Annual Benefit Gala
2021-04-25 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom
SAVE THE DATE!
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center will hold its benefit on Sunday, April 25th, from 2-4 pm, on Zoom. There will be music, there will be poetry, and while we still won’t be able to be in person, we will share the amazing camaraderie of our poetry community and seriously rejoice in that!
To buy tickets, please go to most2021.eventbrite.com. If you would like to support our gala fundraising effort, please visit our Fundly page.
Our featured poets for the event will be longtime MoSt supporters Lee Herrick and Indigo Moor. To download a copy of the flyer, please click here.

Lee Herrick is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award, Gardening Secrets of the Dead and This Many Miles from Desire. He is co-editor of the anthology The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (Orison Books). His poems appear widely in literary magazines, textbooks, and anthologies such as HERE: Poems for the Planet, with an introduction by the Dalai Lama; Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice, with an introduction by Common; One for the Money: The Sentence as Poetic Form; and California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology. His prose has appeared in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, and elsewhere. He served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. Born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted to the United States at ten months, he teaches at Fresno City College, where he co-founded the forthcoming Social Justice and Cultural Center, and in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada University.
Indigo Moor is a multi-genre, award-winning writer and teacher. His second book of poetry, Through the Stonecutter’s Window, won the Northwestern University Press’s Cave Canem prize. His first book, Tap-Root, was published as part of Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Select Poetry Series. His stageplay, Live! at the Excelsior, was a finalist for the Images Theatre Playwright Award. Indigo is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA Program—where he studied poetry, fiction, and scriptwriting—and a graduate member of the Artist’s Residency Institute for Teaching Artists. A musician and photographer, Indigo’s collaborations include the Artists Embassy International Dancing Poetry Festival, the Livermore Ekphrastic Project, and the Davis Jazz Arts Festival.

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

Second Tuesday Poetry Reading with Nicca Ray and Michelle Cernuto
2021-08-10 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center features authors Nicca Ray and Michelle Cernuto for the August installment of Second Tuesday Poetry. Join us for a great mix of poetry, ghost fiction, and punk rock memoir on Tuesday, August 10 at 7 pm on Zooom. Hosted by Stella Beratlis with open mic following the featured readers.

Zoom: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/91909197367
Open mic signup: https://form.jotform.com/berattle/secondtuesday

NICCA RAY
Nicca Ray’s poetry collection, BACK SEAT BABY, was recently published by Chris D.’s Poison Fang Books. In the forward, Ann Magnusun writes, “Plumbing the depths of uncertainty and loneliness, Ray finds gold in the collective swamplands of our souls.” The poet, Charles Plymell, calls Back Seat Baby the “High Noon of poetry.”

Nicca Ray’s memoir RAY BY RAY: A DAUGHTER’S TAKE ON THE LEGEND OF NICHOLAS RAY (Three Rooms Press, 2020) has been called “harrowing, beautifully written and near-impossible to put down” by Shelf Awareness and “a daring revelation of strength and survival, told unflinchingly, bravely, with empathy, sympathy and ultimately an understanding of a great artist who is almost impossible to fathom,” by Ronee Blakely, actress, singer and Academy Award nominee.
Nicca is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a 2020 Acker Award recipient.

MICHELLE CERNUTO
Michelle Cernuto is the author of the recently published YOU USED TO KNOW ME, a fictional coming-of-age account of growing up in Las Vegas in the 80s.

“A mash note from beyond the grave to a lost Vegas. 1980s punk teen dysfunction… a melancholic travelogue through a spiritual wasteland. The self-effacing murder victim gives us a matter-of-fact, blow-by-blow commentary as she haunts both her friends and her predator in a suburban, desert dystopia…. We see ominous harbingers of Death rushing headlong towards us, much like an out-of-control carnival ride…locked into one final, endlessly accelerating rollercoaster to oblivion. There’s no getting off, and the effect is harrowing and masterful.– Chris D. (author of No Evil Star, Dragon Wheel Splendor and Other Love Stories of Violence and Dread, Mother’s Worry, et.al.; singer/songwriter of the bands The Flesh Eaters and Divine Horsemen)

“A vivid recollection of a crazy time in the crazy place of the American Southwest…a transitional time before entire cities were turned into theme parks. Magically real, her story echoes the truth of the women I grew up with, who fought an oppression they could feel empirically but not always articulate with street smarts and sheer guts. And then there are the ghosts…” – Victor Krummenacher (of bands Camper Van Beethoven, Monks of Doom and The Third Mind)

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Poetry On Sunday Series featuring Dane Cervine & Stella Beratlis
2021-08-15 14:00 - 16:00
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:
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Meeting ID: 833 7514 2037
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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!

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Julia B. Levine & Matthew Lippman plus open mic
2021-10-12 19:00 - 20:00
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and host Stella Beratlis are pleased to welcome poets Julia B. Levine and Matthew Lippman on Tuesday, October 12, 2021. Join the reading via Zoom at 7 pm: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/91357899430. Sign up for Open Mic (3 mins each poet) following the featured poets.
JULIA B. LEVINE
Julia B. Levine has won numerous awards for her work, including the 2015 Northern California Book Award in Poetry for her fourth collection of poetry, Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight, (LSU press 2014), first prize in the 2019 Bellevue Literary Review poetry contest, 2019 Public Poetry Awards, 2018 Tiferet Poetry Prize, as well as the 2003 Tampa Review Poetry Prize for Ask, and the 1998 Anhinga Poetry prize as well as a bronze medal from Foreword magazine for her first collection, Practicing for Heaven. Her fifth and most recent collection, Ordinary Psalms, is now available from LSU press.
MATTHEW LIPPMAN
Matthew Lippman’s collection Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful (2020) is published by Four Way Books. It was the recipient of the 2018 Levis Prize. He is the author of 5 other poetry collections.
Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 7 pm PDT
Zoom link: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/91357899430
Open Mic signup: https://forms.gle/j6dsvm31MA2377Pu6
————
Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/91357899430

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Meeting ID: 913 5789 9430

Second Tuesday Poetry Reading featuring Cristina Sandoval & Manny Moreno
2021-11-09 19:00 - 20:00 | Google Meet
The‌ ‌Modesto-Stanislaus‌ ‌Poetry‌ ‌Center‌ ‌features‌ ‌poets Cristina Sandoval and Manny Moreno for the November installment‌ ‌of‌ ‌Second‌ ‌Tuesday‌ ‌Poetry.‌ ‌Join‌ ‌us‌ ‌to hear these two poets read for us as first-time featured poets on Tuesday,‌ November 9, at‌ ‌7‌ ‌pm‌, ‌on‌ ‌Google Meet. Hosted‌ ‌by‌ ‌Stella‌ ‌Beratlis‌ ‌with‌ ‌open‌ ‌mic‌ ‌following‌ ‌the‌ ‌featured‌ ‌readers.‌ ‌
Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/yzr-effe-nrh
Otherwise, to join by phone, dial +1 760-654-5100 and enter this PIN: 914 592 889#

