into a Möbius loop of literary history and cultural consciousness. “Where do we read and whom?” is a question that drives the nostalgia, dread, and humor of this collection. Riddled with geographical coordinates and commentary, this book of interdependent poems explores the idea of “living in translation” and fuses the formal aesthetics of cartography to our relationships with people, places, books, and the natural world.

About ALL TOMORROW’S TRAIN RIDES

Through poetic cartography, Matthew Monte disembarks from a search of what ultimately is borderless. The topography of a land, of home, extending from San Francisco to Tepeyac to Downe places us in a position to feel the transit of time. We travel to where Monte coordinates the lingering as well as the vanishing points of a city. With a lush lexicon, he fuses historical allusions with aspects of spirituality to expound upon what each train ride reveals; in turn, around the next bend, we keep coming back. This is a ride to catch. 

—Thea Matthews, author of Unearth [The Flowers]

Matthew Monte writes in the specifics of speech and memory, pulling the reader along his urban coastline of abandoned dreams and possible destinations. This extraordinary book is filled with the noise and silence of the everyday and is underscored throughout with beauty, examination, and compassion. 

Read these fine poems and encounter some part of your own unvoiced life.

—Beau Beausoleil, author of A Glyphic House: New and Selected Poems 1976–2019

JOSEPH ZACCARDI

Joseph Zaccardi is the author of five books of poetry including, most recently, The Weight of Bodily Touches from Kelsay Books. His poems have appeared in Cincinnati Review, Poetry East, Atlanta Review, Rattle, and Salamander, among other journals. Zaccardi joined the Marin Poetry Center in 1996 and served as a board member from 2010 to 2013 and as the editor of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology in 2010–2012. Appointed poet laureate of Marin County, California, he served from 2013 to 2015. A member of the LGBTQ community, Zaccardi believes that to write a single poem is a minor miracle. He lives in Fairfax, California, with his husband, Dave, and their dog.

 

In his afterword to Songbirds of the Nine Rivers, Joseph Zaccardi recounts how, during his time as a Navy corpsman in the Vietnam War, he found refuge in a volume of ancient Chinese and Vietnamese poetry. His study, now lifelong, has borne fruit in this present volume, the ancients at his shoulder. At once a scholarly work, an homage, and a striking volume of new poems—not translations, not “versions”— this book provides readers with a multifaceted lens, forward, backward, yet always present—and always, even in grief, exultant.

About SONGBIRDS OF THE NINE RIVERS

The beauty of this book is in the lyric surprise, the parabolic of the Tang. If there are such things as true works of art, it is these poems that blend the physical and the eternal, the seen and the unseen. Zaccardi’s words draw from the uncanniness of nature in a startling way and reveal to us a sometimes violent, often beautiful, but always necessary world. A work such as Songbirds of the Nine Rivers,derived from both earth and heaven, is rare indeed. 

––Ann Robinson, author of Stone Window

Historical, philosophical, and alchemical, these poems reenact the cosmos of the classical poet-ancestors of China and Vietnam through the awakened mind of an American poet. Joseph Zaccardi’s poetry enlarges human empathy and connects separated worlds. Listen to these songs! Every note is clear, fresh, and alive.

-–Jie Tian, author of Native Songs and Migration Songs

It is said that to hear music it is best to close your eyes, and that to hear poetry it is best to read the poems aloud. Joseph Zaccardi’s poetry is music to the ear. He lets us feel what he feels, lets us touch what he touches. His voice is song; his sounds are prayers. They wash over me, the way the sea washes over the sound of itself.

––Mai Sato, Yokohama College of Art and Design

Saturday in the Park With Poetry

As April is National Poetry Month, Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is offering an outdoors event on Saturday, April 8, 2023 from noon to 1:30 p.m. The location is Davis Community Park at 2701 College Avenue in Modesto. The host will be Salvatore Salerno, poet laureate of Modesto. Participants can bring a bag lunch and read from their most recent favorite book of poetry.  They are also invited to bring other poetry books to donate and trade with other participants. We will meet at the picnic tables near the parking lot.  If the tables are otherwise occupied, be prepared by bringing a lawn chair, and we can gather elsewhere beneath the welcoming shade of a tree.

