Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog
2019-06-11 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Barkin’ Dog Grill, 940 11th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us for the Second Tuesday Barkin’ Dog reading on June 11th at 6:00 at the Barkin’ Dog Grill in downtown Modesto. Our featured poets will be Stella Beratlis and Gillian Wegener. Wegener has been running the Barkin’ Dog series for the past 10 years and is now handing the reins over to Beratlis, who will carry on with new energy and all her grace and verve and humor. And there will be cake!
An open mic will follow the featured reading, so bring a poem or two to share.
Stella Beratlis is the author of Alkali Sink and the poet laureate of Modesto. Her work has been published in California Quarterly, In Posse Review, hardpan, Song of the San Joaquin, Penumbra, and Quercus Review as well as the anthology The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed. She is a librarian at Modesto Junior College.
Gillian Wegener is the author of two collections of poetry, both from Sixteen Rivers Press, The Opposite of Clairvoyance (2008) and This Sweet Haphazard (2017). Her work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and is forthcoming from MockingHeart Review. Wegener is a co-founder of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, has served as poet laureate for the City of Modesto, and started this reading series in June of 2009.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog
2019-07-09 18:00 - 20:00 | Barkin’ Dog Grill, 940 11th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us for the Second Tuesday Barkin’ Dog reading on July 9th at 6:00 at the Barkin’ Dog Grill in downtown Modesto. An open mic will follow the featured reading, so bring a poem or two to share.
Stay tuned for more info!

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog
2019-08-13 18:00 - 20:00 | Barkin’ Dog Grill, 940 11th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us for the Second Tuesday Barkin’ Dog reading on August 13th at 6:00 at the Barkin’ Dog Grill in downtown Modesto, featuring poets Pos Moa and Yu-Han Chao. An open mic will follow the featured reading, so bring a poem or two to share.
Pos Moua is a Hmong-American writer, educator, and poet who lives in Merced with his wife and their five children. He is the author of the chapbook “Towards the World Where the Torches Are Burning” (Swan Scythe Press, 2001), the first published work from a Hmong American poet. He has published work in How Do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology, Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing, UC Davis Poetry Review, Sacramento’s “Poetry Now,” and National Poetry.” Pos Moua’s new book, Karst Mountains Will Bloom, was published by Blue Oak Press in April 2019.
Yu-Han (Eugenia) Chao was born and grew up in Taipei, Taiwan. Her poetry books & chapbooks were published by Another New Calligraphy, BOAAT Press, Dancing Girl Press, and University of Nebraska Press. Her new short story collection, Sex & Taipei City, is now out with Red Hen Press. She maintains a blog at www.yuhanchao.com about nursing school.

Poetry on Sunday Series
2019-08-18 14:00 - 17:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, Gemperle Gallery, 250 N. Broadway Ave., Turlock, CA, United States
Come join us at the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock for the third installment of our quarterly reading series! Click the image at right to download the PDF flyer, and see below for bios of our featured readers.
Sara Coito is a Central Valley native whose claim to fame is that she and Megan Rapinoe share an alma mater. She seeks to explore ugly emotions, the struggle and ease of intimacy, and the plurality of devotion in her poetry. Her other passions include music, making pictures, working in kindergarten classrooms, eggs for breakfast, and snail mail. You can find her earlier work in Sigma Tau Delta’s Rectangle and University of Portland’s Writers magazine. Connect with her via email at coitosk@gmail.com or Instagram @thecoits.
Ingrid Keriotis is a former MJC English instructor. Her first book of poetry, It Started with the Wild Horses, was published in April and is available at ingridkeriotis.com. Ingrid currently teaches at Sierra College in Grass Valley. When it comes to writing poetry, she believes in Richard Hugo’s advice: “You owe reality nothing and the truth about your feelings everything.”
Joshua McKinney’s most recent book of poetry is Small Sillion (Parlor Press, 2019). His work has appeared in such journals as Boulevard, Denver Quarterly, Kenyon Review, New American Writing, and many others. He is the recipient of The Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, The Dickinson Prize, The Pavement Saw Chapbook Prize, and a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing. He is co-editor of the online eco-poetry zine, Clade Song. He teaches at California State University, Sacramento.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog
2019-09-10 18:00 - 20:00 | Barkin’ Dog Grill, 940 11th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us for the Second Tuesday Barkin’ Dog reading on September 10th at 6:00 at the Barkin’ Dog Grill in downtown Modesto. An open mic will follow the featured reading, so bring a poem or two to share.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog
2019-10-15 18:00 - 20:00 | Barkin’ Dog Grill, 940 11th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us for the Second Tuesday Barkin’ Dog reading on October 15th at 6:00 at the Barkin’ Dog Grill in downtown Modesto with featured readers Paul Neuman and Amy Miller. An open mic will follow the featured reading, so bring a poem or two to share.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog
2019-11-12 18:00 - 20:00 | Barkin’ Dog Grill, 940 11th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us for the Second Tuesday Barkin’ Dog reading on November 12th at 6:00 at the Barkin’ Dog Grill in downtown Modesto. An open mic will follow the featured reading, so bring a poem or two to share.

