Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Gary Thomas and Ian Miller
Join us at 7 pm on Zoom as we feature Gary Thomas, reading from his new collection All the Connecting Lights. He is joined by poet Ian Miller of Modesto.
Hosted by Stella Beratlis
Date: Tuesday, Sept 13, 2022
Time: 7:00 pm PST
On Zoom–Please RSVP for link
Open mic follows featured poets. Three minutes per reader; please sign up for open mic.
Gary Thomas
Gary Thomas taught eighth grade language arts for thirty-one years, and junior college English for seven—sharing and discussing at least one poem each day with his students. He has presented poetry workshops for statewide organizations, festivals, and conferences. He has had poems published in In the Grove and The Comstock Review, among others, and in the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. He is currently vice president of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, is a member of the Curriculum Study Commission and of the local writing group known as The Licensed Fools. A full-length collection, ALL THE CONNECTING LIGHTS, was released in August 2022 from Finishing Line Press.
All the Connecting Lights
All the Connecting Lights is a marvel, an homage to the unnoticed and ordinary, a tender and sweeping reckoning of childhood, nature, the mystery of epilepsy, and how our lives and memories intersect. Thomas sees nuances and symmetries that most of us don’t. I reveled in the joy of “staying lost” and the grace of “spring rationales.” I’ve been waiting for this book. It is a chronicle of wonder by a truly gifted poet.
–Lee Herrick, author of Scar and Flower
Gary Thomas’ poems range widely and feel deeply. From his childhood on a Central California peach farm to the tragic Battle of Aleppo to imagined lives and voices of others, Thomas’ poems strike chords of generosity and nostalgia and wonder and, one of his favorite words, grace. Reading these poems allows us as the readers to take part in worlds that feel at once familiar and lost to us, where Neruda and a farm woman share an unlikely birthday tea, and where we all, in reading each of these portraits of a moment in time, are able to “Gladly bear joy’s burden.”
–Gillian Wegener, author of This Sweet Haphazard
In Gary Thomas’ generous full-length collection All the Connecting Lights, his poetry traverses and pays homage to both real and imaginary landscapes—from the Great Central Valley to a peach farm outside Empire, California to castle rooms “built in the exosphere.” Striking images abound. In “Oleanders and Whoopee Cushions,” he writes, “a robin’s burst blue egg / a stiff black widow in her viscous web / earwigs belly up or ready to boil out at a touch.” These are poems that artfully document moments of the human experience, “Here abide the lost, those / abandoned to swirl among / dust motes, free range sheep, /and unused memory, / whose textures and traces / might still be familiar and felt, / if only in this moment.” Thomas’ debut collection connects the lights with poetic grace and emotional honesty.
–Maw Shein Win, author of Storage Unit for the Spirit House
Ian Miller
Ian Miller is a Californian poet, born and mostly raised in a little passing town
called Oakdale. He is the author of June 30th, 2022 published by Lulu Press (2022) and recently published collections Neon Promises and Neon Promises: Pinky Promise Edition, both published by Lulu Press (2022). He is currently working on two more projects; one is titled Nothing’s Changed, and the other is titled Gertie, Bear, and Bugaroo: A Mother and Son Project. Neither have an expected completion date yet. Ian currently works at the Modesto Junior College’s Library & Learning Center as an Instructional Support Assistant, primarily helping to supervise the Writing and Embedded Tutors. He is also working towards a double major in Psychology and English with the end goal being to enter into higher education.
The aforementioned books can be found for purchase here: https://linktr.ee/iandmiller
