Join us at the Modesto Library to discuss Lee’s collection Scar and Flower. Copies available at the service desk at the downtown library. You don’t need to have read the book to join us!
11th Annual Poetry Festival with Amanda Moore
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt) will host the 11th Annual Poetry Festival on February 4, 2023 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 1528 Oakdale Road, Modesto, California. The event will run from 9 am to 1:30 pm.
Facilitated by Amanda Moore, an awarded-winning, nationally recognized poet from the Bay Area, attendees will be led through a program titled At the Starting Line, A Workshop on Poetic Opening, which promises to be very helpful for both new and experienced poets.
Tickets ($40 each) for the event are available through Eventbrite. Attendance is limited to the first 44 people who purchase tickets. Coffee, tea, and table snacks will be provided, and attendees are welcome to bring their own lunch. As in the past, the festival will include an author’s table and camaraderie with poets and poetry aficionados from throughout Northern California. Eventbrite link for tickets: https://most2023fest.
About Our Workshop Facilitator, Amanda Moore
Amanda Moore’s debut collection of poetry, Requeening, was selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong and published by HarperCollins/Ecco in October 2021. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Best New Poets, ZZYZVA, and Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting, and her essays have appeared in The Baltimore Review, Hippocampus Magazine, and on the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s blog. She is the recipient of writing awards, residencies, and fellowships from The Brown Handler Residency, In Cahoots, The Writers Grotto, The Writing Salon, Brush Creek Arts Foundation, and The Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts.
Poetry Co-editor at Women’s Voices for Change and a reader at VIDA Review and INCH, Amanda is a high school English teacher and lives by the beach in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco with her husband and daughter. https://amandapmoore.com.
Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Beverly Burch and Linda Marie Prather
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry, featuring Beverly Burch and Linda Marie Prather. Hosted by Modesto poet laureate emeritus Stella Beratlis.
Date: Tuesday, Dec 13, 2022
Time: 7:00 pm PST
RSVP for Zoom link
Open mic follows featured readers. Please sign up and plan to read for about 3 minutes.
Beverly Burch
Beverly Burch’s new book, Leave Me a Little Want, was published by Terrapin Books this year. Her last book, Latter Days of Eve (BkMk Press), won the John Ciardi Prize. How a Mirage Works (Sixteen Rivers) was a finalist for the Audre Lorde Award. Her first book, Sweet to Burn (2004), won the Gival Poetry Prize and Lambda Literary Award. Beverly’s poems and prose can be found in 32 Poems, Gulf Coast, Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, New England Review, Barrow Street, Smartish Pace, and Grist. She also has two psychoanalytic books on women’s sexual and gender relations: On Intimate Terms (University of Illinois) and Other Women (Columbia University). Beverly grew up in Atlanta, GA and has lived many years in Oakland, CA with her wife.
About Leave Me a Little Want
“I love this book and its urgent attention to language and form in the “treacherous province” of our current times. Burch never turns away from the coexistence of the beautiful and the bloody, the tedious and the risky, and so I not only trust her, but feel jolted awake.”
-Julia Levine, Ordinary Psalms
Linda Maria Prather
Linda Marie Prather has five published chapbooks, the latest Searching Shadows, Finding Shade, (Cactus Wren Press). Unforced Rhythms, (Finishing Line Press) won 3rd place in the NLAPW 2014 Letters Competition. Her full-length book, Summer Song, was published in 2016 by Pen Women Press. She edits for Song of The San Joaquin and is a member of National League of American Pen Women, in Arts and Letters.
Her poetry appears in More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. Linda’s published
widely and received prizes from Penumbra, Poets’ Dinner Contest, and the Ina Coolbrith Circle. She has won
the Golden Pegasus Award and has been featured poet twice for the Stanislaus Connections poetry column “A Gathering of Voices.” She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.
Poetry on the Spot at ModShop
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center will be back in action with Poetry on the Spot at Saturday’s Mod Shop Handmade Market. Poets from MoSt will write you a poem right there on the spot using words you choose. We’ll be at Mistlin Gallery on J Street between 10th and 11th streets from 2:00 to 8:00 on Saturday, November 26.
Nov 21
MoSt’s Poetry Everywhere Initiative: Getting Poetry Books to Schoolkids
In the nearly ten-year history of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center it has taken on few projects more ambitious than to donate sets of brand new poetry books to every public school in the county. But that’s exactly what MoSt adopted as a goal about five years ago and has been working to achieve ever since.
“As a small nonprofit, our Poetry Everywhere Initiative is a multi-year project, but so far we have donated books to 47 elementary schools and the library at juvenile hall,” explained MoSt board President Gillian Wegener.
The books chosen for the program offer a rich and diverse sampling of poetry for
younger readers.
“There are no strings attached to this donation,” Ms. Wegener continued. “We believe in the power of poetry to change lives, and we want to share that in all ways possible. By donating books to every school – beginning with elementary schools, we hope that poetry will reach even our youngest community members and help them see the joy and wonder alive in that art form.”
Although the pandemic necessitated an interruption in the program for two years, MoSt redoubled its efforts this year, donating poetry books to 8 schools in the spring, and another 10 schools in November. Altogether, MoSt donated 330 books through the Poetry Everywhere Initiative in 2022 alone.