Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Brad Buchanan and Susan Cohen
2023-01-10 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
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)

Register in advance for this reading:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIkc-uopzIiE9CmsJAOxm1JzNtUdnMXYXqN
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

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.

City of Modesto Poet's Corner Reading/Reception
2023-06-04 13:00 - 15:00 | McHenry Museum, 1402 14th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us at McHenry Museum on Sunday, June 4 at 1 pm for a reading featuring the winners of the 2023 Poet’s Corner Contest, sponsored by the City of Modesto.
For contest information, please visit the City of Modesto Poet’s Corner page. (Contest info will be updated soon.)

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Lynn Hansen, Richard Robbins, and Thomas Mitchell
2023-06-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
Join the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center as we present poets Lynn Hansen, Richard Robbins, and Thomas Mitchell in a free on-line poetry reading hosted by Gillian Wegener.

ABOUT LYNN HANSEN
Lynn M. Hansen is a retired Modesto Junior College professor of marine biology. A member of the Ina Coolbrith Circle, Orinda, CA; MoSt Poetry Center, Modesto; and National League of American Pen Women, her work reflects her sense of place and the art of storytelling. In 2013 a collection of her poems was published by Quercus Review Press entitled Flicker: Poems. She is currently writing an historical novel about her maternal grandmother, Mernie Daisy Lewis, 1882-1963.

ABOUT RICHARD ROBBINS
Richard Robbins was raised in California and Montana, taught in Minnesota for many years, and recently moved back west to Oregon. Robbins has received awards or residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, the Anderson Center, Willapa Bay AiR, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers. From 1986 to 2014, he directed the Good Thunder Reading Series at Minnesota State Mankato, which the Minnesota Humanities Commission called, “the premier small-town reading series in the country.”
“Part balm, part prayer, part revelation, the quietly moving and incantatory poems in Richard Robbins’s The Oratory of All Souls reveal a poetic voice that is masterful, adept, and profoundly compelling. These supple poems unfold seamlessly, with the muscular music of moving water: elegant, clear, fierce. Robbins has the gaze of a painter, with a gorgeous insistence on image, line, shadow, and light.” —Lee Ann Roripaugh, author of tsunami vs. the fukushima 50

ABOUT THOMAS MITCHELL
Thomas Mitchell is a shrewd and trusted observer of the natural world. In this third book, Where We Arrive, Mitchell listens to “the counsel of water” and moves “from one silence to another.” And as such, he spies “a red-tailed hawk drifting in absolute loneliness.” More often than not, Mitchell is a poet of intimate feelings. He remarks time and again upon various stars and moons, towhees and starlings. His poetry is a poetry bent on reimagining the world.
—Thomas Aslin, author of Salvage and A Moon Over Wings

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Jun 13, 2023 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqcuqvrDkrHN0lTrVUQlB77MvaiI83W4zMAfter registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Aideed Medina and Ramón García
2023-07-11 19:00 - 20:00
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Aideed Medina and Ramón García, hosted by Stella Beratlis
Date: Tuesday, July 11, 2023
Time: 7:00 pm PST on Zoom–RSVP required:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYld-CrrzIiE9f-nC5FZF4UnTu3ZCbULvXC. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Open mic: 3 mins per poet, follows the featured readers. Open mic sign-up.
Aideed Medina
Aideed Medina is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, award winning spoken word artist and a playwright. She is a California Naturalist, and practices “flor y canto” as part of her poetic process and exploration of California’s natural history. Her work has appeared in Fresno State’s Club Austral Literary Magazine, Chicano Writers and Artists Association Journal, La Bloga, Poets Responding, Art of the Commune, Split This Rock, Nueva York Poetry Review, Di-Liio Revista Literaria, Artivista Anthology, as part of a collection of original art songs composed for The Opera Remix, Fresno Grand Opera, and co-writer of Eclectic Collective plays: Encounter Intuitive and Artista Invisible. Her debut collection, 31 Hummingbird, was just published earlier this year by Xingao Press. Aideed has a forthcoming full-length poetry collection, Segmented Bodies, from Prickly Pear Press coming later this year. In 2024, the Editorial Universitaria of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León in Mexico will be publishing her work poetry in a series that pairs Chicano-Mexican poets.
About 31 Hummingbird
31 Hummingbird | A suite of poems is the debut collection by Chicana poet Aideed Medina. 31 Hummingbird chronicles a human relationship, and ascends with the flights of hummingbirds. The hummingbird is a unique being and a metaphor of the racing of hearts, whose beating never fluctuates whether in mid-flight, hovering, being rejected, ejected, accepted or dive-bombing for the nectars and sugared waters of the embraces.
Aideed Medina’s hummingbird poems are cross-pollinators: She brushes our tongues and eyes with the poetics of aerodynamic words.
Her debut collection of humming-poems is an invitation to risk flying on the wings of feathered lightning. Up, down, across, forward, backward, fluttering like thunder and lightning, 31 Hummingbird invites close and patient reading, waiting for the hummingbird to appear and disappear in the flash of a few lines.
Ramón García
Ramón García is the author of two books of poetry The Chronicles (Red Hen Press, 2015) and Other Countries (What Books Press, 2010), and a monograph on the artist Ricardo Valverde (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). The Chronicles was a finalist for the Latino International Book Award for Best Poetry Book in English in 2016.
García has published poetry, fiction and scholarly work in a variety of journals, anthologies and museum catalogs. His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry anthology, The Floating Borderlands: Twenty-Five Years of US-Hispanic Literature, The American Journal of Poetry, Los Angeles Review, and Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas. He has contributed to the art work and projects of various visual artists, including Berta Jottar, Harry Gamboa Jr., Susan Silton, David John Attyah, and Sandra de la Loza.
Ramón García was born in Colima, Mexico and grew up in Modesto, California. He has a B.A. in World Literature from University of California, Santa Cruz and a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego. He is a Professor at California State University, Northridge and lives in downtown Los Angeles.
About The Chronicles
“Ramón García’s The Chronicles is wondrously deceptive. At first we may think we know the folkloric stuff dreams are made of, but soon one is inside a unique world where, through language and ritual, an edgy authority speaks through metaphor, chronicling the underbelly of the spoken and unspoken, and at times even the unspeakable. The Chronicles unearths things we didn’t know we knew—surprising, new, clear-eyed twists and turns. This collection of urgent poems, partly woven from stories inherited, sings through the past to the present and future.”—Yusef Komunyakaa