Poetry on Sunday Series
2019-12-01 14:00 - 17:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, Gemperle Gallery, 250 N. Broadway Ave., Turlock, CA, United States
Come join us at the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock for the third installment of our quarterly reading series! Click the image at right to download the PDF flyer, and see below for bios of our featured readers.
Ash Young currently lives in Modesto with her husband, two sons, and two Pomeranians. She writes poetry about her life, and hopes to never be famous.
Born in Canada, and of Iraqi heritage, Zaid Shlah currently resides in Northern California with his family. His poetry has appeared in literary magazines, journals, and anthologies in both Canada and the U. S. In May of 2005, he was awarded the American Academy of Poets Award. His first book of poetry, Taqsim, was published in the US and in Canada (Frontenac House, 2006). His second book of poems and essays is entitled Clockwork (Frontenac House, 2015). He teaches composition and literature at Modesto Junior College.
Lee Herrick is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, Gardening Secrets of the Dead, and This Many Miles from Desire. His poems appear widely in literary magazines, textbooks, and anthologies, including Columbia Poetry Review, The Poetry Foundation, Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice and Here: Poems for the Planet, with an introduction by the Dalai Lama. He is co-editor of The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (forthcoming in Spring 2020 by Orison Books). Born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted to the United States, he served as Fresno Poet Laureate (2015-2017) and teaches at Fresno City College and the MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog
2019-12-10 18:00 - 20:00 | Barkin’ Dog Grill, 940 11th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us for the Second Tuesday Barkin’ Dog reading on December 10th at 6:00 at the Barkin’ Dog Grill in downtown Modesto. An open mic will follow the featured reading, so bring a poem or two to share.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog
2020-01-14 18:00 - 20:00 | Barkin’ Dog Grill, 940 11th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us for the Second Tuesday Barkin’ Dog reading on January 14th at 6:00 at the Barkin’ Dog Grill in downtown Modesto. An open mic will follow the featured reading, so bring a poem or two to share.

Poetry on Sunday Series
2020-02-02 14:00 - 16:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, Gemperle Gallery, 250 N. Broadway Ave., Turlock, CA, United States
Come join us at the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock for 2020’s first installment of our quarterly reading series! Click the image at right to download the PDF flyer, and see below for bios of our featured readers.
Barbara Swift Brauer is a freelance writer living in San Geronimo, California. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies as well as in art exhibitions and installations. She is the author of two collections from Sixteen Rivers Press: Rain, Like a Thief (2019) and At Ease in the Borrowed World (2013). With portrait artist Jackie Kirk, Barbara is coauthor of the nonfiction book, Witness: The Artist’s Vision in “The Face of AIDS” (Pomegranate Artbooks, 1996).
Bethanie Humphreys is a writer, editor, and mixed-media visual artist. She is a Sacramento Poetry Center board member, SPC Art Gallery curator, Associate Editor for Tule Review, and was Editor-in-Chief for the 2015 American River Review. Her chapbook, Dendrochronology, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019, and her poetry, short fiction, and art have appeared in various publications in the U.S. and U.K. including: Artemis, Nonbinary Review, The Found Poetry Review, American River Review, and Sacramento Voices. She is a California Certified Naturalist and teaches creative writing workshops as a certified Amherst Writers and Artists method instructor.
Maya Khosla is the poet laureate of Sonoma County (2018–20). Her new poetry book is All the Fires of Wind and Light (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2019). Her work in the natural world has led her into the wild, to the page, and to the screen. She has documented forests, fire scientists, and firefighters talking about ways to be wise about wildfire. Maya’s work has taken her across coastal India, Kenya, and the United States. Her poems have also been collected in Keel Bone (Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, Bear Star Press) and in Heart of the Tearing (Red Dust Press). Her essays have appeared in Flyway, Yes Magazine, Humans and Nature, and elsewhere. She has written for the films Village of Dust, City of Water, and Shifting Undercurrents, and is working on a film about being “Firewise” in a time of climate change.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog
2020-02-11 18:00 - 20:00 | Barkin’ Dog Grill, 940 11th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us for the Second Tuesday Barkin’ Dog reading on February 11th at 6:00 at the Barkin’ Dog Grill in downtown Modesto. Featured poets include Zaid Shlah. An open mic will follow the featured reading, so bring a poem or two to share.

Second Tuesday Series featuring Josh McKinney & Lisa Dominguez Abraham
2020-03-10 18:00 - 20:00 | Barkin’ Dog Grill, 940 11th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Braid fresh flowers into your hair and perform pagan rituals as we ponder the newly-hatched world of SPRING.
Or you could just come to this poetry reading!
Join Modesto poet laureate Stella Beratlis as she presents featured poets Josh McKinney and Lisa Dominguez Abraham.
Joshua McKinney’s most recent book of poetry is Small Sillion (Parlor Press, 2019). His work has appeared in such journals as Boulevard, Denver Quarterly, Kenyon Review, New American Writing, and many others. He is the recipient of The Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, The Dickinson Prize, The Pavement Saw Chapbook Prize, and a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing. He is coeditor of the online ecopoetry zine, Clade Song. He teaches at California State University, Sacramento.
Lisa Dominguez Abraham’s poems have appeared in journals such as Southern Review, North American Review and Poetry East. Her collection Mata Hari Blows a Kiss won the 2016 Swan Scythe Chapbook Contest, and her book Coyote Logic came out from Blue Oak Press in February 2019. She works at Cosumnes River College.
Bring a poem to share during our open mic following the featured poets’ readings. Since it’s almost spring, let’s explore the themes darkness and light.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin’ Dog – On Zoom!
2020-07-14 18:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
We will be holding our Second Tuesday poetry reading series on July 14th, 2020, via Zoom. We hope you’ll join us. Please see the flyer above for more information on our featured poets, Connie Post and Michael Meyerhofer.
Live links for reading here:
For the open mic: https://padlet.com/beratliss/j0ynareusug2u61c
For the Zoom reading: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/99196095308