Sign up for Open Mic: https://forms.gle/v8J9cK9RXn4YDwwc9
CRISTINA SANDOVAL
Cristina Sandoval is an MFA student at Fresno State University and a poet to the bone. Cristina has been a purveyor of words since she can remember. She is a proud Chicana and is desperately in love with language. She often mixes her two languages, Spanish and English, in an attempt to bridge the beauty and hurt in both. Her work often focuses on family, mental health, and finding meaning in the terrible. She has two books on Amazon, Moon Ride, and We Need Bad Bitches. Her work has been featured in Penumbra, Artifact Nouveau, Exist(ir), and Dystopian Dance Party. Her thesis work is centered around the nature of family, culture, and hair. She is from Modesto, California, and now lives in Fresno. And if you were wondering, yes, she misses Mr. T’s Donuts!
MANNY MONOLIN
Monolin “Manny” Moreno is the author of four books, the most recent of which is a collection of poems, Longview Road. Manny’s previous works include Scared–Coming Full Circle: A Memoir; his first poetry collection, The Bridge Is Gone; and The Elder: A Tribute, about the importance of elders in the community and about two Native American elders in particular.
His poems are about growing up in Livingston, where his family’s roots were established in the early 1900s, and about a wide range of topics.
Manny is a Member of the Black Wolf Honor Society Gourd Clan, a member of Native American Church and Sundances yearly in South Dakota. Manny is of Yaqui/Tarascan descent. Manny has been featured in interviews on Native Voice TV, Channel 10, Sacramento and Company, KKUP Radio/Indian Time and Two Roads Productions. He has been a speaker at Modesto Junior College and various events. He was nominated for the Pushcart Award in 2011.
ACCESS THE READING:
Google Meet: To join the video meeting, click this link: meet.google.com/yzr-effe-nrh
To join by phone instead, dial (US) +1 760-654-5100 and enter this PIN: 914 592 889#
More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/yzr-effe-nrh?pin=8948151384183

Poetry on Sunday Series
2021-11-21 14:00 - 16:00 | Zoom
Poetry On Sunday Series Reading: November 21, 2021
Join host Gary Thomas and our featured readers Gerald Fleming, Michael Meyerhofer, And Melchor Sahagun III for the November 21st, 2021 edition of MoSt’s Poetry On Sunday Series readings on Zoom, beginning at 2:00 P. M. Pacific Time.
Gerald Fleming‘s The Bastard and the Bishop is his third Hanging Loose Press title. Previous are Night of Pure Breathing and One, an experiment in monosyllabic prose poems. He’s published two books with Sixteen Rivers Press (Swimmer Climbing Onto Shore and The Choreographer) and recently edited The Collected Poetry and Prose of Lawrence Fixel, also a Sixteen Rivers title. He’s edited literary magazines traditional, vitreous, and epistolary.
Michael Meyerhofer’s fifth poetry book, Ragged Eden, was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2019. He has been the startled recipient of the James Wright Poetry Award, the Brick Road Poetry Book Prize, and other honors. He is also the author of a fantasy series, and serves as the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. For more information and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit troublewithhammers.com.
Melchor Sahagun III says, “I do stuff; like Poetry, Skateboarding, Music, Comic Books, that sort of stuff. I’m in my late thirties, but I somehow feel simultaneously younger and much older than I am—it’s weird. I’m weird. You’re weird. Life is weird. I don’t really know what I’m doing, to be honest, but that’s all right because neither do you. I like my cats, A LOT. I like you a lot, too.”
Our usual Open Mic Time will follow the featured readers. We look forward to seeing you!
MoSt Poetry Center is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: MoSt’s Poetry On Sunday Series Reading–November 21, 2021
Time: Nov 21, 2021 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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Second Tuesday Poetry featuring George Higgins and Rick Bursky
2021-12-14 19:00 - 20:30
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to welcome poets George Higgins and Rick Bursky on Tuesday, December 14, 2021. Register in advance for this meeting: https://tinyurl.com/2p8k6saw. Sign up for Open Mic (3 mins each poet) following the featured poets: https://forms.gle/vYexC9AiS7d7Cgeo7. Hosted by Stella Beratlis.
George Higgins’s book, There There, was published by Kelsay Books/White Violet Press. He has been published in Best American Poetry and more recently in Prairie Schooner and Catamaran.
Rick Bursky’s most recent book, Let’s Become a Ghost Story, is out from BOA Editions. His previous book, I’m No Longer Troubled by The Extravagance, is also from BOA Editions. He teaches poetry for The Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Erin Rodoni & Dana Koster
2022-01-11 19:00 - 20:00
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center invites you to the first Second Tuesday Poetry reading of 2022, featuring Erin Rodoni and Dana Koster.
When: Tuesday, January 11, 2022 at 7 pm PST
Where: Zoom (RSVP https://tinyurl.com/4c3byekj)