Second Tuesday Poetry Reading with Molly Fisk & Ingrid Keriotis
2023-08-08 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
Please join us for a poetry reading featuring Molly Fisk and Ingrid Keriotis with an open mic to follow.
RSVP with the link below.

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Aug 8, 2023 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIud-yorzMjG9Nu0FHzh0Uy7TVpsE81x9PiAfter registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Poetry on Saturday Reading featuring Connie Post and Francesca Bell
2023-08-12 14:00 - 16:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
MoSt’s Poetry On Saturday Reading
August 12, 2023 2:00 p.m. PST
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 August 12 at 2:00 p.m. at the Carnegie
Arts Center in Turlock. Our featured readers are Livermore poet laureate
emeritus Connie Post and Marin County poet laureate Francesca Bell
(both with new books out!) followed by our Open Mic time after the
featured poets. This event is free and open to the public, and light
refreshments will be provided.

Connie Post served as first Poet Laureate of Livermore, California. Her
work has appeared in Calyx, Comstock Review, One, Cold Mountain
Review, Slipstream, Spillway, River Styx, Spoon River Poetry Review,
Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Verse Daily. She has two full-length
books from Glass Lyre Press, entitled Floodwater and Prime Meridian.
Her most recent book, Between Twilight, is from New York Quarterly
books, and she has a recent chapbook, Broken Metronome, about her
brother’s journey with Parkinson’s.

Francesca Bell is the author of Bright Stain, a finalist for the Washington
State Book Award and the Julie Suk Award, and What Small Sound,, and is

the translator of Max Sessner’s Whoever Drowned Here, all from Red Hen
Press. Her work appears in B O D Y, ELLE, Los Angeles Review of Books,
New England Review, North American Review, Mid-American Review, and
Rattle. She is the former poetry editor of River Styx, the translation editor
of Los Angeles Review, and the poet laureate of Marin County. She lives
with her family in Novato, California.

Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Reading and Reception
2023-08-26 14:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
Please join us to celebrate our finalists for the Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate contest 2023-2024. Meet our finalists, Janelle Yulo of Modesto and Zoe Byron of Oakdale, and our Youth Poet Laureate Faith Delgado. With readings and refreshments.
At The Loft, 3rd floor of the Carnegie Arts Center,
Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate program is a partnership between Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, Stanislaus County Library, Stanislaus County Office of Education, MJC’s School of Language Arts and Education, and the Stanislaus Library Foundation.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Chloe Martinez and Emma Trelles
2023-09-12 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
Hosted by Stella Beratlis
Date: Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Time: 7:00 pm PST
RSVP for Zoom link
Open mic signup; 3 mins per reader please.
Please join us this month as we feature poets Emma Trelles and Chloe Martinez on Zoom. Emma Trelles, author of Tropicalia, is the immediate past poet laureate for Santa Barbara, a CantoMundo fellow and Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow. Chloe Martinez, author of Ten Thousand Selves, is a scholar and poet who also serves as associate director of programming at the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at Claremont McKenna College. Her poems and translations have been widely published and have received numerous awards and honors.
Chloe Martinez
Chloe Martinez is a scholar of South Asian religions and a poet. She lives in Claremont, CA with her husband and two daughters. She is the Associate Director of Programming at the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at Claremont McKenna College, as well as Lecturer in CMC’s Department of Religious Studies.
She is a graduate of Barnard College, where she was a Mellon Mays Fellow, and received the MA/PhD in Religious Studies from UC Santa Barbara. Her research and teaching interests include creative writing; religions of South Asia; medieval North Indian devotional movements; poetry and autobiography in South Asia; and South Asian American religious worlds. Her research has appeared in journals including The Medieval History Journal and South Asia​, and has been funded by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, AIIS, and SSRC-Mellon Mays.
She is also a graduate of Boston University’s Creative Writing MA and the MFA for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where she was a Holden Scholar. The author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works, 2021) and chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press, 2020), her poems and translations have appeared in Ploughshares, POETRY, The Common, AGNI, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere, and have been nominated multiple times for a Pushcart Prize, as well as for Best New Poets and Best of the Net. Her translations have won the Robert Fitzgerald Prize and the Anne Frydman Prize. She is a visiting editor at Beloit Poetry Journal and the poetry editor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.
See more at www.chloeAVmartinez.com
About The Ten Thousand Selves