Second Tuesday Poetry with the Meter Maids
2020-09-08 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
Join us this month as we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the local writing group The Meter Maids, featuring members of the group reading their work. Open mic following featured readers. NOTE: 7 pm start time.
Below is a history of the Meter Maids:
What began as a sharing of poetry between two women who worked with the committee that brought the 20th Anniversary of Earth Day to Modesto in April 1990 inspired one to reach out to other friends who wrote and loved poetry.
The group gathered monthly at various homes and remained nameless for many, many years, welcoming a few men and many women into its fold. Eventually, the group evolved into an ever-changing, nurturing sisterhood, whose members have ranged in age from 16 to 80 and included two mother-daughter partners. One daughter, the 16-year-old, is grown, married and continues to meet with us from New York on Zoom with her infant son on her lap.
The structure of our monthly meetings departs from most poetry groups, which usually write independently and bring poems to be read, critiqued and enjoyed. We are not designed as a critique group, but critique does happen. We are not a therapy group, but we do support one another through our personal challenges. We share a common love of poetry and passion for writing.
Over the years the group has developed a tradition of staring each meeting with an afternoon “tea” schmooze during which members catch up with one another, share our lives, gather words or suggest prompts, then write and share. The tradition includes sharing the fun of writing and creating around such monthly prompts as fortune cookie Monday in January; hearts; MLK; dead presidents in February; Women’s History in March’ the four seasons at solstices and equinoxes; Cinco de Mayo in May, Stone Soup; pumpkins, ghosts and goblins in October; Dia de los Muertos and Thanksgiving in November; and the many, many holidays in December.
Over the past 30 years, three chap books have been published, and a 30-Year- Anniversary book featuring poetry submitted by members past and present will go to press very soon, thanks to the talented and dedicated work of one of our original founding members, Karen Baker.
We share these samplings of our poetry with gratitude for the talented community of poets both in Meter Maids and in the Modesto area. We are pleased that members who have moved away to new adventures can join our Zoom meetings during this quarantine year and beyond.
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Meeting ID: 977 8229 7419

Poetry Night at the Queen Bean
2020-09-15 18:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
Melchor Sahagun III will be hosting Poetry Night at the Queen Bean on Tuesday, September 15th starting at 6 pm, via the Zoom platform. (Links to the event will be furnished on Facebook a little later this month). The reading will be devoted exclusively to open mic readers, so drop by and read and/or listen to some great poetry.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin’ Dog – on Zoom!
2020-09-24 08:00 - 17:00 | CA
Join host Stella Beratlis in our monthly reading + open mic series. This month we are excited to feature Eliot Schain, author of THE DISTANT SHORE, and Patrick Cahill, author of THE MACHINERY OF SLEEP.
Patrick Cahill’s prose and poems have appeared in over forty journals, including TriQuarterly, Volt, Poets Eleven, the Irish magazine Into the Void, Subprimal, and Eclectica. His poems have twice won the Central Coast Writers Award. He is a cofounder and editor of Ambush Review, a San Francisco–based literary and arts journal and was a contributing editor for the Sonoma County anthology Digging Our Poetic Roots. Patrick received his Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz and wrote a study of Whitman and visual experience in nineteenth-century America. Portions of this work have appeared in The Daguerreian Annual and Left Curve.
Eliot Schain’s poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Santa Monica Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and Miramar, among other journals, as well as in three anthologies: The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed, Christopher Buckley and Gary Young’s Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems and Poetics from California, and America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience. Schain’s books include American Romance from Zeitgeist Press and Westering Angels from Small Poetry Press. He has served as program director for the Poetry Society of America, has taught high school, and now works as a psychotherapist. A proud member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, he lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Mary.

Open mic follows: sign up in advance (10 slot available): https://form.jotform.com/berattle/secondtuesday
Zoom: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/91739636824
Or iPhone one-tap (US Toll): +16699006833,91739636824# or +12532158782,91739636824#
Or Telephone: +1 669 900 6833 (US Toll)/Meeting ID: 917 3963 6824

MoSt Zoom Open Mic Night!
2020-10-25 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is offering an Open Mic Poetry Reading to MoSt members and to any other poets in the Stanislaus County community. This Zoom program will be on Sunday, October 25 at 7:00 p.m. The host will be Salvatore Salerno. All poets are invited to read one or two of their own poems for two to three minutes, including any introductory remarks. If they have books that are available, they can show those works to the audience. The Zoom invitation will be sent through the MoSt website, our Facebook page, and through other publicity venues on Friday, October 23. There is no prior registration required. We look forward to hearing your poetry!

Second Tuesday @ Barkin’ Dog – on Zoom!
2020-11-10 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
Join us for the NOVEMBER installment of the Second Tuesday Poetry series on November 10th at 7:00 pm, hosted by Stella Beratlis. We are pleased to feature poets Aideed Medina of Fresno and Jon Grammatico of Modesto.

