Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center

Ekphrasis: Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Rhony Bhopla and Lynn Hansen
2024-03-12 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto, CA, United States
Ekphrastic poetry has come to be defined as poems written about works of art; however, in ancient Greece, the term ekphrasis was applied to the skill of describing a thing with vivid detail. —Getty Museum
We invite you to join the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center at Second Tuesday Poetry as we feature visual artist/poet Rhony Bhopla and Lynn Hansen of Modesto. Both poets will share their poems accompanied by images. With open mic following featured poets. Hosted by Stella Beratlis.
Date: Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Place: Artist Lab, Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto, 95354
Open mic sign-up form (3 min per poet): https://forms.gle/RnPGLFptHija15RU8

RHONY BHOPLA

Rhony Bhopla is a poet and visual artist whose poems and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in PRISM International, The Hopper, Notre Dame Review, Cherry Moon: Emerging Voices from the Asian Diaspora, Northwest Review, and Harvard Review. She is a member of the Mapmakers Alumni Institute, and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Pacific University.

LYNN HANSEN

Lynn M. Hansen is Faculty Emerita from Modesto Junior College Biological Sciences and a member of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and the National League of American Pen Women, Modesto Branch. A new collection of travel poems, In the Presence of the Moai: Poetry and Prose of Travel, was published in November 2023. In addition to her other poetry collections, Flicker and The Journey to Sky Avenue, she has written an historical novel about the life of her grandmother.

Painless Poetry for Teen Poets: Performance Strategies
2024-03-16 14:00 - 15:30 | Turlock Library, 550 N. Minaret Ave, Turlock, 95382, United States
Painless Poetry: A Workshop for Aspiring Teen Poets – Performance Strategies
Turlock Library in the Maker Space

How do you inhabit the space on stage when performing a piece? How about holding a microphone and reading from a page? Join Faith Delgado, 2023-24 Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate, who will share strategies and explore what might work while performing spoken word poetry. This program is presented in partnership with Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt)

Sponsored by Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center

Bloom Where Planted: Four Central Valley Poets for National Poetry Month
2024-04-09 19:00 - 20:30 | The Artist Lab at Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us for our next Second Tuesday Poetry on April 9, 2024, as we present four Central Valley poets to help us honor National Poetry Month.
Featuring Kristy Lauron, Elizabeth Sousa, Jazmarie LaTour, and Kevin Walton with open mic following featured poets.
When: Tuesday, April 9, 2024 at 7:00 p.m.
Where: The Artist Lab at Prospect Theater Project, 1218 K Street, Modesto CA 95354. Plenty of street parking, free! We are also welcome to park across the street at the Stanislaus County Law Library.
Open Mic Sign-up: https://forms.gle/rcwsEcyk7paszWk27(4 mins per poet or 2 pieces, whichever is shorter)
Our Featured Poets
Kristy Lauron
My name is Kristy Lauron and I am a published poet. I was born and raised in Stockton and have been immersed in the arts since childhood. I believe art is necessary for healing and sharing of our human existence. My poetry is a reflection of my self journey, offering insights to my trials and tribulations, all wrapped up in love.
Jazmarie LaTour
Jazmarie is the Poet Laureate of her hometown Stockton, Ca. She is an artisan, healer, mediation leader, and dreamer who uses writing to attune to the frequency and deep call of the Earth, her Ancestors, and the Great Spirit that leads her. Her love for spoken word performance has given her the courage to speak from her heart to anyone who will listen. Her love for the written word has given her the courage to allow others to hold a piece of her heart right in their hands. She is the author of the collection The Nature of Her, which can be ordered from the thenatureofher.com.
Elizabeth Sousa
Elizabeth Sousa is a poet from Turlock, a Type One Diabetes advocate, and an aspiring badass. She was co-organizer of the 2016 Writers Resist reading at the Prospect Theater Project, and she has performed her pieces on stages throughout the Central Valley.
Kevin Walton
Kevin is a poet and raconteur who founded a Facebook group, To the Prose Pros, a space where he shares his work and offers a forum for others to contribute. He lives in Modesto with his wife, artist Traci Bookman.

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.