ERIN RODONI
Erin Rodoni’s most recent book is And if the Woods Carry You, winner of the 2020 Southern Indiana Review Michael Waters Poetry Prize. Her two previous collections are: Body, in Good Light and A Landscape for Loss. Her poems have been published in journals and anthologies such as Blackbird, Poetry Northwest, and Best New Poets. She has won awards from AWP, Ninth Letter, and the Montreal International Poetry Prize. She teaches at the Writing Salon in San Francisco and serves on the board of the Marin Poetry Center.
And if the Woods Carry You, Winner of the 2020 Michael Waters Poetry Prize: On the brink of climate catastrophe, a mother grappling with her choice to bring children into an apocalyptic world sends her daughters into the woods of fairy tale as a rite of initiation. The woods carry her fears of extinction— devastating fires, rising seas, and the predatory dangers of girlhood—but also contain the transformative magic of love, interdependence, and renewal. And if the Woods Carry You roots into the wild heart of motherhood, where worry and wonder intertwine.
“Like all great fairy tales, Erin Rodoni’s poems are a glorious marriage of the domestic and the dangerous. There are tests and transformations, solitudes and sacrifices, births and burials. Everything is changing into something else, something energized, erotic, and enchanted. But it is the poet’s attention to craft that lifts these poems from the beguiling world of mere narrative into the more magical realm of art. In language that feels both ancient and current, Rodoni manages to craft lyrics that seem to come from some other world while speaking truths to this one. This is a marvelous book with a poetic voice to enliven even the wildest woods.” –Dean Rader, author of Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry and Landscape Portrait Figure Form
DANA KOSTER
Dana Koster was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and grew up in Ventura, California. She earned her English degree from UC Berkeley and MFA in poetry from Cornell University. From 2011-2013, she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. She lives in Modesto, California with her husband and two sons, where she works as a wedding photographer, occasional freelance writer and half of the art partnership Broad Sides with her collaborator, Chelsea America.
Dana’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in EPOCH, Indiana Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Cincinnati Review, PN Review, Clackamas Literary Review, THRUSH Poetry Journal and many others. She has work in the anthologies America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience, Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books, Haiku of the Living Dead and More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. In 2012, she was the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize and a Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award. Her first book, Binary Stars, was published by Carolina Wren Press in 2017. She makes a lot of claims about immortality and ghosts on her twitter account.
“We need a new word (astro-tropism?) for the poetry of Binary Stars. For the way it leaps into stellar depths to cast a gaze sharp as a hummingbird’s beak back on the extended family cluster. Two stars, a larger and a smaller, in tight rotation, yield binary poems in clumps and couplets in the first-person dual and second-person singular: to the baby, the husband (with orbiting cows, horses, and almonds), the burned-out but still gravitational father-in-law and mother, and the therapist, whose analytical gaze is returned with equal intensity. Koster has written a domestic poetry not “of the heart,” not soft-focused, but of the barycenter, the binary center of gravity, in which the familiar, thrown off kilter, becomes alienated, estranged, and new. Dare you read a poetry at the white heat? Then open Binary Stars, an incandescent book of the first magnitude.”
—John Shoptaw, author of Times Beach

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Kelly Cressio-Moeller & John Sibley Williams
2022-02-08 19:00 - 20:00
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present the Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Kelly Cressio-Moeller and John Sibley Williams, hosted by Stella Beratlis with an open mic following the featured poets.
Tuesday, February 8, 2022
7 pm PST
RSVP for Zoom
Sign up for open mic (3 mins per reader)
Kelly Cressio-Moeller
Kelly Cressio-Moeller is a poet and visual artist. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net, and have appeared widely in journals and at literary websites including Gargoyle, North American Review, Poet Lore, Salamander, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Water~Stone Review, and ZYZZYVA, among others. An associate editor at Glass Lyre Press, she lives in the Bay Area with her husband, two sons, and basset hound. Shade of Blue Trees from Two Sylvias Press (Finalist for the Wilder Prize) is her first poetry collection. Visit her website at www.kellycressiomoeller.com
John Sibley Williams
John Sibley Williams is the author of seven poetry collections. The most recent are the forthcoming Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (winner of the Cider Press Review Book Award, 2021) and The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award, 2021), just published this month. A twenty-six-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards, including the Laux/Millar Prize, Wabash Prize, Philip Booth Award and others. Previous publishing credits include Best American Poetry, Yale Review, Midwest Quarterly, Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and Poetry Northwest, among many others. John holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rivier University and an MA in Book Publishing from Portland State University. He is the founder and head teacher of Caesura Poetry Workshop, a virtual workshop series, and he serves as co-founder and editor of The Inflectionist Review. He also works as a poetry editor and book coach. John lives in Portland, Oregon.

Poetry on Sunday Series featuring Heather Altfeld and Troy Jollimore
2022-02-13 14:00 - 15:00 | Zoom
Join host Gary Thomas and our featured readers Heather Altfeld and Troy Jollimore for the February 13th, 2022 edition of MoSt’s Poetry On Sunday Series readings on Zoom, beginning at 2:00pmPacific Time.
Heather Altfeld’s second book of poems, Post Mortem, published in 2021 by Orison Books, was selected by Eric Pankey for the 2019 Orison Prize. Her first book, The Disappearing Theatre, won the 2015 Poets at Work Prize. She is the 2017 recipient of the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Conjunctions Magazine, Aeon, Orion Magazine, Narrative, ZYZZYVA, Poetry Northwest, and others. She teaches in the Honors Program and for the Department of Comparative Religion and Humanities at California State University, Chico.

Troy Jollimore is the author of four books of poetry and three books of philosophy, as well as numerous articles, essays, and reviews. His first collection of poetry, Tom Thomson in Purgatory, won the National Book Critics Circle award in poetry for 2006. His third, Syllabus of Errors, appeared on the New York Times’ list of the best books of poetry published in 2015. His most recent collection of poetry, Earthly Delights, was published by Princeton University Press in 2021. He is currently a Professor in the Philosophy Department at California State University, Chico. His poems have appeared in publications including the New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, McSweeney’s, Tin House, and The Best American Poetry 2020.

To attend the February 13, 2022 Poetry on Sunday Series reading, please register using the link below.
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcucuGtrDIvHNMw1JjSYCkeUpOrZlGJHTMR

Second Tuesday Poetry presents Naming the Lost: The Fresno Poets Reading
2022-03-08 19:00 - 20:00
MoSt is thrilled to host a Zoom reading with Christopher Buckley, Gordon Preston, Lee Herrick, and Sam Pereira, who will talk about and read work from the anthology Naming the Lost: The Fresno Poets. The reading will include poems and excerpts from interviews and essays.
With open mic following the featured poets; 3 minutes per reader.
When: Tuesday, March 8, 2022 at 7 pm PST
Where: Zoom (RSVP in advance for link: https://tinyurl.com/4c3byekj)
Link for open mic signup: https://forms.gle/xVfDF4hUx89REVmq7

A Reading with Lara Gularte in conjunction with Festa: A Celebration of Portuguese Faith & Culture
2022-04-02 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
Join MoSt Poetry, in partnership with the Carnegie Arts Center, as we present a reading with Lara Gularte in conjunction with the main lobby exhibition Festa: A Celebration of Portuguese Faith & Culture. Gularte is joined by local poet Sara Coito.
Lara Gularte lives and writes in the Sierra Foothills of California, and she is El Dorado County Poet Laureate 2021-2023. Her book of poetry, Kissing the Bee, was published by “The Bitter Oleander Press,” in 2018. Her forthcoming book, Fourth World Woman, published by Finishing Line Press, was published earlier this year.
Nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, Gularte has been published in national and international journals and anthologies. Her poetry depicting her Azorean heritage is included in the The Gávea-Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry, and in Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora in the United States and Canada. She is affiliated with the Cagarro Colloquium: Azorian Diaspora Writers, at the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI), California State University-Fresno.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring the poetry of Mexican poet Ulalume González de León
2022-04-12 19:00 - 20:00
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry, featuring the poetry of Mexican poet Ulalume González de León from Plagiarisms/Plagios Vol. 2
with translators Terry Ehret &Nancy J. Morales and guest poet-translator William O’Daly.
Hosted by Stella Beratlis
Zoom–RSVP required: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYvdu-oqDktGNSizk4tQoG2D1gD0ynwn0CD. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Open mic signup link (3 min per poet): https://forms.gle/PHW4ixpkG3U3zwJk8
About Ulalume González de León