Aideed Medina, poet and spoken word artist, creates and performs poetry in English, or Spanish, as dictated by the inspiration of each individual piece. She enjoys mentoring high school students under the direction of the Fresno Poet Laureate, Bryan Medina, with the Poetry Out Loud Program, and for youth slam competitions throughout the California central valley. She was honored to be the 2017 Representative for the Loud Mouth Poetry Slam of Visalia, CA at the Women of the World Poetry Slam DTX, and recently received the 2017 Fresno Arts Council Horizon Award for her contributions to the city’s artistic and cultural scene in the category of individual artist. She is currently working on her first two manuscripts, “A California Dime” and “Mis Papelitos.” Her work has appeared in Revista Literaria Austral, Fresno State’s Club Austral literary magazine and Flies, Cockroaches and Poets, the Chicano Writers and Artists Association journal. Online she has work on La Bloga, Poets Responding, Art of the Commune: La comuna, and as part of a collection of original art songs composed for The Opera Remix, Fresno Grand Opera.
Jon Grammatico has been writing poems since his high school days but began reading at local open mics last year. Jon received his Bachelor of Arts in Gender Studies and his Master of Social Work from Stanislaus State. He currently works as a social worker with Stanislaus County in the Public Health Department, functioning as the HIV/AIDS program coordinator and is the recently elected President of MoPride, the leading LGBTQ+ organization in Stanislaus county. When he is not writing, Jon spends his time tending to his 30+ house plants, caring for his two cats and dog, and listening to music. He currently lives in Turlock, CA with his partner.
Zoom link: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/99171810028
Open mic following the featured readers; sign up here: https://form.jotform.com/berattle/secondtuesday

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog - On Zoom!
2020-12-08 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
The MODESTO-STANISLAUS POETRY CENTER and your host Stella Beratlis are pleased to welcome Odilia Galván Rodríguez and Meg Withers for Second Tuesday Poetry on December 8, 2020. Join the reading via Zoom at 7 pm: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/91826874769

Odilia Galván Rodríguez is a poet, writer, editor, publisher, and social justice activist, the author of six volumes of poetry. Her latest is The Color of Light, FlowerSong Books, 2019. She is a long-time community organizer and volunteer and has been the editor for Matrix Women’s News Magazine, Community Murals Magazine and Tricontinental Magazine in Havana, Cuba. She currently edits two journals: Cloud Women’s Quarterly and Anacua Literary Arts.
Galván Rodríguez co-founded the Facebook page “Poets Responding,” and co-authored the groundbreaking, award winning anthology, Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, University of Arizona Press. Her poetry and writings have appeared in numerous anthologies, and literary journals. She is a practitioner of Indigenous Spiritual and Healing Traditions and strives to live a simple life based on the indigenous worldview of her ancestors.

Meg Withers has been writing to save her sanity since she was about 9. She has been published in literary journals and other creative projects. She has been anthologized, and has three published books: Must Be Present to Win (Ghost Road 2005), A Communion of Saints (TinFish 2008), and Shadowed: Unheard Voices (Press at Fresno State 2014).
Her fourth book, Particular Odyssey: In Search, is forthcoming from Prickly Pear Press, and is likely to be published in 2021, barring the unforeseen circumstances of life these days. The basis for Meg’s work is concern with the attempt to silence voices.
Open mic follows the featured readers. Please sign up in advance at https://form.jotform.com/berattle/secondtuesday.

Poetry on Sunday Series
2020-12-13 14:00 - 16:00 | Zoom
Please join us for the December edition of MoSt’s quarterly Poetry On Sunday Readings on Sunday, December 13th at 2:00 P. M. While we look forward to a time we can all gather again at the Carnegie Arts Center, this time we’ll be on ZOOM: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84608931424
Join us, too, for the Open Mic time following the featured readers! And please feel free to download and print our PDF flyer.

Jay Deshpande is the author of Love the Stranger and The Rest of the Body (both from YesYes Books) and the new chapbook The Umbrian Sonnets (PANK). His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, New England Review, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Kundiman fellowship, and residencies at Civitella Ranieri and the Saltonstall Arts Colony. He teaches at Brooklyn Poets and Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

Prageeta Sharma is the author of the poetry collections Grief Sequence (Wave Books, 2019), Undergloom (Fence Books, 2013), Infamous Landscapes (Fence Books, 2007), The Opening Question (Fence Books, 2004), which won the 2004 Fence Modern Poets Prize, and Bliss to Fill (Subpress, 2000). She is the founder of the conference Thinking Its Presence: Race, Creative Writing, Literary Studies and Art. A recipient of the 2010 Howard Foundation Award and a finalist for the 2020 Four Quartets Prize, she has taught at the University of Montana and now teaches at Pomona College.​