“Martinez understands the power of story to transmute experience into knowledge, and the power of poetry to question story’s power. Her scope is global, her vision historical, and her voice—by turns tender, sardonic, full of rage or humbled awe—is eloquently contemporary. Here is a book that presses back against reality. ‘Not a story, not an image. It is a map.'” —Suzanne Buffam, author of A Pillow Book
“…the selves in these beautifully wrought poems are wide-eyed in their wisdoms and whole-hearted in their songs. In poem after poem, they show the myriad possibilities in our extraordinary and surprising lives.” –Adrian Matejka, author of Somebody Else Sold the World

MoSt's 10th Anniversary Fundraiser w/ CA Poet Laureate Lee Herrick & Stan Cty Youth Poet Laureate Faith Delgado
2023-09-23 14:00 - 17:00
Join us on the afternoon of Saturday, September 23, 2023 for an afternoon of wine, hors d’oeuvres, and readings by California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick and Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Faith Delgado.
Your ticket supports poetry in Stanislaus County, including monthly reading series in Modesto and Turlock; sets of poetry books for area schools; Poetry Out Loud; poetry readings at senior communities; free poetry workshops and poetry book discussions at the Modesto Library; the Youth Poet Laureate program; poetry on the spot at events across the county; annual workshops by noted poets from across California, the Modesto Poetry Festival every February, and much more!
TICKET SALES END FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15th AT MIDNIGHT. $50 purchase through https://poetrygala2023.brownpapertickets.com/.
Please email info@mostpoetry.org to request sliding scale price.

Second Tuesday featuring Melchor Sahagun & Tina Marie Curiel-Vega
2023-11-14 19:00 - 20:30 | Intermission at the State Theater Modesto CA, 1307 J Street, Modesto, 95354, United States
We’re super excited to invite everyone to November’s Second Tuesday reading at the Intermission in downtown Modesto. Not only do we get to experience poetry in an amazing new space in our community, but also we celebrate Sorry I’m Late, the first collection from Stockton poet Melchor Sahagun, erstwhile and beloved Queen Bean Poetry Night host. Joining him as featured poet is author and activist Tina Marie Curiel-Vega, cofounder of the existir collective whose most recent zine Trying to Fix Destiny just came out. Stay for the open mic following the featured readers.

MELCHOR SAHAGUN – Melchor Sahagun is a human being from the human city of Stockton, CA, who has spent most of the last three decades writing, singing, joking, rapping, acting, and otherwise participating in various human endeavors.

He’s spent his human years as a poet, musician, author, comedian, playwright , performer, and skateboarder; mentoring other humans in the written and performing arts, coaching slam teams, hosting events, and advocating for the arts in the greater human community– a group he connects with through several forms of human interaction.

Though he’s been writing poems for nearly thirty years, Sorry I’m Late is his first collection. He apologizes for the wait.

TINA MARIE CURIEL-VEGA – Tina Curiel is a Xicana and Boricua almost-native Central Valley poet and artivist currently living in Modesto, California with her three cats and as many books and records as possible. Her poetry explores her family history, dealings with incarceration and the criminal legal system, activism, addiction, and hope.

Both authors will have copies of their pubs for sale. Hoping you can join us to bless these new books of poetry and share ALL the poetry love.

MoSt Member Open Mic on December 14
2023-12-14 18:00 - 20:00 | The Dragonfly Art for Life, 1210 J Street, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
MoSt Poetry members are cordially invited to read at this special open mic poetry reading on Thursday, December 14th at The Dragonfly Art for Life, 1210 J Street in downtown Modesto, CA. Free and open to the public, the event starts at 6:00 p.m. If you haven’t yet become a MoSt member and would like to help support poetry in Stanislaus County, please go to mostpoetry.org.

Youth Poet Laureate: Speak Your Silence poetry open mic
2023-12-16 13:30 - 15:30 | Turlock Library, 550 N. Minaret Ave, Turlock, 95382, United States
Speak Your Silence is a reading on December 16, 2023 at the Turlock Library in remembrance of Sandy Hook (Dec. 14 is the Sandy Hook Day of Remembrance).

Speak Your Silence, a student-led campaign organized by Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Faith Delgado, is intended to address and combat all types of violence that occurs in the schools. Youth poets are invited to share their stories and/or experiences in the form of poetry, slam poetry, speeches, spoken word, etc. This can be about sexual or physical violence, any kind of bullying, and/or your experience of how the school handled it. work on the topic of school violence. For middle- and high-schoolers; original work please.

Feel free to contact Faith at faithd@mostpoetry.org for any questions about the event!