Ulalume González de León was born in 1928 in Montevideo, Uruguay, the daughter of two poets, Roberto Ibañez and Sara de Ibañez. She studied literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of Mexico.
While living in Mexico in 1948, Ulalume became a naturalized Mexican citizen. She married painter and architect Teodoro González de León, and together they had three children. She published essays, stories, and poems, and worked with Mexican poet and Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz as an editor of two literary journals, Plural and Vuelta. She also translated the work of H.D., Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes, Lewis Carroll, and e.e. cummings.
In the 1970’s in Latin America, González de León was part of a generation of women writers challenging the traditional identities of women, marriage, and relationships. Her poetry earned her many awards, including the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, the Flower of Laura Poetry Prize, and the Alfonso X Prize. Ulalume González de León died in 2009 of respiratory failure and complications of Alzheimer’s.
About the Translators
Terry Ehret, one of the founders of Sixteen Rivers Press, has published four collections of poetry, most recently Night Sky Journey from Kelly’s Cove Press. Her literary awards include the National Poetry Series, the California Book Award, the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, a nomination for the Northern California Book Reviewer’s Award, and five Pushcart Prize nominations. From 2004–2006, she served as the poet laureate of Sonoma County where she lives and teaches writing.
Nancy J. Morales, a first-generation American of Puerto Rican parents, earned her bachelor’s degree from Rutgers College, a master’s in teaching English as a Second Language from Adelphi University, and a doctorate in education from Teachers College at Columbia University. She has taught at Dominican University, College of Marin, Sonoma State University, and other schools, from elementary to graduate levels. Currently she is a board member for the Northern California Chapter of the Fulbright Alumni Association and teaches Spanish to private clients.
About William O’Daly
William O’Daly is co-founder of Copper Canyon Press and a noted Neruda translator.

Many Voices, One Community: Gillian Wegener and Salvatore Salerno
2022-04-28 19:30 - 20:30
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center & Stanislaus County Library Present Many Voices, One Community, featuring Gillian Wegener and Salvatore Salerno, emeritus and current Poets Laureate of Modesto
Celebrate National Poetry Month by sharing your poetry! Read your poetry, or poems from one of your favorite poets. Reading time limited to three minutes per person.
Thursday, April 28
at 7 p.m. on Zoom
Register at www.stanislauslibrary.org to receive the Zoom link.

Second Tuesday Poetry Reading featuring Susan Kelly-Dewitt & Linda Toren
2022-05-10 19:00 - 20:00
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry, featuring Susan Kelly-Dewitt and Linda Toren.
Hosted by Gary Thomas
Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2022
Time: 7:00 pm PST
on Zoom–RSVP required:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIpf–tqTwjHtzOiKfx1CE232QV992N-gyG
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
About Susan Kelly-Dewitt
Susan Kelly-DeWitt is the author of The Gatherer’s Alphabet, just published in 2022, Gravitational Tug (Main Street Rag, 2020), Spider Season (Cold River Press, 2016), and The Fortunate Islands (Marick Press, 2008).
Her work has been included in many national and regional anthologies including The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (Autumn House Press), When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women (Autumn House Press), : In Whatever Houses We May Visit: an Anthology of Poems That Have Inspired Physicians (American College of Physicians) and Claiming the Spirit Within: A Sourcebook of Women’s Poetry (Beacon Press). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, North American Review and many others. She has been featured on Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily.
Susan has been the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, The Chicago Literary Award from Another Chicago Magazine, the Bazzanella Award for Short Fiction and a number of Pushcart nominations. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the Northern California Book Reviewers Association.
Over the years she has worked as a freelance writer and poetry columnist for the Sacramento Bee and Sacramento Union as the editor of the on-line journal Perihelion and the print journal Quercus. She has been a California Poet-in-the-Schools, Artistic Director for the Women’s Wisdom Project arts program for homeless and low-income women, an educator, and an artist in the prisons. She lives in Sacramento, California, where she is a contributing editor for Poetry Flash and a reviewer for Library Journal. Previously she was an instructor for the University of California, Davis and a blogger for Autumn House Press’ Coal Hill Review. She is also an exhibiting visual artist.
Gatherer’s Alphabet is the first book in Gunpowder Press’s California Poets Series.
Praise for Gatherer’s Alphabet:
These luscious poems feel like small museums of infinite wonder. Gallery, butterfly, stars in autumn. The wisdom of nature, the work of angels, what women endure—I love these poems. A timeless grace breathes through this marvelous book, this bounty you’ll be grateful that you read. —Lee Herrick, Fresno Poet Laureate (2015-17) author of Scar and Flower, Gardening Secrets of the Dead, and This Many Miles from Desire
Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s concentrations come to life as if in a studio, with watercolor washes and ink accentuations. As well as mother and father, ghosts and angels, words are animated characters urgently communicating— whistling to animals or dogwood gods, pinches of anger too—a tool to save us. Is she holding a pen—or a moth by its wings? Poems like “Words” and “The Thorne Miniatures” and the title poem gaze multi-eyed at the reader from the palm of her offering hand. — Sandra McPherson, author of The 5150 Poems and Speech Crush
What I love about Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s poems are the colors, how they “hold / themselves out / to be touched.” Her mother is described as having “storm-colored hair.” Silence is a “white bulb.” The past is a minefield of blue flowers. This bringing together of nature and mind, the mundane and the transcendent, is the result of the poet’s unrestrained sympathy for all living things. Kelly-DeWitt’s companions in this vision-quest are O’Keeffe and Van Gogh, artists who paint not the appearance of field and cloud, but the primal energy beneath the surface. The act of seeing is the true subject here. We are fortunate to have Kelly-DeWitt to guide us through this journey. —Michael Simms, editor of Vox Populi, author of Nightjar
Coming from a world “sheltered by cold leaves of starlight,” Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s powerful new work serves as a garden for ghosts, windows, and angels capable of making ordinary events extraordinary. A sharp sense of loss is integral to Gatherer’s Alphabet, which is steeped in the particulars of memory, the pebbles, the dark pits. Here is an “impossible country of imagination“ that must be visited over and over. —Maya Khosla, Poet Laureate Emerita of Sonoma County, author of All the Fires of Wind and Light
About Linda Toren
Linda Toren lives in the foothills of Calaveras County with her husband Theo, dogs, a cat, and many chickens. Linda is a retired teacher and director of Voices of Wisdom through Manzanita Writers Press (MWP). She has presented poetry workshops for children and adults, publishing schoolwide collections of poetry and art at local elementary schools for more than 15 years.
Her poetry appears in many collections, including Manzanita: Poetry and Prose of the Mother Lode & Sierra (MWP 1995–2008), Voices of Wisdom (MWP 2018, 2019, 2022), Out of the Fire (MWP 2017), Collision V: an Intersection of Poetry and Photography (2018), and more. This year, her first full-length collection, Raven Braids the Wind: A Life in Syllables, was published by Manzanita Writers Press.
Raven Braids the Wind started with a simple assignment in elementary school— write a haiku. That first haiku—Lonely people live/within themselves like dusty/ books upon a shelf—is a senryu (a haiku poem focused on personal reflection or comment about the self or world.) Thousands of haiku later, this poetic form has become a daily journey in which the author explores and translates the natural world and the inner world of introspection. Whether or not you write haiku, you will be able to appreciate their accessibility and simplicity and find yourself opening doors and windows to companionable thoughts and feelings.
Linda produces a community radio program dedicated to poetry, prose, nonfiction literary news, lyrics, and the celebration of thoughts and language at KQBM Blue Mountain Radio (KQBM.org).
Praise for Raven Braids the Wind:

Linda Toren has graced readers with her haiku meditations on the world—both the natural world and the chaotic one humans have wrought. Her poems take us on a seasonal journey through pine forests and chicken coops, through road-side sweet peas, on ravens’ wings, and through the dreams and puzzlement of modern life. Toren’s careful attention allows the reader a window into her love and compassion for these worlds, in all their flawed wonder. One haiku reads “How do I gather/ the threads of my life into/ some kind of order?” Lucky for us, in this collection, Linda Toren does just that, and the order revealed is deeply personal, poignant, and beautiful. —Gillian Wegener, author of This Sweet Haphazard (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2017)

Raven Braids the Wind by Linda Toren is a collection of lovely and thought-provoking haiku and senryu graced with charming artwork. Toren’s haiku transport the reader into the garden, the busy barnyard, and the woodlands where birds, plants, animals, and weather impart wisdom and elicit questions that Toren transposes into concise and musical language. Her senryu distill the vicissitudes of emotion, recent sociopolitical perturbations, and pandemic upheaval, deftly portraying the human condition in clean, contemplative lines. The juxtaposition of these two poetic forms reflects the dichotomy of contentment and disquiet, the eternal and the ephemeral, in measured syllables that brilliantly convey vivid imagery and lucid observations. Linda Toren’s Raven Braids the Wind is a treasure. –Linda Scheller, author of Wind and Children (Main Street Rag, June 2022) and Fierce Light (FutureCycle Press, 2017)

Second Tuesday Poetry with Clay Hunt and Briana Muñoz
2022-06-14 19:00 - 20:00
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry, featuring Clay Hunt and Briana Muñoz, hosted by Stella Beratlis.
Tuesday, June 14, 2022
7:00 pm PST w/ open mic
on Zoom–RSVP required: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcvcOqvrz8pG9Yi9Z0cV9-AoGodS4mymh-Q
RSVP Open Mic (3 min per poet): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSezxMg1qBq4z4NyNQWRckkONw_hR-JWWJ8HsJ__XjSDKx34GA/viewform

Briana Muñoz
Briana Muñoz is a Poet from Southern California. She is the author of Loose Lips published by Prickly Pear Publishing (2019) and of Everything Is Returned to the Soil published by FlowerSong Press (2021). She has performed poetry in places like UNEAC (The National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba), CECUT (The Tijuana Cultural Center), El Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego and beyond.
Briana currently serves as the Volunteer Event Coordinator for the Sims Library of Poetry and the Volunteer Event Coordinator for the Luis J Rodriguez for CA Governor 2022 campaign.
About Everything is Returned to the Soil/ Todo Vuelve a la Tierra:
Everything Is Returned to the Soil is a bilingual, full-length poetry collection of poems on the spiritual, political, and cultural realms. Reading Briana Muñoz’s poetry is like following her as she reclaims her Indigenous culture, recounts moments growing up wedged in-between two borders, all while breaking long existing patriarchal structures within her existence as a woman of color.
https://linktr.ee/Awomanofwords
Links to purchase books: https://www.flowersongpress.com/store/p/everythingisreturnedtothesoil
https://www.pricklypearpublishing.com/shop/loose-lips
Clay Hunt
Clay Hunt is the author of three chapbooks: Born Shane, published by Two Key Customs, Young When the Sun Went Down, published by Budget Press, and Sewn-On Patch, published by Between Shadows Press. He has poems published in many journals, some which include Spectra Poets, The Raw Art Review, Paper and Ink Literary Zine, The Rye Whiskey Review, Penumbra, Song of the San Joaquin, Seppuku Quarterly, and Beyond Words Literary Magazine. Some of his poems have won awards such as 2nd place in poetry in Modesto Junior College’s Celebration of the Humanities, The Dark Sire’s TDS Awards 2021 for poetry, and the City of Modesto’s Poet’s Corner Contest. He currently lives in San Francisco with his wife, Laura.
Young When the Sun Went Down chapbook can be found at Budgetpress.net
Email: Chuntjr89@gmail.com
Instragram: @claytanic89

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Linda Scheller & Zubair Ahmed
2022-07-12 19:00 - 20:00
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry, featuring Zubair Ahmed and Linda Scheller
Date: Tuesday, July 12, 2022
Time: 7:00 pm PST
RSVP for Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZArcu6oqD4sGNDZmBo6MV6JoEG46YsUVpYJ