Second Tuesday @ Barkin’ Dog – On Zoom!
2021-01-12 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
Please join the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and host Stella Beratlis as we present the first Second Tuesday Poetry reading of 2021! Helping us ring in this year are featured poets Sam Pereira and Dawn Trook, followed by a dynamic open mic.
Sam Pereira is from Los Banos, California; he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University, Fresno and his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa, where he was a student in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His books include The Marriage of the Portuguese (L’Epervier Press, 1978), Brittle Water (Abattoir Editions/Penumbra Press, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 1987),[3] and A Cafe in Boca, released in 2007 by Tebot Bach. In December, 2020, Nine Mile Press published Pereira’s seventh collection of poems, True North and Untrue You.
Dawn Trook is a writer, theater producer, performer, and educator. She teaches writing at UC Merced. Though she focuses on non-traditional methods of poetry distribution, she has been published in The Rumpus, Ms Magazine, and several literary journals.
Join us at 7 via Zoom: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/99542317135
Open mic signups at https://form.jotform.com/berattle/secondtuesday

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog - on Zoom!
2021-02-09 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and host Stella Beratlis are pleased to welcome Josiah Luis Alderete and Anthony Cody for Second Tuesday Poetry on Tuesday Feb. 9, 2021. Join the reading via Zoom at 7 pm: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/91076973120
Open Mic signup: https://form.jotform.com/berattle/secondtuesday

Josiah Luis Alderete is a full blooded Pocho Spanglish speaking poet from La Area Bahia who learned to write poetry in the kitchen of his Mama’s Mexican restaurant. He first began performing his poetry in San Francisco’s Mission District at the infamous Cafe Babar’s Thursday night readings and was one of the founding members of San Francisco’s outspoken word troupe, The Molotov Mouths. He is also a radio insurgente whose stories have appeared on KALW’s “Crosscurrents” and whose show, “The Spanglish Power Hour,” aired on KPFA. He curates and hosts the monthly Latinx reading series Speaking Axolotl at Nomadic Press in Oakland. Josiah Luis Alderete’s first book of poems, Baby Axolotls y Old Pochos, is forthcoming from Black Freighter Press.
Anthony Cody is the author of Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn, April 2020), winner of the 2018 Omnidawn Open Book Contest selected by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry , and longlisted for the PEN America / Jean Stein Book Award. He is a 2020 Poets & Writers debut poet and a 2020 Southwest Book Award winner from the Border Regional Library Association. A CantoMundo fellow from Fresno, California, Anthony has lineage in both the Bracero Program and the Dust Bowl. His poetry has appeared in The Academy of American Poets: Poem-A-Day, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, The Boiler, ctrl+v journal, among others. Anthony is a member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle where he co-edited How Do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology. He is a recent MFA-Creative Writing graduate from Fresno State where he continues to collaborate with Juan Felipe Herrera and the Laureate Lab Visual Wordist Studio. Anthony has received fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, and Desert Nights, Rising Stars Conference. Anthony won the inaugural 2020 CantoMundo Guzmán Mendoza / Paredez Fellowship for his work-in-progress poetry manuscript, “The Rendering”, selected by Aracelis Girmay. He serves as an associate poetry editor for Noemi Press and a poetry editor for Omnidawn.

Poetry on Sunday Series
2021-02-21 14:00 - 16:00 | Zoom
Download the PDF Flyer here!
Please join us for the February edition of MoSt’s quarterly Poetry On Sunday Readings on Sunday, February 21st at 2:00 P.M., featuring local poets Ed Bearden and Cleo Griffith. While we look forward to a time we can all gather again at the Carnegie Arts Center, this time we’ll be on ZOOM: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83974391144
Open Mic Time follows, including poems from the New Year’s Poetry Challenge.
Free and open to the public. Join us in celebrating the written and spoken word!

Ed Bearden has been published in Penumbra, Quercus Review, In The Grove and the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. He is the recipient of the 2007 Award in Literary Arts presented by the Stanislaus Arts Council. His poetry has received three Pushcart Prize nominations. He was the 2008-2012 Poet Laureate for the City of Modesto. His work is scheduled to appear later this year in Evening Street Review.
Cleo Griffith was Chair of the Editorial Board of Song of the San Joaquin for its first twelve years and remains on the Board in its 17th year. She is vice-president of the Modesto branch of the National League of American Pen Women. Widely published, she lives in Salida, California with her cats Amber and Neil.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog - on Zoom!
2021-03-09 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and host Stella Beratlis are pleased to welcome Iris Jamahl Dunkle and Cathryn Shea for Second Tuesday Poetry on Tuesday, March 9, 2021. Join the reading via Zoom at 7 pm: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/96055243749
Open Mic signup: https://form.jotform.com/berattle/secondtuesday

Iris Jamahl Dunkle writes and lives in Northern California. An award-winning literary biographer, essayist, and poet, her academic and creative work challenges the western myth of progress by examining the devastating impact that agriculture and overpopulation have had, and continue to have, on the North American West. Taking an ecofeminist bent, her writing also challenges the American West’s androcentric recorded history by researching the lives of women. As Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, she witnessed first-hand the devastating 2017 wildfires. These fires were the catalyst for her latest collection of poetry West : Fire : Archive and her investigation of her family’s migration to California during the Dust Bowl. Twitter: @irjohnso
Cathryn Shea’s poetry has been published in New Orleans Review, Typishly, After the Pause, burntdistrict, Permafrost, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere; she has also been shortlisted or selected for a variety of poetry prizes, including winning the Marjorie J. WIlson Award, judged by Charles Simic. She’s the author of four chapbooks and her first full-length collection, Genealogy Lesson for the Laity, was just published in September 2020 by Unsolicited Press of Portland, Oregon. Poet Thomas Centolella author of Almost Human (Tupelo Press, winner of the Dorset Prize),Terra Firma, Lights & Mysteries, and Views from along the Middle Way (Copper Canyon), notes the following about Cathryn’s work: “Focused chiefly on the domestic life, with all its “important confusion,” but also ranging into the transpersonal, Shea holds a particular regard for subjects that have vanished or are on the verge of vanishing, and does her best to rescue them with her appealingly quirky style, sometimes comic, sometimes melancholy, and always vested with affection.” Follow Cathryn on Twitter: @cathy_shea.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog - on Zoom!
2021-04-13 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and host Gillian Wegener are pleased to welcome Sixteen Rivers Press poets Stella Beratlis and Dane Cervine Second Tuesday Poetry on Tuesday April 13, 2021. Join the reading via Zoom at 7 pm: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/94208575176 and sign up for Open Mic (3 mins each poet) following the featured poets.
Open Mic signup: https://form.jotform.com/berattle/secondtuesday