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Luke Johnson and Mariah Bosch
2024-01-09 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Luke Johnson, author of Quiver, and Mariah Bosch, Fresno State MFA graduate. Hosted by Stella Beratlis
Date: Tuesday, January 9, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm PST on Zoom–RSVP required. https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqce6uqTwqHtFdKlW9fo8M7VcNJLdy8ref. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet): https://forms.gle/RnPGLFptHija15RU8

LUKE JOHNSON
Luke Johnson is the author of Quiver (Texas Review Press), a finalist for The Jake Adam York Prize, The Levis Award, The Vassar Miller Prize and the Brittingham. His second book A Slow Indwelling, a call and response with the poet Megan Merchant, is forthcoming from Harbor Editions Fall 2024. You can find more of his work at Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. Connect on Twitter at @Lukesrant or through email: writerswharfmb@gmail.com

About Quiver
“Quiver is the most visceral, haunting book of poems I have read in years. Johnson reimagines masculinity and is unafraid to unearth its dark elements, as father, son, and witness to the brutality and beauty in and around us. He writes, ‘Listen: When/I said boys have a storm inside,/this itch that fills our teeth, I/was sharing in secret. I meant/we have mothers who gift us ghosts,/our heads upon a trigger.’ This searing debut is a world of its own, built with fearlessness, tenderness, and grace. Take notice. Luke Johnson has arrived.” —Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate
“In Quiver, Luke Johnson’s unforgettable debut poetry collection, he invokes The Old Testament, its fires, floods, and prophecies—to reckon with ‘all the ways a child drowns, like spiders trapped in spit.’ These are harrowing poems. Yet, at the heart of Johnson’s unsparing gaze lies enormous compassion—for the ghosts that haunt him, for the child self who carried ‘scars without witness.’ Quiver is a work of glorious complexity—brutal, lyrical, shot through with images that stop you in your tracks. But more than that, these poems look deeply at the ways the sins of the father are visited on successive generations and move toward breaking the cycle.” —Ellen Bass — Ellen Bass

MARIAH BOSCH

Mariah Bosch (she/they) is a queer Chicana poet and visual artist from Fresno, CA. She is a graduate of Fresno State’s MFA program in poetry. Her work can be found on Poets.org, Small Press Traffic, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere.

MoSt Second Tuesday Poetry Reading featuring Angela Drew & Linda Scheller
2024-02-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto, CA, United States
Please join us Tuesday, February 13th, 2024 at 7:00 p.m. PST for a poetry reading featuring Angela Drew and Linda Scheller at Prospect Theater Project’s Artist Lab, 1214 K Street, Modesto CA. Hosted by Gillian Wegener, this free event will include an open mic.
Angela Mason-Drew is a mother, dancer, poet, spoken word performer and self-proclaimed linguistic artist who has loved the rhythm and sounds of words for as long as she can remember. Born in Berkeley, CA, she began writing at age 8 and has always understood that words have the power to soothe, stir, or solidify connection. Her lifelong love affair with storytelling began in the sandbox of her childhood playground and she has played with the magic of words ever since. Angela is a graduate of Holy Names University in Oakland, CA, where she graduated magna cum laude. She is a proud Bay Area native and shares stories from her current home in the Central Valley. To learn more about Angela and her word artistry, visit her on Instagram @she_spits_fire Facebook @Angela Drew (Angela Mason) and online at www.elderberrywine.org.

Linda Scheller is the author of two books of poetry, Fierce Light (FutureCycle Press) and Wind & Children (Main Street Rag Publishing Company). Her poetry, plays, and book reviews are published in numerous journals and anthologies including Hawai’i Pacific Review, Poem, Sugar House Review, Slipstream, and Colorado Review. Recent honors include Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominations, and her manuscript Laurels was a finalist for the 2023 Aryamati Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the Concrete Wolf Louis Poetry Book Award. Ms. Scheller is a retired educator who volunteers as a programmer for KCBP Community Radio. For more information, please go to her website, lindascheller.com.

MoSt Poetry On Saturday featuring Susan Kelly-DeWitt & Mary Mackey
2024-02-24 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
Please join us at the Carnegie Arts Center, 250 North Broadway in Turlock, for a MoSt Poetry reading featuring Susan Kelly-DeWitt and Mary Mackey on Saturday, February 24, 2024 at 2:00 p.m. PST. An open mic will follow the featured poets, and light refreshments will be available. This reading, hosted by Gary Thomas, is free and open to the public.
Susan Kelly-DeWitt is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and the author of Gatherer’s Alphabet (Gunpowder Press, CA Poets Prize, 2022), Gravitational Tug (Main Street Rag, 2020), Spider Season (Cold River Press, 2016), The Fortunate Islands (Marick Press, 2008) and a number of previous small press collections. Her work has also appeared in many anthologies, and in print and online journals at home and abroad. She is currently a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the Northern California Book Reviewers Association and a contributing editor for Poetry Flash. A new book, Frangible Operas: Selected Uncollected is forthcoming from Gunpowder Press. For more information, please visit her website at www.susankelly-dewitt.com.