Deadline Aileen Jaffa Young Poets Contest

AILEEN JAFFA YOUNG POETS CONTEST

Co-sponsored by MoSt (Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center) and the National League of American Penwomen (NLAPW), Modesto chapter.

This contest is offered as a means of encouraging young writers throughout Stanislaus County and as a way to remember poet Aileen Jaffa, the founding President of the Poets of the San Joaquin and member of the Modesto Branch of the National League of American Pen Women.

Eligibility and Deadline

Any student enrolled in a Stanislaus County school, grades K through 12, is eligible to submit up to 3 entries, at $1 per entry. Each entry, except for typing, must be the original creative work of the student, although parents or teachers may provide encouragement.  Postmark deadline for submissions is April 3, 2023.

 

Details at Aileen Jaffa Youth Poetry Contest.

Deadline: City of Modesto Poet’s Corner Contest

The Parks, Recreation and Neighborhoods Department and the City of Modesto’s Poet’s Corner Committee are pleased to offer an Annual Poets’ Corner Contest. Please view the Poet’s Corner Contest Submission Form for full details.

Submissions

Poems will not be returned after the contest, so entrants should keep copies of their work.

Electronic Submissions

  1. Include one cover page with poet’s name, address, email and title(s) of poem(s). If poet is a student, then indicate grade, school and name of teacher on the cover page.
  2. Submit cover page and poem/poems in one file in .doc, .docx or .pdf format to the Poets Corner Contest Submission Email.

Mailed Submissions

Submit one copy of each poem along with one entry form for each poet to one of the following locations:

  • Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, C/O Poet’s Corner Contest, PO Box 578940, Modesto, CA, 95353
  • McHenry Museum, C/O Poet’s Corner Contest,1402 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354

Printed Entry Form and Contest Rules

May be picked up at the following locations:

  • Parks, Recreation & Neighborhoods Department Office – 1010 Tenth Street Place, Suite 4400
  • McHenry Museum – 1402 I Street
  • McHenry Mansion Visitor’s Center and Gift Shop – 924 15th Street
  • Stanislaus County Library – 1500 I Street

Deadline

Entries must be postmarked by Friday, March 24, 2023 or submitted electronically by 11:59 pm on Friday, March 24, 2023. 

Requirements

The contest is open to all Stanislaus County residents.

Categories

  • General: Any kind of poetry on any subject, rhymed or unrhymed.  Free verse and form welcome.  Group of three haiku accepted as one entry.
  • Special: “Renewal: How do we restore and renew ourselves and our community after years of pandemic? How do we individually and collectively allow ourselves the space to mourn and feel what has been lost while holding optimism and being open to possibility? What might renewal look like in nature, ourselves, our families, and our communities? What does it feel like to be hopeful, imagine a better world, and create the future?”

Entry Limitations

  • Two poems per person
  • Each poem may not exceed 32 lines
  • All entries must be typed on standard 8.5″ x 11″ paper, double-spaced, in standard font
  • Entries must be unpublished at the time of submission
  • Entries may be two of one category or one of each category
  • At the top of each poem, indicate contest category and, if under the age of 18, grade in school
  • Do not put name of poet on any submitted poem: put name on cover page or entry form only
  • No plagiarism or offensive language.

Contest Winners

Contest winners will be notified by email (or mail, when email is unavailable).  Poets will be invited to read their winning poems on Sunday, June 4, 2023 at 1:00 PM at the McHenry Museum, followed by light refreshments.

Winning poems will be printed in a booklet that will be placed in the Poets’ Bookshelf, which contains published works by local writers and will be kept at the McHenry Museum. Each winner will receive a copy of the booklet.

City of Modesto Poet’s Corner Reading/Reception

Join us at McHenry Museum on Sunday, June 4 at 1 pm for a reading featuring the winners of the 2023 Poet’s Corner Contest, sponsored by the City of Modesto.

For contest information, please visit the City of Modesto Poet’s Corner page. (Contest info will be updated soon.)