Stella Beratlis grew up in a second-generation Greek-American family in Northern California. Her first collection of poems, Alkali Sink, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2015 and was a nominee for the Northern California Book Awards in poetry. Her work has also appeared in numerous journals, including Harbor Review, Penumbra, Song of the San Joaquin, In-Posse Review, and California Quarterly, as well as in the anthologies The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010) and California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology (Story Streets, 2020). She is coeditor of the collection More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets (Quercus Review Press, 2011) and served as the poet laureate of Modesto from 2016 to 2020. Beratlis lives and works as a librarian in Modesto.
About Dust Bowl Venus:
With tenderness, wit, and humor, Dust Bowl Venus explores the fragility of love, good health, and the Earth. Rooted not just in the city of Modesto but also in the music, legends, and community of the Central Valley, these poems brilliantly reflect a struggle to find beauty in the contradictions of our contemporary lives. Amazingly thoughtful and musical, these are poems we should all read. —Judy Halebsky, author of Spring and a Thousand Years and Sky=Empty
“The poems in Stella Beratlis’s Dust Bowl Venus ring with the clarity of a shovel strike against stone, each line cracking against the next, igniting spark after glorious spark. And yet, like the seasonal lake bed on which Modesto sits, like the many hands ‘making mud out of dry soil,’ every poem aches toward tenderness. In one poem, Beratlis asks ‘What grows here?’ before revealing the bounty—heirloom tomatoes, holy basil, kindness—that can be coaxed from this ‘city of drought.’ But darker things grow here, too: a tumor ‘the consistency of a potato,’ fear, terror that ‘builds cell by sticky cell.’ Here, to grow, and to love, is to risk vulnerability. These’“bone-and-ligament / narratives’ of grief and yearning, illness and healing, perseverance and resistance, beat with so much heart in this fiercely beautiful book.” —Erin Rodoni, author of Body, in Good Light and A Landscape for Loss
“Stella Beratlis’s Dust Bowl Venus animates California’s Central Valley as a postmodern Prometheus, an eco-sapient Frankenstein with whom we wrangle, wrestle, and fall madly in love. With sass and grit and grace, Beratlis’s craft is brilliant in its imagistic associations that jolt and jump cut in powers of ten. These poems stir us with the urgency of the Anthropocene and form a ‘mycorrhizal web’ that connects us to the mantle of deep time.” —Rosa Lane, author of Chouteau’s Chalk and Tiller North

Dane Cervine is a poet whose recent books include Earth Is a Fickle Dancer (Main Street Rag), and The Gateless Gate – Polishing the Moon Sword, from Saddle Road Press in Hawaii. Previous poetry books include Kung Fu of the Dark Father, How Therapists Dance, The Jeweled Net of Indra, and What a Father Dreams. Dane’s poems have won awards from Adrienne Rich, Tony Hoagland, the Atlanta Review, Caesura, and been nominated for a Pushcart. His work appears in The SUN, the Hudson Review, TriQuarterly, Poetry Flash, Catamaran, Miramar, Rattle, Sycamore Review, and Pedestal Magazine, among others. You can read more about Dane’s work at his blog: https://danecervine.typepad.com/
About The World Is God’s Language:
“Dane Cervine’s new book, The World Is God’s Language, is a raft for troubled souls, a balm for aching hearts, and a tree of koan-like wisdom nuggets to be squirreled away and returned to again and again. These prose poems often address loss and difficulties but with a lightness of touch that emphasizes the spiritual lessons they can embody. . . . Dane Cervine steadies us with his attention to each word, his deceptive simplicity of language, and his calibrated spirituality—which outlines mysteries, rather than attempting to fill them in. These remarkable poems are Rumi-like pearls.”
—David Sullivan, author of Seed Shell Ash
“Dane Cervine’s poems cast their attention on the everyday—his father’s slippers, an orange cat, the last biscuit in a box—and find the extraordinary in what’s in front of all of us. Even when the poems take place in distant locales, Cervine makes magic with simplicity. Hand in hand, he takes his readers to the edge, and willingly, we jump with him.”
—Patrice Vecchione, author of My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry & Speaking Your Truth

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog - on Zoom
2021-05-11 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and host Stella Beratlis are pleased to feature poets Lelania Fowler and Salvatore Salerno for Second Tuesday Poetry on Tuesday May 11, 2021. Join the reading via Zoom at 7 pm (https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/92855890148) and sign up for open mic (3 mins each poet, maximum 10 poets) following the featured poets.
Zoom link: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/92855890148
Open Mic signup: https://form.jotform.com/berattle/secondtuesday