Mary Mackey became a writer by running high fevers, tramping through tropical jungles, being swarmed by army ants, and reading. She is the author of eight poetry collections, including Sugar Zone, winner of a PEN Award, and The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, winner of a the 2019 Eric Hoffer Award for Best Book Published by a Small Press. Her poetry has been praised by Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, D. Nurkse, Al Young, Rafael Jesús González, and Maxine Hong Kingston for its beauty, precision, originality, and extraordinary range. She is also the author of 14 novels including The New York Times bestseller A Grand Passion. Recent honors and awards include:
2023 City of Angels Women’s Film Festival Award Official Selection for Best Feature Screenplay for “The Stand In.” The screenplay is an adaptation of Mary Mackey’s novel of the same title, published under her pen name “Kate Clemens.”
Northern California Book Reviews Award Finalist for “Creativity: Where Poems Begin, Best Book of Creative Nonfiction Published in 2023.
Winner of City of Angels Film Festival for Best Short Screenplay for “Time Piece “ 2022.
“Lady Danger,” Nominated for Best Feature-Length Screenplay, City of Angels Womens Film Festival, 2022.

Youth Poet Laureate's Painless Poetry: Open Mic Performance
2024-04-20 14:00 - 15:30 | Turlock Library, 550 N. Minaret Ave, Turlock, 95382, United States
Saturday, Apr. 20, 2 pm

Join Faith Delgado, 2023-24 Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate, in this final installment of Painless Poetry. Come show off what you’ve been working on these past months! Connect with Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Faith Delgado if you’d like more information: faithd@mostpoetry.org

Light refreshments will be served while they last.

Aileen Jaffa Contest Awards Ceremony
2024-05-11 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
Join us at the Carnegie Arts Center on Saturday, May 11 at 2:00 pm to celebrate our youth contest winners! Presented by the North American League of American Pen Women, Modesto Branch, in partnership with MoSt Poetry.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Fresno poets Michael Meyerhofer and Angela Chaidez Vincent
2024-05-14 19:00 - 20:00 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
MoSt Poetry welcomes featured poets Michael Meyerhofer and Angela Chaidez Vincent for its May Second Tuesday Poetry series–this month at Bookish–Modesto’s very own, very new, and very exciting bookstore!
Where: Bookish Bookstore, 811 W. Roseburg Avenue, Modesto CA 95350
When: Tuesday, May 14, 2024 at 7:00 pm
Hosted by Modesto poet laureate emeritus Gillian Wegener; open mic follows featured poets. Please sign up at event.
Michael Meyerhofer

Michael Meyerhofer is the author of five books of poetry—including What To Do If You’re Buried Alive (free from Doubleback Books). His work has appeared in The Sun, Missouri Review, Southern Review, Brevity, Rattle, and other journals. He’s also the author of a fantasy series and Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. For more info and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit troublewithhammers.com.
About WHAT TO DO IF YOU’RE BURIED ALIVE
The poems in What To Do If You’re Buried Alive are tenderly masculine, self-deprecating and humorous. They are the poems of an adult male poet looking back at childhood and puberty with anything but rose-colored glasses. He shows us how we see ourselves often through time—with a mixture of cringe and understanding.
Mary Biddinger, author of A Sunny Place with Adequate Water, writes, “With a compassionate eye, and his trademark sense of humor that hooks readers from the very first page, Meyerhofer sends us back to our earliest memories, and shows us a world of heartbreak and wonder.” And Jon Tribble, author of Natural State, adds “Through pain and loss, Meyerhofer’s poems are harrowing prayers searching for ‘the charms of language’ that might lead to forgiveness, to redemption, to love.”
Angela Chaidez Vincent
Image credit: © Adrianne Mathiowetz Photography
Angela Chaidez Vincent writes poetry and fiction and has a background of livelihoods in engineering, mathematics, and programming. Her debut poetry collection ARENA GLOW (April 2024, Tourane Press) features poems about women with a daredevil oblique. Angela’s work has appeared in Oxford Review of Books, North American Review, 32 Poems, Atticus Review, and Bellevue Literary Review, among others. She lives in Fresno, California and is online at angelachaidezvincent.com.

City of Modesto Poets' Corner Reading & Reception
2024-05-19 13:00 - 15:30 | McHenry Museum, 1402 14th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us at the McHenry Museum for a reception and reading for the annual Poets’ Corner contest.
When: Sunday, May 19, 2024
Where: McHenry Museum
Time: 1:00 pm
A copy of the Poets’ Corner anthology will be available to contributors.
Presented by the City of Modesto with assistance from the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Susan Cohen & Lenore Weiss
2024-08-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is proud to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Susan Cohen & Lenore Weiss
Date: Tuesday, August 13, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg, Modesto CA 95350 (Roseburg Square Shopping Center)
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event.

