Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center

Poems of Connection & Joy
2022-06-11 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Gillian Wegener will facilitate a free poetry workshop at the downtown Modesto library on Saturday, June 11, 2022 from 1:00-3:00. This in-person workshop will focus on creating poems of connection and joy. All ages and experience levels are welcome. This is the first MoSt Summer Poetry Workshop of the season, so hope to see you there!

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

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

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

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

Humor in Poetry Workshop
2022-07-16 13:00 - 15:00 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join facilitator Linda Scheller for Humor in Poetry, the second MoSt Poetry Summer Workshop of 2022. We’ll meet on Saturday, July 16 from 1-3pm PT at the Stanislaus County Modesto Library. Participants will examine poems containing humor, consider methods and ideas for creating humor in poetry, and write first drafts of a poem enhanced by humor. Free and in person!

MoSt Poetry Book Club Vantage by Taneum Bambrick
2022-07-20 16:30 - 17:30 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
MoSt Poetry Book Club will meet Wednesday, July 20, 2022 at 4:30 pm Pacific at the Modesto Stanislaus County Library downstairs in the Maker’s Space. Sara Coito will lead a discussion of this month’s selection, Vantage by Taneum Bambrick. One or two copies of the book are still available to borrow at the library desk.
Winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, selected by Sharon Olds (who writes the introduction), Vantage is a fictionalized account of the poet’s time spent working as the only woman on a six-person garbage crew around the reservoirs of two massive dams. Bambrick began writing poems in order to document the forms of violence she witnessed towards the people and the environment of the Columbia River. Power—literal and metaphorical—runs through the collection and its stories, as Bambrick finds connection across the lines.

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

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

. Gary Thomas grew up on a peach farm outside Empire, California. Prior to retirement, he taught eighth grade language arts for thirty-one years and junior college English for seven, sharing and discussing at least one poem every day with his students. He has presented poetry workshops for statewide organizations, festivals, and conferences. He has had poems published in In the Grove, Time of Singing, and The Comstock Review, among others, and in the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. He is currently vice president of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center. All the Connecting Lights, published by Finishing Line Press, is his first full-length collection.

Summer Poetry Workshop
2022-08-20 13:00 - 15:00 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join facilitator Salvatore Salerno, poet laureate of Modesto, for the third MoSt Poetry Summer Workshop of 2022. We will meet on Saturday, August 20 from 1:00-3:00 p.m. at the Stanislaus County Modesto Library. Participants are requested to bring a poem or two in working drafts, or even brief phrases of potential poems, to the workshop. They will be guided on using repetitive elements in their poetry to create momentum and flow. This workshop is free and in person!

Saturday in the Park with Poetry
2022-09-10 08:00 - 09:00 | Davis Park, 2701 College Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Join Modesto Poet Laureate Salvatore Salerno at Davis Community Park, 2701 College Avenue in Modesto, CA at 8:00 a.m. PT on September 10, 2022 for Saturday in the Park with Poetry. Bring a favorite book of poetry or two and share some of your favorite poems with other poetry aficionados. You can also bring poetry books to donate or trade.
Meet at the picnic tables near the parking lot. In case the tables are occupied, please also bring a lawn chair, and we’ll gather elsewhere.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Gary Thomas and Ian Miller
2022-09-13 19:00 - 20:00 | CA
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Gary Thomas and Ian Miller
Join us at 7 pm on Zoom as we feature Gary Thomas, reading from his new collection All the Connecting Lights. He is joined by poet Ian Miller of Modesto.
Hosted by Stella Beratlis
Date: Tuesday, Sept 13, 2022
Time: 7:00 pm PST
On Zoom–Please RSVP for link
Open mic follows featured poets. Three minutes per reader; please sign up for open mic.
Gary Thomas
Gary Thomas taught eighth grade language arts for thirty-one years, and junior college English for seven—sharing and discussing at least one poem each day with his students. He has presented poetry workshops for statewide organizations, festivals, and conferences. He has had poems published in In the Grove and The Comstock Review, among others, and in the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. He is currently vice president of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, is a member of the Curriculum Study Commission and of the local writing group known as The Licensed Fools. A full-length collection, ALL THE CONNECTING LIGHTS, was released in August 2022 from Finishing Line Press.
All the Connecting Lights
All the Connecting Lights is a marvel, an homage to the unnoticed and ordinary, a tender and sweeping reckoning of childhood, nature, the mystery of epilepsy, and how our lives and memories intersect. Thomas sees nuances and symmetries that most of us don’t. I reveled in the joy of “staying lost” and the grace of “spring rationales.” I’ve been waiting for this book. It is a chronicle of wonder by a truly gifted poet.
–Lee Herrick, author of Scar and Flower
Gary Thomas’ poems range widely and feel deeply. From his childhood on a Central California peach farm to the tragic Battle of Aleppo to imagined lives and voices of others, Thomas’ poems strike chords of generosity and nostalgia and wonder and, one of his favorite words, grace. Reading these poems allows us as the readers to take part in worlds that feel at once familiar and lost to us, where Neruda and a farm woman share an unlikely birthday tea, and where we all, in reading each of these portraits of a moment in time, are able to “Gladly bear joy’s burden.”
–Gillian Wegener, author of This Sweet Haphazard
In Gary Thomas’ generous full-length collection All the Connecting Lights, his poetry traverses and pays homage to both real and imaginary landscapes—from the Great Central Valley to a peach farm outside Empire, California to castle rooms “built in the exosphere.” Striking images abound. In “Oleanders and Whoopee Cushions,” he writes, “a robin’s burst blue egg / a stiff black widow in her viscous web / earwigs belly up or ready to boil out at a touch.” These are poems that artfully document moments of the human experience, “Here abide the lost, those / abandoned to swirl among / dust motes, free range sheep, /and unused memory, / whose textures and traces / might still be familiar and felt, / if only in this moment.” Thomas’ debut collection connects the lights with poetic grace and emotional honesty.
–Maw Shein Win, author of Storage Unit for the Spirit House