Lelania Fowler
Born and reared on the Eastside of Santa Barbara, California, Lelania Fowler experienced a Chicano/Hippie hybrid childhood. Later as a homeless teen, she bounced between Long Beach, Hollywood, and her hometown of Santa Barbara before relocating to Sacramento. In the late 1980s, she became part of a thriving music and arts scene and she began songwriting for local musicians.She writes about PTSD, sexual violence, California nature themes, and is a mental health activist.Her poetry has most recently been published in Quiet Rooms, a global anthology published by Cold River Press. Under a Milk Glass Moon is her first collection of poetry.
About Under a Milk Glass Moon:
“An excellent debut collection of poetry. Lelania’s long strophic lines and sparkler-like images propel these excursions into another realm. The work is not lyrical or narrative but cuts a lovely landscape between these genres. Refreshing to read and re-read.” –D.R. Wagner
“Lelania Fowler’s Under A Milk Glass Moon is, I am convinced, a collection of hymns to the Hindu goddess Kali, Mother of All, adorned in her necklace of human heads. There is a female energy in this writing to which I, as a male, have been blind and deaf, a feminine language in which I am not fluent. Even so, the poems themselves contain keys to help me unlock doors I
never knew existed.” —Robert Lee Haycock

Salvatore Salerno
Salvatore Salerno has an M.F.A. from University of North Carolina, where he was awarded The Academy of American Poets University Prize. He is retired from teaching English and Drama at Grace Davis High School. More than 120 of his poems have been published in numerous periodicals. His latest poetry book is Hello, Posterity. He has also independently published volumes of nonfiction, plays, and short stories.
Salvatore is a board member of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, and he is also the president of the Stanislaus Audubon Society. He is the current poet laureate of Modesto.

Poetry on Sunday Series
2021-05-23 14:00 - 16:00 | Zoom
Please join us for the May edition of MoSt’s quarterly Poetry On Sunday Readings on Sunday, May 23rd at 2:00 P. M. While we look forward to a time we can all gather again at the Carnegie Arts Center, this time we’ll be on ZOOM. Join us, too, for the Open Mic time following the featured readers!
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85841157090
Click here to download the PDF flyer.

Josiah Luis Alderete is a full-blooded Pocho, Spanglish-speaking poeta who has been an active part of la Area Bahia’s spoken word scene for over twenty years. He was a founding member of outspoken word group “The Molotov Mouths” and is the curator and host of the long-running monthly Chicanx/Latinx reading series “Speaking Axolotl” which happens the 3rd Thursday of every month in el Zoom mundo. Josiah’s book of poems, Baby Axolotls y Old Pochos is being released this April from Black Freighter Press.
Whether sharing stages with legendary beat poets or your favorite Hip Hop emcees, Andru Defeye’s unorthodox writing and performance style has made him a fixture behing microphones around the country. 2020 saw the release of his critically acclaimed Frequency album, followed shortly after by his crowning as the youngest Poet Laureate in California capitol history. From Sacramento to Staten Island and SXSW, Andru served as the Director of Communications for Sol Collective from 2009-2020. In 2014 Defeye founded Zero Forbidden Goals, a support system for creatives dedicated to innovating arts equity, experiences, and education. ZFG’s guerilla art activations including National Guerilla Poetry Month, Chainlink Poetry, and The Intersection have been covered and recreated around the globe.
Angela Drew is a mother, dancer, poet, and spoken word performer who has loved the rhythm of words for as long as she can remember. Born in Berkeley, CA, she began writing at age eight and has always understood that words have the power to soothe, stir, or solidify connection. Thus, her lifelong love affair with storytelling began. Angela has performed at various venues throughout Modesto, Sacramento and Bay Areas, including Modesto Junior College, Modesto’s inaugural “Ill List Poetry Slam” at the State Theater, the Gallo Center for the Arts, in a Sankofa Community Theater production of The Journey—The African American Experience, and the Hildegard Festival of Women in the Arts, Turlock and the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center’s poetry event “Words Worth Speaking,” to name a few. Angela’s spoken word piece, “BWE: The Black Woman Experience” was recently featured at the 2020 NAACP Modesto/Stanislaus Virtual Black Graduates Recognition Ceremony and her poetry was included in COLLISION VI, the February 2020 exhibit at the Mistlin Gallery which featured poet-photographer collaborations.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog - on Zoom!
2021-06-08 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and host Stella Beratlis are pleased to feature poets Indigo Moor and Jennifer K. Sweeney for Second Tuesday Poetry on Tuesday June 8, 2021. Join the reading via Zoom at 7 pm (https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/94454258218). Open mic (3 mins each poet, maximum 10 poets) following the featured poets.
Join reading: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/94454258218
Open mic following featured readers. To sign up: https://form.jotform.com/berattle/secondtuesday