MoSt Poetry Book Club
2024-04-22 18:30 - 19:30 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join host Salvatore Salerno for a discussion of The Art of Drowning by Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus. MoSt Book Club will meet Monday, April 22, 2024 at 6:30 p.m. in the Maker Space of the Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto CA. Participants may pick up a free copy of The Art of Drowning at the library reference desk prior to the meeting. This MoSt event is free and open to the public.

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 Rooja Mohassessy & Tamer Said Mostafa
2024-06-11 19:00 - 20:30 | The Artist Lab at Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is proud to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Rooja Mohassessy, author of When Your Sky Runs Into Mine, and Tamer Mostafa, author of Where Will I Find America? Hosted by Gillian Wegener.
Date: Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: The Artist Lab at Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto CA 95354
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event.
ROOJA MOHASSESSY
Rooja Mohassessy is an Iranian-born poet and educator. She is a MacDowell Fellow and an MFA graduate of Pacific University, Oregon. Her ekphrastic debut collection When Your Sky Runs Into Mine (Feb 2023) was the winner of the 22nd Annual Elixir Poetry Award. Rooja has been featured on NPR, The Hive Poetry Collective, and other poetry podcasts and radio stations. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Poet Lore, RHINO Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, CALYX Journal, Ninth Letter, Cream City Review, The Adroit Journal, New Letters, The Rumpus, The Journal, Verse Daily, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. Her work is also anthologized in California Fire & Water, A Climate Crisis Anthology, and Colossus: Body, a compilation of writings by Californians writing on the themes of bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. Rooja is an editorial assistant at the journal Prairie Schooner.
About WHEN YOUR SKY RUNS INTO MINE
“Rooja Mohassessy’s debut collection, WHEN YOUR SKY RUNS INTO MINE, belies any notion of a first book. It is a work of expansive vision and formal achievement, sounding an assured and unforgettable voice in poetry. Ekphrasis is at the core of Mohassessy’s poetics, resplendent in her responses to works of visual art and in the richly textured images she creates with intricate diction and syntax.”
-Shara McCallum
TAMER SAID MOSTAFA
Tamer Said Mostafa is an Arab-American, Muslim poet and storyteller from Stockton, California. His work has appeared in literary journals and magazines such as Zone 3, Confrontation, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and Freezeray among others. Tamer is a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, and a graduate of the creative writing program at University of California, Davis where he won the Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg Contest for Poetry. His debut, full length book of poetry, Where Will I Find America? was released in Summer 2021. Tamer lives life through spirituality, community work, and the music of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.

About WHERE WILL I FIND AMERICA?
“In the debut collection Where Will I Find America?, Tamer Said Mostafa renders narratives of childhood to adulthood demanding an interrogation of what it means to be a person of other. From body image to intimacy, these poems beautifully weave inextricable culture and place. Islamic traditions provide the framework for extraordinary love of family as well as witnessing of self as each poem shelters the narrative bravely. We too want to see the past with eloquent bravery, knowing that its truth is not the same as what we imagine. This collection’s lyrical and visual evocations do no harm in the telling about the harmed. Empathy and love counter the brutality of social order and familial dislocation. As Mostafa brings mind and body into these compassionate poems, he reveals a hopeful awakening.”
-Rhony Bhopla

MoSt Summer Poetry Workshop #1--Classicontempo: Classic and Contemporary Poems of Love, Irritation, Birds, & More
2024-06-15 13:00 - 15:00 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
FREE! Saturday, June 15, 1:00-3:00 p.m. at Modesto Library Auditorium
Join MoSt board member Gary Thomas as we discuss–and write to–“ancient” and “modern” poems that deal with common themes such as love, annoyance, (in)justice, and the mashups we encounter between customary and cutting-edge visions of life. Writing supplies will be provided, but feel free to bring your favorite pen, pad, and/or tablet!