Ian Miller
Ian Miller is a Californian poet, born and mostly raised in a little passing town called Oakdale. He is the author of June 30th, 2022 published by Lulu Press (2022) and recently published collections Neon Promises and Neon Promises: Pinky Promise Edition, both published by Lulu Press (2022). He is currently working on two more projects; one is titled Nothing’s Changed, and the other is titled Gertie, Bear, and Bugaroo: A Mother and Son Project. Neither have an expected completion date yet. Ian currently works at the Modesto Junior College’s Library & Learning Center as an Instructional Support Assistant, primarily helping to supervise the Writing and Embedded Tutors. He is also working towards a double major in Psychology and English with the end goal being to enter into higher education.
The aforementioned books can be found for purchase here: https://linktr.ee/iandmiller

MoSt Poetry Workshop with Kai Coggin
2022-10-01 10:00 - 12:30 | Zoom
Award-winning poet Kai Coggin will facilitate a Zoom workshop and read her poetry Saturday, October 1, 2022 from 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PT.
$20 per person; please register at https://mostfall2022.eventbrite.com
to receive Zoom link.

Kai Coggin (she/her) is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press 2021) and INCANDESCENT (Sibling Rivalry Press 2019). She is a queer woman of color who thinks Black Lives Matter, a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council and Arkansas Learning Through the Arts, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry.
Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award, named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, and nominated as Hot Springs Woman of the Year, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated four times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016, 2018, 2021— awarded in 2022. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Best of the Net, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, Bellevue Literary Review, TAB, Entropy, SWWIM, Split This Rock, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Tupelo Press, West Trestle Review, and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review, and on the Board of Directors of the International Women’s Writing Guild.
She lives with her wife and their two adorable dogs in the valley of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.

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

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

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcvduuqqD4rGdz7w9BSPEysavrDAG4cdbBq
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

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

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

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

MoSt Poetry Book Club
2022-11-21 18:30 - 19:30 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Monday, November 21, 2022 6:30-7:30 p.m.
Stanislaus County Library Makerspace 1500 I Street, Modesto
The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón
Join host Gary Thomas for a discussion of The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón, the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Limón is also the host of the critically-acclaimed poetry podcast, The Slowdown. Her new book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, is out now from Milkweed Editions. She is the 24th Poet Laureate of The United States.
5 copies of the book are available (while they last) to check out at the Modesto Library (1500 I Street.).
An astonishing collection about interconnectedness—between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves—from National Book Critics Circle Award winner, National Book Award finalist, and U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.
“I have always been too sensitive, a weeper / from a long line of weepers,” writes Limón. “I am the hurting kind.” What does it mean to be the hurting kind? To be sensitive not only to the world’s pain and joys, but to the meanings that bend in the scrim between the natural world and the human world? To divine the relationships between us all? To perceive ourselves in other beings—and to know that those beings are resolutely their own, that they “do not / care to be seen as symbols”?