Linda Scheller
Linda Scheller is a poet, playwright, and essayist whose work has recently been published in Colorado Review, On the Seawall, Arkana, Sugar House Review, Terrain, The Museum of Americana, and The Wild Word. Her first book of poetry, Fierce Light, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2017. Recent honors include finalist for the Barrow Street Press Poetry Book Prize and The Word Works Washington Prize as well as Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominations. She is a founding board member of MoSt Poetry, serves on the Stanislaus County Arts Council, programs for KCBP Community Radio, and belongs to the Modesto Chapter of the National League of American Pen Women. Wind & Children, her new poetry book, was published by Main Street Rag on June 8, 2022.
“Linda Scheller’s Wind and Children is a tragic and beautiful exposition of a teacher’s heart. Tinged with the uncertain fates of her children, California climate chaos, and bright birdsong, these poems sing as a poignant “flute for the wind” in a broken “system that fosters indifference.” Through exquisite metaphor and gripping imagery, this “mother of thousands” pens 36 years of service with grace and wonder, regret and hope. And like a true teacher—with love. ~Kai Coggin, educator and author of Mining for Stardust
“In Linda Scheller’s Wind and Children, fifth graders sit “hunched and silent/like a cloud of butterflies/forced to earth.” We worry over them, their parents, their homes, the violence that surrounds them. Scheller refuses to turn away from difficult realities, yet seeks understanding, looking to the natural world. Reader, you’ll travel far before you’ll find a more thoughtful guide than the one you meet and learn to love in the pages of this moving, care-filled book.” ~Christopher Citro, author of If We Had a Lemon We’d Throw It and Call That the Sun
“Scheller brings the focus of her lens to the world, showcasing a lifetime of literary lessons, poetic remembrances, and artistic manifestations. This volume is a beautiful addition to her work.” ~Indigo Moor, Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something
For more information and links to publications, please go to lindascheller.com.
Zubair Ahmed
Zubair Ahmed was born and raised in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He works as an engineer in Oakland. He also writes poetry, having been named by Poets & Writers magazine as one of the top debut poets of 2012. His collection City of Rivers (McSweeney’s, 2012) was nominated for the California Book Award. Zubair’s works have appeared in Poetry Magazine and The Believer, among others, and have been translated into Swedish and French.

Second Tuesday Poetry presents Field Studies: Poems We Love
2022-08-09 19:00 - 20:00
[Field research is defined as a qualitative method of data collection that aims to observe, interact and understand people while they are in a natural environment.]
Second Tuesday Poetry presents Field Studies, Poems We Love
FIELD STUDIES. Maybe poets are social scientists at heart: We ask questions and seek to understand the world, ourselves, each other. For this open mic reading, please come prepared to read a poem that you love–one in which witness, documentation, analysis, and/or understanding are key. You’ll have 3-4 minutes to read your poem(s). Hosted by Stella Beratlis.
Date: Tuesday, August 9, 2022
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Zoom RSVP required: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAkd-yuqzIuHN2hEdFucto5F3xrkxX-lplH
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

MoSt Poetry on Saturday featuring Nancy Aidé González and Gary Thomas
2022-08-13 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
Nancy Aidé González and Gary Thomas will read their poetry on August 13, 2022 at 2:00 p.m. during MoSt Poetry on Saturday at the Carnegie Arts Center, located at 250 North Broadway in Turlock, CA. There will be light refreshments and an open mic following the featured poets. This event is free and open to the public.
Nancy Aidé González is a Chicana poet, educator, and activist. Her work has appeared in Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature, La Tolteca, Mujeres De Maiz Zine, Hinchas de Poesía, Fifth Wednesday Journal and several other literary journals. Her work is featured in Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, Sacramento Voices: Foam at the Mouth Anthology, Lowriting: Shots, Rides, and Stories from the Chicano Soul, and Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century.

. Gary Thomas grew up on a peach farm outside Empire, California. Prior to retirement, he taught eighth grade language arts for thirty-one years and junior college English for seven, sharing and discussing at least one poem every day with his students. He has presented poetry workshops for statewide organizations, festivals, and conferences. He has had poems published in In the Grove, Time of Singing, 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. All the Connecting Lights, published by Finishing Line Press, is his first full-length collection.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Gary Thomas and Ian Miller
2022-09-13 19:00 - 20:00
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

Second Tuesday Poetry Online featuring Cyrus Cassells & James Fujinami Moore
2022-10-11 19:00 - 20:00
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry Online featuring Cyrus Cassells and James Fujinami Moore
Join us as we welcome two tremendous poets to our Second Tuesday Poetry series: State of Texas Poet Laureate Cyrus Cassells and James Fujinami Moore of Los Angeles. Both have new collections published by Four Way Books. We’re pleased to welcome these poets to our Central Valley poetry community. Open mic follows featured poets, 3 min per poet, please. Sign up for open mic.
Hosted by Stella Beratlis
Date: Tuesday, October 11, 2022
Time: 7:00 pm PST
RSVP for Zoom link
Cyrus Cassells
A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, Cyrus Cassells has also been a recipient of a Lambda Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, and a Lannan Literary Award. His first book, The Mud Actor, was a 1981 National Poetry Series Selection. His 2018 volume, The Gospel according to Wild Indigo, was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award, and the Balcones Poetry Prize. His Catalan translations, Still Life With Children: Selected Poems of Francesc Parcerisas was awarded the Texas Institute of Letters’ Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translated Book of 2018 and 2019. He was nominated for a 2019 Pulitzer Prize for his cultural criticism for The Washington Spectator. My Gingerbread Shakespeare, his first novel, and his seventh book of poems, Is There Room For Another Horse on Your Horse Ranch? were published in 2021. In 2021, he was appointed Texas poet laureate, and in 2022, Cassells received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship and his eighth collection The World That the Shooter Left Us was published by Four Way Press. He lives in Austin and is a tenured full professor at Texas State University.
About The World That the Shooter Left Us
“Wrestling in the clutches of fury and mourning, Cassells—long a master purveyor of both the splendor and contradictions of the natural world, as well as the voluptuary elements of the self—turns his consummate clear-eyed gaze to a bleak and burgeoning brutality that threatens our days, siphons the spirit and challenges the realm of the poet. The World the Shooter Left Us is a world defined by stark boundaries and firepower, chalk outlines, rampant injustices and histories tainted with each and every version of sin. Cassells, a wily and relentless witness, doesn’t tiptoe through the maelstrom or allow the reader to turn away. Instead, he becomes the writer that this moment needs—one with the lyrical skill and decades of experience to craft this revelatory guidebook for our grief.” —Patricia Smith
“The World That the Shooter Left Us is poetry of conscience at its most crafted and compassionate. The title poem is an elegy for a beloved Latino lawyer, murdered by a white assailant over a parking space, that forces us to contemplate all we have lost in a society bristling with guns, rage and bigotry. However, the title of another poem captures the essence of this eloquent collection: “The Only Way to Fight the Plague is Decency.” In the face of plague after plague—COVID-19, lethal police violence, kids in cages, the end of asylum, sexual exploitation, Trumpism—these poems show us a way out, a vision of transcendence through reclamation of our humanity. Cyrus Cassells demonstrates, through the resplendent decency of these poems, that the world the shooter left us is not only a world of death, but life, not only bullets, but poetry.”
–Martin Espada