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Monolin “Manny” Moreno and Lillian Vallee
2024-07-09 19:00 - 20:30 | The Artist Lab at Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Date: Tuesday, July 9, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: The Artist Lab at Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto CA 95354
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event.
Hosted by Gillian Wegener
Monolin “Manny” Moreno

Monolin “Manny” Moreno is of Yaqui-Tarascan descent and an Enrolled Member of the State Recognized Tribal Group of the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians. His five published works include poetry collections, memoirs, and a remembrance of Native elders Harry Jack and Barry Beaver Turner.
His poems have appeared in Song of the San Joaquin, Hincha Poesia and Whispering Thunder. He was a Pushcart Prize nominee in 2011 and was Poet of the Month for Moon Tide Press in 2012.
Moreno is a Sundancer and member of the Black Wolf Honor Society Gourd Clan and Native American Church. Manny was brought out and introduced as a community elder at a pow-wow in Stockton CA, and he has served the Native community as a spiritual leader.
Manny’s newest book, Santa Nella Blues, was just published earlier this year and was created with support and funding from The Heartland Creative Corps, California Arts Council, Merced United Way, and the Merced County Art Council.
Lillian Vallee
Lillian Vallee is an award-winning translator, writer and scholar who served an apprenticeship with the Nobel-Prize winning Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz. Her poems appear in Collision I, II & III and More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. She was one of the featured poets in Highway 99, A

Literary Journey through California’s Great Central Valley and is the author of three chapbooks—Vision at Orestimba, Erratics, and handful of snow.
Her popular monthly column in Stanislaus Connections, “Rivers of Birds, Forests of Tule: Central Valley Nature and Culture in Season,” was published in 2019 as a collection of the same name. Lillian is professor emeritus in English at MJC.

MoSt Summer Poetry Workshop--Monsters, Villains, & a Disaster or Two: Writing About the Scary Stuff
2024-07-20 13:00 - 15:00 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Our July 20th MoSt Summer Poetry Workshop offers participants the opportunity to write about scary subject matter with facilitator Gillian Wegener. Please join us at the Modesto Library on Saturday, 7/20/24 at 1:00 p.m. for this free workshop open to all members of the public, from novice to experienced poet and everything in-between.

Poetry Book Club--Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss
2024-07-27 10:00 - 11:00 | BakeShop, 940 Eleventh Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Please join us at 10:00 a.m. Saturday, July 27, 2024 at Bakeshop, 940 Eleventh Street in Modesto for MoSt Poetry Book Club. Linda Scheller will facilitate a discussion of Modern Poetry, the latest collection by Diane Seuss. Copies are available at the Modesto Library main desk. You’re always more than welcome to come and enjoy the discussion whether or not you’ve read the book! This event is free and open to the public.
“Diane Seuss’s signature voice—audacious in its honesty, virtuosic in its artistry, outsider in its attitude—has become one of the most original in contemporary poetry. Her latest collection takes its title, Modern Poetry, from the first textbook Seuss encountered as a child and the first poetry course she took in college, as an enrapt but ill-equipped student, one who felt poetry was beyond her reach. Many of the poems make use of the forms and terms of musical and poetic craft—ballad, fugue, aria, refrain, coda—and contend with the works of writers overrepresented in textbooks and anthologies and those too often underrepresented. Seuss provides a moving account of her picaresque years and their uncertainties, and in the process, she enters the realm between Modernism and Romanticism, between romance and objectivity, with Keats as ghost, lover, and interlocutor.” —https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/modern-poetry

Diane Seuss is the author of six books of poetry, including Modern Poetry; frank: sonnets, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Voelcker Prize; Still Life With Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Four-Legged Girl, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She was a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, and in 2021 she received the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Michigan.

Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Reception & Reading
2024-08-03 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
Join us on Saturday, August 3, 2024 from 2-3 pm at the Carnegie Arts Center as we celebrate our incoming Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate.
Welcome our new laureate, Zoe Byron of Oakdale, and bid a fond farewell to our inaugural laureate, Faith Delgado of Turlock. With readings and refreshments.
At The Loft, 3rd floor of the Carnegie Arts Center,
The 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 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.