“Ada Limón’s sixth and latest collection is a testament to the power of sensitivity. As with her previous award-winning books, The Carrying and Bright Dead Things, these poems are acutely aware of the natural world. And Limón has a knack for acknowledging nature’s little mysteries in order to fully capture its history and abundance. For her, evidence of poetry is everywhere. She connects big ideas – fear, isolation, even death – with little details, like field sparrows, a box of matches or “the body moving / freely.” Above all, The Hurting Kind asks for our attention to stay tender.” NPR, Books We Love
“”Poetry readers have come to expect greatness from Limón, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and finalist for the National Book Award, and that is exactly what the author offers in The Hurting Kind. . . . My most brief statement on the quality of this collection is this: If you have space to teach just one book of poetry, make it The Hurting Kind. . . . What Limón manages with The Hurting Kind is rare; the poems are at once highly specific and yet broadly relatable, both technically masterful and easily comprehensible. In sum, this collection works equally well for both the avid poetry enthusiast and the reluctant reader. If I was going to try and convince someone that poetry is our most important verbal art, I would start with The Hurting Kind. . . . The Hurting Kind is a collection that begs to be shared, and one that will inevitably show signs of wear as readers carry it with them for weeks at a time.”—The Poetry Question

Poetry on the Spot at ModShop
2022-11-26 14:00 - 20:00 | CA
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center will be back in action with Poetry on the Spot at Saturday’s Mod Shop Handmade Market. Poets from MoSt will write you a poem right there on the spot using words you choose. We’ll be at Mistlin Gallery on J Street between 10th and 11th streets from 2:00 to 8:00 on Saturday, November 26.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Beverly Burch and Linda Marie Prather
2022-12-13 19:00 - 20:00 | CA
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry, featuring Beverly Burch and Linda Marie Prather. Hosted by Modesto poet laureate emeritus Stella Beratlis.
Date: Tuesday, Dec 13, 2022
Time: 7:00 pm PST
RSVP for Zoom link
Open mic follows featured readers. Please sign up and plan to read for about 3 minutes.
Beverly Burch
Beverly Burch’s new book, Leave Me a Little Want, was published by Terrapin Books this year. Her last book, Latter Days of Eve (BkMk Press), won the John Ciardi Prize. How a Mirage Works (Sixteen Rivers) was a finalist for the Audre Lorde Award. Her first book, Sweet to Burn (2004), won the Gival Poetry Prize and Lambda Literary Award. Beverly’s poems and prose can be found in 32 Poems, Gulf Coast, Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, New England Review, Barrow Street, Smartish Pace, and Grist. She also has two psychoanalytic books on women’s sexual and gender relations: On Intimate Terms (University of Illinois) and Other Women (Columbia University). Beverly grew up in Atlanta, GA and has lived many years in Oakland, CA with her wife.
About Leave Me a Little Want
“I love this book and its urgent attention to language and form in the “treacherous province” of our current times. Burch never turns away from the coexistence of the beautiful and the bloody, the tedious and the risky, and so I not only trust her, but feel jolted awake.”
-Julia Levine, Ordinary Psalms

Linda Maria Prather
Linda Marie Prather has five published chapbooks, the latest Searching Shadows, Finding Shade, (Cactus Wren Press). Unforced Rhythms, (Finishing Line Press) won 3rd place in the NLAPW 2014 Letters Competition. Her full-length book, Summer Song, was published in 2016 by Pen Women Press. She edits for Song of The San Joaquin and is a member of National League of American Pen Women, in Arts and Letters.
Her poetry appears in More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. Linda’s published
widely and received prizes from Penumbra, Poets’ Dinner Contest, and the Ina Coolbrith Circle. She has won
the Golden Pegasus Award and has been featured poet twice for the Stanislaus Connections poetry column “A Gathering of Voices.” She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Brad Buchanan and Susan Cohen
2023-01-10 19:00 - 20:00 | CA
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.

Book Discussion: Lee Herrick's Scar & Flower
2023-01-23 18:30 - 19:30 | CA
Join us at the Modesto Library to discuss Lee’s collection Scar and Flower. Copies available at the service desk at the downtown library. You don’t need to have read the book to join us!