James Fujinami Moore
James Fujinami Moore’s debut collection indecent hours was published by Four Way Books in 2022. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrow Street’s 4×2, The Brooklyn Rail, Guesthouse, The Margins, the Pacifica Literary Review, and Prelude. He has been a Poets House Emerging Poets Fellow, a Bread Loaf Work-Study Fellow, and the Four Way Books Fellow at the Frost Place Conference in Poetry. He received his MFA from Hunter College in 2016, and lives in Los Angeles.
About indecent hours
“James Fujinami Moore’s powerful poems keep intimacy active in their measure and perspectives, working through a wide range of public and private histories. They close in and zoom out with an intensity of tonal scale, one that binds an elegance steeped in experience with all the irreducible cuts and marks the poems invoke and depict. Those cuts and marks may be rendered with a surrealist’s touch or a realist’s blunt recall, as needed, and with a precise understanding of the various physical and emotive overlapping roles the glimpse, the conversation, the story, the touch, and the brawl each retain. indecent hours is a terrific book.” -Anselm Berrigan
“James Fujinami Moore’s poems possess the uncanny capacity to be at once unsettled and unnervingly lucid. It is this particular power that fuels his searing investigations—into the intimate relationships between representation and violence, into how families and countries take shape around those who are missing. Moore’s poems are urgent, achingly searching, unflinching. Here is a poet who moves as he needs to—flipping foreground and background, rewinding and replaying, refusing the distortions of fear.” –Mary Syzbist

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Kiss Me Like You Voted: Election Night Open Mic
2022-11-08 19:00 - 20:00
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, wrote the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1821 in the essay, “A Defence of Poetry.” By this, he meant that poetry reflects the real world and that the poet’s imagination is the faculty which allows us to perceive beauty in the world–thereby helping create civilization itself. Poets are makers of civilization, no less–hence, poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
With this in mind, we invite you to the Election Day installment of the Second Tuesday Poetry series. The November 8 reading is a virtual open mic around the questions: How do we reckon the promise of this country with its violent past and present? How can we love when so much is on the line? How can we NOT love?
Open mic 15 poets max; 3 minutes per person–sign up to read at https://forms.gle/izdLKgzryo1uFzwLA
RSVP for Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYscOqhpjgrGNZ9calCIAyo_9KPb7XWmAy_

Carnegie Poetry on Saturday Series 2:00 p.m. November 19, 2022 featuring Bryan Medina & Linda Scheller
2022-11-19 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
Please join us Saturday, November 19, 2022 at Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock, CA from 2:00-3:00 p.m. for a poetry reading by Bryan Medina and Linda Scheller with an open mic following the featured poets. This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be provided.
S. Bryan Medina is a former student of U. S. poet laureate emeritus Juan Felipe Herrera, and his poetry has graced stages in the San Francisco BayArea, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Kansas City. He founded both the Inner Ear Open Mic and the Beat Down Slam as a way to free poetry from the confines of academic institutions, making it accessible to all. Medina, a long-time art activist, has been awarded two City of Fresno Commendations, including the 2014 Fresno Arts Council Horizon Award, for contributions to the rich artistic and cultural heritage in Fresno. He is the author of More than Soil, Less than Sand and his work has appeared in journals such as Flies, Cockroaches, and Poets, In the Grove, The San Joaquin Review, Jubilee, and Invisible Memoirs, among others. In 2017 Medina was named Fresno County’s third Poet Laureate, serving a distinguished two-year term reaching out to the community featuring readings, school and university visits, writing workshops, and meetings with business and political leaders throughout the state of California. Medina is a Desert Storm/Gulf War veteran and a graduate of Fresno Pacific University.

Linda Scheller is a retired public elementary school teacher and the author of two books of poetry, Fierce
Light (FutureCycle Press, 2017) and Wind & Children (Main Street Rag, 2022) as well as a chapbook, Halcyon. Her poetry, plays, and book reviews are widely published in journals and anthologies including Colorado Review, Arkana, Gyroscope Review, Plays, On the Seawall, Sugar House Review, Poetry East, and The Wild Word. She volunteers as a programmer for KCBP Community Radio, tutors adults in literacy and English language acquisition, and serves on the boards of MoSt Poetry and the Stanislaus County Arts Council. Ms. Scheller is a member of the Modesto Chapter of the National League of American Pen Women and sings with Modesto Symphony Orchestra Chorus. Her website is lindascheller.com.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Brad Buchanan and Susan Cohen
2023-01-10 19:00 - 20:00
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Brad Buchanan and Susan Cohen, on Tuesday, January 10, 2023 at 7:00 p,m PST. Hosted by Stella Beratlis, city of Modesto poet laureate emeritus.
RSVP for Zoom link
Open Mic Signup: https://forms.gle/d51j2WqGmBrzrTLT9. 3 minutes per reader, please.
SUSAN COHEN
Susan Cohen is a journalist and poet in Berkeley, California. She has been a newspaper reporter, a contributing writer to the Washington Post Magazine, and a faculty member of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California. In 2013, she earned an MFA in poetry. Her third full-length book of poems, Democracy of Fire, was released from Broadstone Books on September 30, 2022; it was a finalist for the Washington Prize, Wilder Prize, and Richard Snyder Prize,
Susan’s second book of poems, A Different Wakeful Animal, won the 2015 David Martinson-Meadowhawk Prize from Red Dragonfly Press. It also was a runner-up for the Philip Levine Prize, finalist for the May Swenson Award, Blue Lynx Prize, and Richard Snyder Prize.
Susan’s first full-length book of poems, Throat Singing, was published in 2012 by Cherry Grove Collections. She also wrote two chapbooks: Backstroking (Unfinished Monument Press; 2005), which won the Acorn-Rukeyser Prize; and Finding the Sweet Spot (Finishing Line Press; 2009).
About Democracy of Fire
A thread of elegy runs through Democracy of Fire, Susan Cohen’s wise and wonderful new poetry collection. Tenderly, precisely, these poems record a litany of the world’s ongoing losses: “Greenland’s ice sheet pooling like tears into the ocean,” elephants, beetles, democracies, “languages left behind like cloaks,” and “our own bones interred without ceremony.” Cohen shows us our interconnectedness, a reminder of both the beauty and value of what’s at stake. Yet, paradoxically, this vision makes Democracy of Fire a deeply comforting book. Of the planet Mercury she writes, “…a pinprick ablaze for longer than our species will exist…Between us and it, there’s a distance far beyond air, and beyond despair.”
—Ellen Bass, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets & author of Indigo