Susan Cohen
Susan Cohen’s third collection, Democracy of Fire (Broadstone Books: 2022), was praised by Ellen Bass as a “wise and wonderful” vision of “our interconnectedness.” Her poetry honors include the Red Wheelbarrow Prize judged by Mark Doty, the Terrain Annual Poetry Prize judged by Arthur Sze, and a special mention in Pushcart Prize XLIII. A former journalist and contributing writer for the Washington Post Magazine, she lives in Berkeley and has appeared in 32 Poems, Prairie Schooner, Southern Review, Verse Daily, and many anthologies.
Praise for Susan Cohen & 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
At this historical, political and ecological moment, with democracy and our earth aflame, could there be a more timely or relevant collection than Susan Cohen’s powerful, wise and deeply humane book of poetry, Democracy of Fire? Here, the many losses we experience both daily and across time—losses both cultural and personal—are mitigated by the act of memory and a faith in, well, the facts of our world and our capacity for intimate reckonings. Once again, Susan Cohen has shown herself to be one of the most compassionate recorders of our complicated times. —David St. John, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets & author of The Last Troubadour: Selected and New Poems
Lenore Weiss
Lenore’s past poetry collections form a trilogy about love, loss, and being mortal: Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012); Two Places (Kelsay Books, 2014), and The Golem (Hakodesh Word Press, 2017). Her most recent collection, Video Game Pointers (WordTech Editions, 2024) issues a call for peace. Ethelzine published her hand-sewn poetry chapbook, From Malls to Museums. Alexandria Quarterly Press published her prize-winning flash fiction chapbook, Holding on to the Fringes of Love.
Lenore serves as the Associate Editor (Creative Nonfiction) for the Mud Season Review and lives in Oakland, California with Zebra the Brave and Granola the Shy. She earned an MFA in fiction from San Francisco State University. You may find her at www.lenoreweiss.com.

Praise for Lenore Weiss and Video Game Pointers
“This mighty collection features limbs of a radical mass autobiography. Our aggregate imagination wedded to virtuosic architecture of wordplay and image. Through these poems, quilted revolutionary legacies of resistance find their best song.”—Tongo Eisen-Martin, 8th Poet Laureate of San Francisco, California
“This generous volume stretches the expansive geography of the author’s imagination, time, space, experience and world view. Weiss is a practitioner of the politics of being fully alive.”—Maw Shein Win, Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn)

MoSt Poetry on Saturday featuring Christina Lux, Kim McMillon, & Salvatore Salerno
2024-08-17 14:00 - 16:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
MoSt Poetry On Saturday Reading
August 17, 2024 at 2:00 p.m. PST
Carnegie Arts Center 250 N. Broadway Avenue, Turlock, CA
Join host Gary Thomas for the latest edition of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center’s (MoSt’s) Poetry On Saturday in-person readings on August 17 at 2:00 p.m. at the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock. Come enjoy some high-quality summertime respite and restoration via three fine poets’ words!
Our featured readers are Christina Lux, Kim McMillon, and Salvatore Salerno. An Open Mic time will follow the featured poets. For more details on the poets and their books, read their accompanying bios.
This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be provided.

Christina Lux’s poetry has appeared on National Public Radio, in the Houston Chronicle, in textbooks by Oxford University Press, and in journals such as Women’s Studies Quarterly and North Dakota Quarterly. Her book of poems, War Bonds, is forthcoming from FlowerSong Press. Born in Pasadena, California, she lived in the Central Valley of California for several years before moving to Texas, then Québec, and finally spending five years in Cameroon, where she lived in the Bui Division of the Northwest Province as well as in Yaoundé before returning to the U.S. for university. She holds a Ph.D. in Romance Languages from the University of Oregon and is currently Managing Director of the Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Merced.

Dr. Kim McMillon is a producer, playwright, and contributor to the anthology Some Other Blues: New Perspectives on Amiri Baraka (Ohio University Press, 2021). McMillon is the editor of Willow Books’ anthology Black Fire—This Time, published March 15, 2022. McMillon produced the 2016 Dillard University-Harvard Hutchins Center Black Arts Movement Conference in New Orleans. With UC Merced’s Center for the Humanities, ASUCM, and the Office of Student Life, Ms. McMillon co-produced the 2014 UC Merced Black Arts Movement Conference, Fifty Years On. McMillon edited the April 2018 special edition of The Journal of PAN African Studies on the Black Arts Movement and contributed a chapter on the Black Arts Movement to the Black Power Encyclopedia (1965-1975). This two-volume reference work explores the emergence and evolution of the Black Power Movement in the United States. McMillon produced, wrote, and starred in her one-woman show, Confessions of a Thespian: When Spirit & Theatre Collide, directed by Margo Hall and staged at the Julia Morgan Theatre in Berkeley, CA, in March 2000. McMillon also produced, wrote, and directed Voyages, which premiered at the Nova Theatre in San Francisco in March 1986 and was produced at Zellerbach Playhouse in August 1987. In January 1988, Berkeley’s Black Repertory Group produced Voyages. Dr. McMillon’s children’s book, The Healing Book of Me, will be available in late 2024.