11th Annual Poetry Festival with Amanda Moore
2023-02-04 09:00 - 13:30 | CA
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt) will host the 11th Annual Poetry Festival on February 4, 2023 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 1528 Oakdale Road, Modesto, California. The event will run from 9 am to 1:30 pm.
Facilitated by Amanda Moore, an awarded-winning, nationally recognized poet from the Bay Area, attendees will be led through a program titled At the Starting Line, A Workshop on Poetic Opening, which promises to be very helpful for both new and experienced poets.
Tickets ($40 each) for the event are available through Eventbrite. Attendance is limited to the first 44 people who purchase tickets. Coffee, tea, and table snacks will be provided, and attendees are welcome to bring their own lunch. As in the past, the festival will include an author’s table and camaraderie with poets and poetry aficionados from throughout Northern California. Eventbrite link for tickets: https://most2023fest.eventbrite.com
About Our Workshop Facilitator, Amanda Moore
Amanda Moore’s debut collection of poetry, Requeening, was selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong and published by HarperCollins/Ecco in October 2021. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Best New Poets, ZZYZVA, and Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting, and her essays have appeared in The Baltimore Review, Hippocampus Magazine, and on the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s blog. She is the recipient of writing awards, residencies, and fellowships from The Brown Handler Residency, In Cahoots, The Writers Grotto, The Writing Salon, Brush Creek Arts Foundation, and The Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts.
Poetry Co-editor at Women’s Voices for Change and a reader at VIDA Review and INCH, Amanda is a high school English teacher and lives by the beach in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco with her husband and daughter. https://amandapmoore.com.

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.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Tamer Mostafa & Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas
2023-02-14 19:00 - 20:00 | CA
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Tamer Mostafa and Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas
Hosted by Stella Beratlis
Date: Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023
Time: 7:00 pm PST
RSVP for Zoom link
Open Mic Signup: https://forms.gle/d51j2WqGmBrzrTLT9. 3 mins per reader, please.
TAMER MOSTAFA
Tamer Said Mostafa (pronouns: he/him/his), a radical social worker by day and poet by night, is a Stockton, California native whose poetry has appeared in over twenty literary journals and magazines, including Confrontation, Zone 3, and Freezeray. Tamer is a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee whose debut full-length book of poetry, Where Will I Find America? was released in August, 2021 and is available online. He is also the author of Which Way Will the Water Drag Our Bodies, published in 2020.Mostafa is a graduate of the Creative Writing program at University of California, Davis where he won the Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg Contest for Poetry. As an Arab-American Muslim, Tamer lives life through spirituality, community work, and the music of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.
CAROL LYNN STEVENSON GRELLAS
Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas lives in the Sierra Foothills and is a recent graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, MFA in Writing program, where she received a Merit Scholarship. She is an eleven-time Pushcart Prize nominee and an eight-time Best of the Net nominee. In 2012 she won the Red Ochre Chapbook Contest, with her manuscript, Before I Go to Sleep. In 2018 her book In the Making of Goodbyes was nominated for The CLMP Firecracker Award in Poetry, and her poem A Mall in California took 2nd place for the Jack Kerouac Poetry Prize. In 2019 her chapbook An Ode to Hope in the Midst of Pandemonium was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards and Epitaph for the Beloved was nominated for The Northern California Book Award. Her latest collection of poems, Alice in Ruby Slippers, was short-listed for the 2021 Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and awarded honorable mention in the Poetry category. You can find out more about Carol Lynn’s work by visiting her website: https://www.clgrellaspoetry.com/

Deadline for STANISLAUS COUNTY YOUTH POET LAUREATE Contest
2023-02-27 23:59 | CA
Please check our YOUTH POET LAUREATE Contest page for all the details plus application.
Applications for the 2023 Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate open January 1, 2023!

Are you a teen? Are you SUPER into poetry? We want to hear from you!
Introducing the Inaugural process to choose a Youth Poet Laureate for Stanislaus County!
Teens ages 15–19 who reside or go to school in Stanislaus County may submit up to five original works of poetry demonstrating their commitment to the mastery of the art and craft of poetry.
RULES:
● Poems may be in any style or form.
● You must submit at least 3 poems but no more than five poems.
● Poems must be the original creative work of the poet. Plagiarism will result in immediate disqualification from this and all future Youth Poet Laureate opportunities.
● All poems must be typed. Single or double spaced, 12 pt Times New Roman preferred unless the poem’s form dictates the format (example: blackout poetry, erasures, visual poetry, spoken word, etc.)
● Brief artist statement/biography describing why you want to be a Youth Poet Laureate. Who inspired you to write poetry?
● No gratuitous violence or sexual content. No hate speech. No slander.
Submission Dates:
SUBMIT APPLICATION
JANUARY 1 – FEBRUARY 27, 2023.
Email PDF application and poem attachment per instructions on application.