Jennifer K. Sweeney
Jennifer K. Sweeney is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Foxlogic, Fireweed, winner of the Backwaters Prize from Backwaters Press/University of Nebraska. Her other collections are Little Spells (New Issues Press, 2015), How to Live on Bread and Music (Perugia Press), and Salt Memory (Main Street Rag). She is the recipient of many awards, including the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Perugia Press Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. She teaches poetry workshops at the University of Redlands in California, and is known for a decade-long practice of private instruction and manuscript critique.
Foxlogic, Fireweed can be purchased from the University of Nebraska Press, linked from Jennifer’s website: https://www.jenniferksweeney.com/
About FOXLOGIC, FIREWEED
“Foxlogic, Fireweed is a torn map of a state where all words are proximate to mystery. Venturing into terra incognita, into territory that might be anima mundi, maybe, reader, you think you know the lineaments, but they are altered. Altared. Yes, to dream space, but wilder, wider—this metal into bird, stone into air, mother into vulpine. Sweeney is breathing strangeness into a small body of words, and the expanses open exponentially.”—Marsha de la O
​“The logic of Foxlogic, Fireweed is human and humane; it’s the logic of a penetrative tenderness and an embodiment always on the verge of dispersing into fox, or deer, or rain. . . . These are not bandwagon poems. They don’t mug for the camera. Rather, they enact a love ‘sourced in loneliness’ where ‘with our little keys of witness’ we find each other—the very definition of the lyric poem.”—Diane Seuss

Indigo Moor
Indigo Moor is the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Sacramento. His fourth book of poetry, Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something, took second place in the University of Nebraska Press’ Backwater Prize. His second book, Through the Stonecutter’s Window, won Northwestern University Press’s Cave Canem prize. His first and third books, Tap-Root and In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers, were both part of Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Select Poetry Series. Indigo is an adjunct professor at Dominican University and visiting faculty for Dominican’s MFA program, teaching poetry and short fiction.
Indigo is a former faculty member at the Stonecoast MFA Program, where he graduated in 2012 with an MFA in poetry, fiction, and scriptwriting. He’s a playwright as well: his full-length stageplay, Live! at the Excelsior, was a finalist for the Images Theatre Playwright Award, and the subsequent screenplay has been optioned for a full-length film.
Indigo is a Cave Canem fellow, former resident artist at 916 ink, and a graduate member of the Artist’s Residency Institute for Teaching Artists.
A 10-year veteran of the US Navy and a twice-decorated Gulf War Veteran, Indigo divides his time between writing, teaching, and Integrated Circuit Layout Designer for computer companies.
About EVERYBODY’S JONESIN’ FOR SOMETHING
“Narratives don’t always belong to history’s victors,’’ writes Indigo Moor. If this line gives you pause, I strongly suggest you carry Moor’s brilliant book, Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something, home with you. In this dazzling book, you will read just how closely this poet has been paying attention, to us, to his histories, foreign and domestic, to our mighty (and sometimes mighty confusing) nation. Jonesin’ is a verse flashlight to all the corners you thought no one was supposed to pay attention to, line by beautifully crafted line, truth by earned truth. You’ll reach the last line of the last poem, and trust me, that’s when the hunger for more will begin.”—Cornelius Eady, author of The War Against the Obvious
“Indigo Moor’s new collection shuttles between searing rebuke and hopeful anguish with accents of hard-edged humor. What I love most is the clarity of thought—the no-holds-barred, no-punches-pulled sharpness of the language that carries the reader through each poem, jonesin’ for the next. Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something invites you out of your complacency and fuels a restlessness that reminds you that you’re alive, that this is no time for sleeping.”—Tim Seibles, author of One Turn around the Sun

Poetry On Sunday Series featuring Dane Cervine & Stella Beratlis
2021-08-15 14:00 - 16:00 | CA
Join host Gary Thomas and our featured readers Stella Beratlis and Dane Cervine for the Sunday, August 15th edition of MoSt’s Poetry On Sunday Series readings on Zoom, beginning at 2:00 P. M. Pacific Time.
Stella Beratlis is the author of Alkali Sink (2015) and her latest collection, Dust Bowl Venus (May 2021). Her poems have appeared in the anthologies The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Franciso Bay Watershed (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010) and California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology (Story Streets, 2020). Beratis served as Modesto’s poet laureate from 2016-2020 and works as a librarian there.
Dane Cervine is a poet whose recent books include Earth Is a Fickle Dancer (Main Street Rag), and The Gateless Gate – Polishing the Moon Sword, from Saddle Road Press in Hawaii. Previous poetry books include Kung Fu of the Dark Father, How Therapists Dance, The Jeweled Net of Indra, and What a Father Dreams. Dane’s poems have won awards from Adrienne Rich, Tony Hoagland, the Atlanta Review, Caesura, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His work appears in The SUN, the Hudson Review, TriQuarterly, Poetry Flash, Catamaran, Miramar, Rattle, Sycamore Review, and Pedestal Magazine, among others. You can read more about Dane at his blog: https://danecervine.typepad.com/
Here is the Zoom link to the reading:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83375142037
Meeting ID: 833 7514 2037
One tap mobile
+16699006833,,83375142037# US (San Jose)
+13462487799,,83375142037# US (Houston)
Stella’s latest book, Dust Bowl Venus, and Dane’s new book, The World is God’s Language, have recently been published by Sixteen Rivers Press. For more information about the authors and the books, go to these pages on the Sixteen Rivers site:
https://sixteenrivers.org/authors/stellaberatlis/
https://sixteenrivers.org/authors/dane-cervine/
Our usual Open Mic Time will follow the featured readers. We look forward to seeing you!