Salvatore Salerno has an M.F.A. from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He was a poet and playwright in the North Carolina Visiting Artist Program. Salvatore is a retired English and drama teacher from Davis High School. He was the Poet Laureate of Modesto from 2020-24 and is still the president of Stanislaus Audubon Society. His sixth poetry book is After Thoughts.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Tom Myers and Stella Beratlis, with special guest Zoe Byron
2024-09-10 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Tom Myers and Stella Beratlis, with special guest Zoe Byron, Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate
Date: Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg, Modesto CA 95350 (Roseburg Square Shopping Center)
Join us for this special reading to celebrate the release of Tom Myer’s first full poetry collection, Tremor in my Bones. Also featuring Stella Beratlis, author of Dust Bowl Venus. With special guest Zoe Byron, new Youth Poet Laureate for Stanislaus County.
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Reading host: Gillian Wegener
Tom Myers
Tom Myers is a retired elementary school teacher and a founding board member of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt). He enjoys the wilds of nature and a sense of place frames much of his poetry. His poems have been published in hardpan, Quercus Review, More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets, Collision II and VII, Homestead Review, Cosumnes River Journal, and Steam Ticket. He has four chapbooks. His first full-length book, A Tremor in my Bones, was just published in August.
Stella Beratlis
Stella Beratlis is the author of Dust Bowl Venus (2021) and Alkali Sink, both published by Sixteen Rivers Press. Alkali Sink was a 2016 nominee for the Northern California Book Award. Stella’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies as well as in the grand rotunda of the San Francisco Transbay Terminal, as part of a giant LED installation by artist Jenny Holzer. Stella was Modesto’s poet laureate from 2016-2020; is the coordinator of the Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate program, and works as a librarian at Modesto Junior College. She also collects typewriters, if you want to sell yours.
Zoe Byron
Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Zoe Byron, a junior at Oakdale High School, was recently appointed to serve as the county’s second youth poet laureate. Zoe, whose parents are both English teachers, is a confirmed poetry fanatic whose initial exposure to performance poetry (thanks, Mom!) during the pandemic sparked a curiosity for and love of the form. Zoe’s early work was published in Oakdale Junior High’s annual poetry anthology; more recently, her work appeared in Penumbra, the Stan State literary journal. Zoe is also a regular participant in the Stanislaus County Poetry Out Loud competition.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Patricia Caspers & Molly Fisk
2024-10-08 19:00 - 20:30 | The Artist Lab at Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Patricia Caspers and Molly Fisk
Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Artist Lab at the Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto CA 95354
Join us for this special reading featuring Patricia Caspers and Molly Fisk, both of Nevada City. Patricia’s collection The Most Kissed Woman in the World was published by Kelsay Books earlier this year; she is the editor of the poetry journal West Trestle Review. Molly Fisk is the poet laureate of Nevada City and received a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets to create the anthology California Fire & Water, A Climate Crisis Anthology. Her new collection, Walking Wheel, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2026.
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Hosted by Gillian Wegener
Patricia Caspers
Patricia Caspers is an award-winning writer and the founder/publisher of West Trestle Review. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections: The Most Kissed Woman in the World (Kelsay Books, 2024), Some Flawed Magic (Kelsay Books, 2021), and In the Belly of the Albatross (Glass Lyre Press, 2015). She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, and her work has appeared widely in journals such as Ploughshares, Malahat Review, and Sugar House Review.
About The Most Kissed Woman in the World:
“There is so much beauty in Patricia Caspers’ The Most Kissed Woman in the World, and a lot of darkness, too. In each “Portrait of God” Caspers finds the sacred somewhere unexpected: a pungent ginkgo tree; an assisted living facility; a dysfunctional family; the self in all its gorgeous imperfections. These lyrical, surprising poems look at the world with hard-won clarity and tenderness, embracing joy without turning away from suffering. “God is the kitchen knife that misses,” Caspers writes, as well as “the crash of abundance.” Exactly. The Most Kissed Woman is sharp and generous and wise, reminding us where we hurt and also, in its revelatory unfoldings, why we go on.” –Chloe Martinez, author of Ten Thousand Selves

Molly Fisk

Molly Fisk edited California Fire & Water, A Climate Crisis Anthology, with a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. Author of The More Difficult Beauty, Listening to Winter, and five volumes of radio commentary, her new collection Walking Wheel is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2026. Fisk, who lives in the Sierra foothills, has also won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She was the inaugural poet laureate of Nevada County and is current poet laureate of both KVMR-FM, Nevada City and Hell’s Backbone Grill in Boulder, UT.

Dos Rios State Park Nature Poetry Walk
2024-10-27 09:00 - 12:00 | Dos Rios State Park, 3559 Shiloh Rd, Modesto, CA, 95358, United States
A special event for poetry lovers! Join a State Park Interpreter and special guest, poetry author, Salvatore Salerno. Bring your favorite poem or poetry book about nature and share with other poetry enthusiasts. Walk 2.5 miles round-trip to the amazing pond Oaks. Share or just listen to poems that connects us to nature. Please bring good walking shoes, sunscreen, snack, and water. Bring lunch to eat at the day use area, along the pond, following the poetry walking tour. Register: https://www.parks.ca.gov/EventDetails/16477

MoSt Poetry on Saturday featuring Christina Lloyd & Alice Templeton
2024-11-09 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
MoSt Poetry On Saturday Reading
November 9, 2024
2:00 p.m. PST
Carnegie Arts Center
250 North Broadway Avenue, Turlock, CA

Join host Gary Thomas for the latest edition of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center’s (MoSt’s) Poetry On Saturday in-person readings on November 9 at 2:00 p.m. at the Carnegie Arts Center (250 North Broadway Avenue) in Turlock. Our featured poets are Christina Lloyd and Alice Templeton, both with new books out from Sixteen Rivers Press. An Open Mic time will follow the featured poets. This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be provided.