"The Poem Heard in Plain Sight" MoSt Poetry Summer Workshop w/ Guest Artist Tama L. Brisbane
2024-08-31 13:00 - 15:00 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
THE POEM HEARD IN PLAIN SIGHT
1:00-3:00 p.m. Saturday, August 31st, 2024 in the downtown Modesto Library
With a little discipline, your poem can make a declaration and a difference! Join August’s Guest Artist Tama L. Brisbane, author, Stockton Poet Laureate Emerita, and coach of over 15 national youth slam teams. From the opening ice-breaker to performance tips to the final printed page, this workshop is all about poetry being visible as well as audible. It will also be super-fun! Join us! Free and open to the public!

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.

Summer Poetry Workshop #4 "Poetry for the Ages"
2024-09-21 13:00 - 15:00 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join facilitator Linda Scheller in the Modesto Library Auditorium from 1:00-3:00 p.m. Saturday, September 21st, 2024 to read and discuss poetry focussed on youth and aging. We’ll draft poems that recall, explain, or imagine different stages in our lives with the option to share what we’ve written. This workshop is free and open to the public.

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.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring John Shoptaw and Murray Silverstein
2024-11-12 19:00 - 20:30 | The Artist Lab at Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is excited to present Second Tuesday Poetry with featured poets Murray Silverstein and John Shoptaw.
Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Artist Lab at the Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto CA 95354
Join us at this reading featuring noted East Bay poets John Shoptaw and Murray Silverstein, with open mic following our guest poets. Featured poets will be reading from their new collections, which will be available for purchase and signing.
Murray Silverstein
Red Studio is Murray Silverstein’s third book of poems. His first collection, Any Old Wolf (2007), was the winner of the Independent Publisher’s Bronze Medal for Poetry and was followed by Master of Leaves (2014). His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Rattle, ZYZZYVA, The MacGuffin, The Brooklyn Review, West Marin Review, Plainsongs, Nimrod, The Dreaming Machine, and Spillway.
The senior editor for two Sixteen Rivers anthologies, America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience (2018), which received the Independent Publisher’s Silver Medal for anthologies, and The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed (2010), he also directs the Sixteen Rivers Press Youth Poetry Project, which has published three chapbooks by teen poets: Anthems (2022), Dear Earth (2023), and Our Own Light (2024). A practicing architect for forty years and coauthor of four books on architecture, including A Pattern Language (Oxford University Press) and Patterns of Home (The Taunton Press), Silverstein lives in Oakland, California.
John Shoptaw
John Shoptaw, a leading voice in ecopoetics, is widely published in literary journals and magazines, including Arion, Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, and Poetry. His first poetry collection, Times Beach (2015), won the Notre Dame Review Book Prize and the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Shoptaw is the author of On the Outside Looking Out: John Ashbery’s Poetry, the libretto for Eric Sawyer’s opera Our American Cousin (Boston Modern Orchestra Project), and a number of essays on poetry and poetics, including “Why Ecopoetry?” (Poetry). He teaches in the UC Berkeley English Department.
From the Foreword to Near Earth Objects, by Jenny O’Dell:
In Near-Earth Object, Shoptaw explores the interactions, sometimes dark and sometimes joyful, between humans and the non-human natural world. Resisting the human exceptionalism that in its many forms can block imaginative access to the world, Shoptaw entertains the perspectives of a host of others: a cricket, a bat, a nuthatch, a carnival bear, a tree’s shade, cherubim, an asteroid, and Earth herself.
Patrick Davis, publisher at Unbound Edition Press, said, “John’s remarkable work is formally attuned, entirely accessible, and urgently relevant. His ecopoetics, on full display in Near-Earth Object, propel a vital voice for our challenging times.”

Poetry Book Club: In Praise of Late Wonder by Lee Herrick
2024-11-17 14:00 - 15:00 | Panera, 2103 McHenry A, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Join us for the latest edition of the MoSt Poetry Book Club, when we’ll be discussing California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick’s excellent new collection, In Praise of Late Wonder! We’ll meet on Sunday, November 17th, 2024 at 2pm, at Panera Bread, 2103 McHenry Avenue, in Modesto.
In the meantime, pick up a copy of Lee’s book, which is now available at the front desk of the Modesto Library. Tom Portwood will lead a discussion about the collection that afternoon. We look forward to seeing you!

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.