Brad Buchanan
Brad Buchanan’s writings have appeared in nearly 200 journals, and he has also published 4 book-length collections of poetry: his latest, CHIMERA, was just published in November 2022. The Miracle Shirker (Poets Corner Press, 2005), Swimming the Mirror: Poems for My Daughter (Roan Press, 2008), and The Scars, Aligned: A Cancer Narrative (Finishing Line Press, 2019) as well as two academic books. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Sacramento State University. He was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma in February 2015, and underwent a stem cell transplant in 2016, which involved temporary vision loss and disability, as well as an ongoing illness: chronic Graft-versus-Host Disease.
About CHIMERA
Brad Buchanan‘s painfully stunning new collection, CHIMERA, continues his explorations of the monstrosities that cancer can create in the lives of human beings as they struggle through invasive testing, treatments, recovery, and the hope of being cancer-free that stem cell transplants offer. Buchanan…documents, reports, questions, disputes both himself and the world cancer and chimerism force him to confront. He helps us see and feel in a most visceral way what it means—for him, for us, for those he loves and those who love him—to be engaged in this struggle. “Cancer is not your standard bully, / it will not back down if confronted / with sufficiently brave defiance. / It doesn’t have a nervous system / to mobilize or sympathize. / The only martial arts it knows/ are patience, stealth and resilience.” These poems will surprise you with their tenacity, empathy and ingenious language.
–Susan Kelly-DeWitt, author of SPIDER SEASON (Cold River Press, 2016) and GRAVITATIONAL TUG (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2020)

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Poetry On Saturday: Andrena Zawinski and Susie Meserve
2023-02-11 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
Carnegie Arts Center
250 North Broadway Avenue, Turlock, California
Join host Gary Thomas for the latest edition of MoSt’s Poetry On Saturday readings in person on February 11 at 2:00 p.m. at the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock. Our featured readers are Andrena Zawinski and Susie Meserve from the Bay Area, followed by our Open Mic time following the featured poets. This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be provided.
Andrena Zawinski is a veteran teacher of writing Jack Hirschman called “an activist poet whose works open up paths of struggle, celebration, revolutionary victories.” About her fourth full-length poetry collection, Born Under the Influence, Mary Mackey lauds the poems as “tough, smart, beautifully crafted” and Michael Simms says, “we are lucky to have this poet among us.” Her work has appeared in Blue Collar Review, CQ, Plainsongs, Progressive Magazine, Rattle, and more, and is widely anthologized, including Crossing Class, Lawrence Ferlinghetti Tribute, Raising Lilly Ledbetter, Women Write Resistance, and others with awards from Akron Art Museum, International Human Rights Creators of Justice, Ventura County Poetry Project, Emily Stauffer Poetry Prize, Kenneth Patchen Poetry Prize, and PEN Oakland Award. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, but has made her home in the San Francisco Bay Area. To find out more about Andrena’s latest book, visit: https://www.wordpoetrybooks.com/zawinski.html

Born and raised in New England, Susie Meserve is the author of the poetry collection Little Prayers, which won a Blue Light Award from Blue Light Press and was published in 2018. She is also the author of the chapbook Faith. Her poetry and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Elle, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Gulf Coast, Salamander, and more. She lives in northern California with her family.

MoSt Poetry Reading
2023-04-22 13:00 - 14:00 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
To celebrate National Poetry Month, MoSt Poetry will have a reading featuring poets who serve on our non-profit’s board followed by an open mic. Please join us at 1:00 p.m. PT on Saturday, April 22, 2023 in the Stanislaus County Library. This event is free and open to the public.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Bryan Medina, Joseph Rios, Michael Meyerhofer, and Kenneth Chacón
2023-05-09 19:00 - 20:00
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Four Fresno Poets: Bryan Medina, Joseph Rios, Michael Meyerhofer, and Kenneth Chacón.
Hosted by Gillian Wegener
Date: Tuesday, May 9, 2022
Time: 7:00 pm PDT
on Zoom–RSVP required:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAuceuuqDIjG9D7nH7UsdTrO5qDQlW6f7Lp
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Bryan Medina
Bryan Medina has been a fixture in the Fresno literary community for over 25 years. A former student of California Poet Laureate Emeritus Juan Felipe Herrera, his poetry has graced stages in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Kansas City. He founded the Inner Ear Poetry Slam as a way to free poetry from the confines of academic institutions, making it accessible to all. Bryan has been awarded two City of Fresno Commendations for contributions to Fresno’s rich artistic and cultural heritage and has been featured as one of the four “Fresno Poets” from writer Nick Belardes’s Distinguished Valley Writers series as well as appeared in journals such as Poetry, Flies, Cockroaches, and Poets, In The Grove, The San Joaquin Review, Jubilee, and Invisible Memoirs and was an Honorable Mention in the ‘06 Larry Levis Poetry Prize. He is a graduate of Fresno Pacific University and teaches Special Education.
Joseph Rios
Born in Clovis, Joseph Rios is the author of Shadowboxing: Poems and Impersonations (Omnidawn), winner of the American Book Award; he was named one of the Notable Debut Poets by Poets & Writers Magazine for 2017. His poems can be found at Poem A Day, Huizache, The Rumpus, the San Francisco Chronicle, and on Metro buses and trains in Los Angeles. He was recently named a Stegner Fellow by Stanford University. He lives in Fresno.
Michael Meyerhofer
Michael Meyerhofer’s fifth book, Ragged Eden, was published by Glass Lyre Press. He has been the startled recipient of fourteen national writing awards including the James Wright Poetry Award, the Liam Rector First Book Award, the Brick Road Poetry Book Prize, and several chapbook prizes. His work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry, Rattle, Brevity, Ploughshares, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and other journals. He is also the author of a fantasy series.
Kennth Chacón
Kenneth Chacón is the author of The Cholo Who Said Nothing & Other Poems(Turning Point, 2017). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Colorado Review, Cimarron Review, Palette Poetry, Blackbird, and Huizache among others. Chacón is a native of Fresno, California and teaches English at Fresno City College.