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Manila and San Francisco, Christina Lloyd holds a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University. Her work appears in a wide variety of publications, including Canadian Woman Studies, EcoTheo, Hive, Meniscus, Poetry Daily, Poetry Ireland, Poet Lore, The North, and SWWIM. Women Twice Removed, published by Sixteen Rivers Press, is her first full-length collection. She lives in San Francisco.

Alice Templeton’s poems and short stories have appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Bellingham Review, Calyx, North American Review, Poetry, and other publications. Her work was a finalist for the 2020 Neruda Prize from Nimrod, and her chapbook Archaeology won the 2008 New Women’s Voices Prize in Poetry from Finishing Line Press. She is also the author of a critical book on Adrienne Rich’s poetics and scholarly articles on contemporary poetics, cultural criticism, and literary theory. Originally from Tennessee, Templeton lives in Point Richmond, California.

Poetry Reading and Open Mic featuring Youth Poet Laureate Zoe Byron
2024-11-23 12:00 - 13:00 | Oakdale Library, 151 South First Avenue, Oakdale, CA, 95361, United States
Please join Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and Stanislaus County Library at a poetry reading and open mic at the Oakdale Library, featuring Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Zoe Byron. Bring a poem—your own or a favorite–to share at open mic. Reading starts at 12:00; free and open to all.
Zoe, a student at Oakdale High School, was selected by a panel of judges to serve as the county’s second Youth Poet Laureate. The Youth Poet Laureate program is a partnership between MoSt Poetry, Stanislaus County Library, SCOE, and MJC’s School of Language Arts & Education. For more info: ypl@mostpoetry.org.

Reading/Open Mic & Book Launch for Gary Thomas's O YES WE BREATHE
2024-11-26 19:00 - 20:00 | Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto, CA, United States
O Yes We Breathe is a collection of earthborn connections, a ragged inquiry into our commonalities and yearnings as humans. Divided into four sections (Hard News & Kittens in Trees, If Memory Serves, Liaisons Ordinaires, and Ready to Step Into Waves) these poems address “current” events, the acts of recollection and reminiscence, mortal-to-mortal relationships, and unexpected spiritual encounters and connections. Embedded and resting at rock bottom in this landscape of dusty farms, remnants from news and history, summonings of childhood scraps and souvenirs, and arguments for and within love is the awareness that each of us matters simply because of what we all share.
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Gary Thomas writes with a gentility that belies razor-sharp observations of the human condition, and the humans conditioned to excuse, ignore and embrace it. O Yes We Breathe is stuffed full of poems posing questions. Will you reminisce, nodding in agreement, despair and clench in anger, gasp at a sudden nuance, squirm with uncomfortable recognition? Yeah, you will. But mostly you’ll just marvel…
——Tama L. Brisbane, Literary Arts Consultant, Stockton Poet Laureate Emerita
In his new collection, O Yes We Breathe, Gary Thomas seamlessly weaves days-gone-by boyhood pastoral with the post-pandemic political and spiritual present. Moving between poems, I was transfixed by the gentle music within these pages. “I am beholden to beauty that breathes any way it can—” As inhale, Thomas’ keen eye for detail sharpens the blade of these poems on the sandstone grit of his father’s lessons on life. As exhale, Thomas delivers poignant and tender incantations summoning the deeper, higher self. “If all we ever have is what we trade invisibly in our hulls of flesh and fluidity, we can learn to care for what we have. We can partake our full portion as family. We can breathe easy.” Each poem is a circle within itself “still working with some astonishment,” rippling outward, a whole world. This collection: “Let it light the corners.”
——Kai Coggin, Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, Arkansas, author of Mother of Other Kingdoms and Mining for Stardust
O Yes We Breathe chronicles a poet’s joyful boyhood and explores, with wonder, a changing world. A farmer’s son, Thomas writes with precision and imagination about nature and human nature through the lens of a “sandstone fireplace,” “ten prayer things,” or the miracles of everyday life. He writes, “I wish we were us again instead of our shadows. I wish/ you were the weather and here. I wish I was abundance.” This is a large-hearted poet, a book of abundance, a pleasure through and through.
——Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate, author of In Praise of Late Wonder:
New and Selected Poems and Scar and Flower

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. He has presented poetry workshops for literary organizations, festivals, and conferences. His poems have been published or accepted for publication in The Comstock Review, MockingHeart Review, Atticus Review, River Heron Review, Barzakh, Blue Heron Review, Split Rock Review, Book of Matches, Hole in the Head Review, and The Banyan Review among others, and in the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. He is a founding member of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt) and of the Stanislaus County writing group known as The Licensed Fools. A full-length collection, All the Connecting Lights, was released in August 2022 from Finishing Line Press.