Second Tuesday: Members' Holiday Open Mic & Potluck
2024-12-10 18:00 - 19:30 | The Dragonfly Art for Life, 1210 J Street, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday: Members’ Holiday Open Mic and Potluck. Bring a dish to share, and help us celebrate 15 years of bringing poetry to the community through our Second Tuesday series. If you’re not a MoSt member yet, you are warmly encouraged to attend and join us at the door.
On Tuesday, December 10 at the Dragonfly Art for Life, 1210 J Street, Modesto CA 95354.
MoSt Poetry is proud to serve our community with free poetry events, including the Second Tuesday Poetry series, Poetry on Saturdays at the Carnegie Arts Center, Free Summer Poetry Workshops at the Library, New Year’s Poetry Challenge, Poetry Everywhere initiative at Stanislaus County K-12 public schools, and more. Programs we administer or in which we partner include Poetry Out Loud, Aileen Jaffa Youth Poetry Contest, Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate, and the City of Modesto’s Poets’ Corner Contest.
On Facebook, Instagram, and Threads: @mostpoetry.

First Day of NYPC16: New Year's Poetry Challenge
2024-12-15 | CA
Keep an eye out for our New Year’s Poetry Challenge sign-ups! NYPC prompts begin Dec. 15. Sign-up form will be on MostPoetry.org homepage.

Second Tuesday Poetry: The Meter Maids' 35th Anniversary Reading
2025-01-14 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
For our Second Tuesday Poetry reading in January, help us celebrate one of the longest-running poetry groups in our region, the Meter Maids! Reading starts at 7:00 pm at Bookish Modesto in Roseburg Square.

13th Annual MoSt Poetry Festival with Michael Meyerhofer: Pulling Up the Floorboards
2025-02-01 10:00 - 14:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
For poets and poetry lovers, MoSt Poetry Festival is the place to be on Saturday, February 1.
Join us as we meet fellow poets and create space to write new poems in supportive community. This event features a generative workshop led by author Michael Meyerhofer, whose workshop Pulling Up the Floorboards: Two Radical Approaches to Revising Poems, will guide you through the process of writing as well as revision.
RSVP $40. Price includes continental breakfast and a light lunch.
If you are a poet with a publication, feel free to bring your books to sell. Bring poetry books to exchange at our community table.

About Michael Meyerhofer
Michael Meyerhofer is a contemporary poet and fantasy author who believes those two genres genuinely can get along. His fifth poetry book, Ragged Eden, was published by Glass Lyre Press. His fourth, What To Do If You’re Buried Alive, was originally published by Split Lip Press, then recently re-released by the fine books at Doubleback Press (click here to download it for free!). His third, Damnatio Memoriae (lit. “damned memory”), won the Brick Road Poetry Book Contest. His previous books are Leaving Iowa (winner of the Liam Rector First Book Award) and Blue Collar Eulogies (Steel Toe Books, finalist for the Grub Street Book Prize).
In addition to his poetry books, he has published two fantasy trilogies. His debut fantasy novel, Wytchfire (Book I in the Dragonkin Trilogy), was published by Red Adept Publishing, and went on to win the Whirling Prize and a Readers Choice nomination from Big Al’s Books and Pals.
He has also published six poetry chapbooks: To the Person Who Tends My Body (out now from Finishing Line Press), Pure Elysium (winner of the Palettes and Quills Chapbook Contest), The Clay-Shaper’s Husband (winner of the Codhill Press Chapbook Award), Real Courage (winner of the Terminus Magazine and Jeanne Duval Editions Poetry Chapbook Prize), The Right Madness of Beggars (winner of the Uccelli Press 3rd Annual Chapbook Competition), and Cardboard Urn (winner of the Copperdome Chapbook Contest).
Michael has won the Marjorie J. Wilson Best Poem Contest, the Laureate Prize for Poetry, the James Wright Poetry Award, and the Annie Finch Prize for Poetry. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, North American Review, Arts & Letters, River Styx, Quick Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and other journals.
He received his BA from the University of Iowa and his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. An avid weightlifter, medieval weapons collector, and unabashed history nerd, he currently lives, teaches, and inhabits various coffee shops around Fresno, CA.