IF SELECTED, POET:

will receive $500
serve a one-year term from June 1, 2023 – May 31, 2024
must be available for public appearances throughout Stanislaus County
must either live in or be enrolled in a school in Stanislaus County at time of submission and for the entire term if chosen
must attest that their work is solely their own original creative work
will work with a mentor from the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center; display their poems in the Young Adult section of the Modesto Library and elsewhere; and will mentor others;
will write at least 3 poems during their term and present these at events to be decided

will be asked to participate in at least two poetry events in the community focusing on engaging other youth in poetry. Examples of these possible Youth Poet Laureate activities are as follows:

If they’d like to create a poetry-related project of their own, the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center will offer assistance/support;
feature at a reading as part of the Second Tuesday Reading Series at the end of their term; and/or
write a poem for the City of Modesto’s Poet’s Corner event.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Rooja Mohassessey & Farnaz Fatemi
2023-03-14 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
We are so excited to feature Rooja Mohassessy and Farnaz Fatemi for our Second Tuesday reading in March.
Please RSVP to get Zoom link for reading: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYucOmqrzIrGdb0wNX9dF4OQqZv7IRjNEOT
Hosted by Modesto poet laureate emeritus Stella Beratlis; open mic follows featured poets. (Open mic sign-up.)
Rooja Mohassessy
Rooja Mohassessy is an Iranian-born poet and educator living in Northern California. She is a MacDowell fellow and a graduate of the Pacific University MFA program. Her first poetry collection, When Your Sky Runs Into Mine, was the winner of the 22nd Annual Elixir Poetry Prize and was published by Elixir Press earlier this year. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Poet Lore, RHINO Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, CALYX Journal, Ninth Letter, Cream City Review, The Rumpus, The Adroit Journal, Bare Life Review, Potomac Review, The Florida Review, New Letters, International Literary Quarterly, and elsewhere.
ABOUT WHEN YOUR SKY RUNS INTO MINE
“When Your Sky Runs Into Mine is a stunning debut collection … about personal revolution, the turning toward art in times of suffering, the claiming of a rich cultural heritage.”—Ellen Bass, author of Indigo
“Rooja Mohassessy’s debut collection 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. “ —Shara McCallum, author of No Ruined Stone
Mohassessy’s intellectual power and penchant for image stand out in beautiful ways in this debut collection. She displays a painterly use of color, texture, and image that reflects her striking awareness of the physical world. Her capacity for efficient and elegant syntax and her fierce intelligence when dealing with political subjects and subjects of the female body in this world, constitute a most welcome addition to American poetry. This is a very impressive debut collection by a most promising poet.” —Kwame Dawes, author of UnHistory with John Kinsella
Farnaz Fatemi
Farnaz Fatemi, an Iranian American poet and writer, and Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate for 2023 & 2024, is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective. She was formerly a writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, was published in September 2022. It won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly. Some of her poems and lyric essays appear in Poem-a-Day (Poets.org), Tab Journal, Pedestal Review, Nowruz Journal, Grist Journal and Tupelo Quarterly.
ABOUT SISTER TONGUE
“Delicious, provocative, and incredibly wise, Farnaz Fatemi transcends years and oceans in these pages. Like gripping a cup and string to the ear, Sister Tongue is a hopeful missive, proof of words and their witnesses, an atlas of the wonder of becoming.”—T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
“Poet Farnaz Fatemi is the soulful Iranian American truth-teller and wonder-wanderer we’ve needed to hear. In Farsi, in English, in Tehran, or California, these poems cherish the miracle of connectedness by weaving family threads through time and space—through sisters, mothers, grandmothers, through a changed and changing world. Sister Tongue is a luscious love letter to language(s), spoken in a trusting, intimate voice. The poet recognizes the twinned solace of silence and song, of sister and self. Loss takes its seat, as it does, at the table, and Fatemi, with tea, family history, powerful memory, and a new/old tongue, inscribes it alongside the depths of beauty and joy in this radiant book of passionate understanding.”—Brenda Shaughnessy, author of The Octopus Museum
“I praise the present tense of these poems for its tensile strength, its ability to hold the struggle that is happening in the past, present, and future. The way it speaks of the perpetual, of what it is to be tongue-tied in the presence of one’s other self. ‘Language is geological,’ this speaker tells us, ‘a process of accumulation, and accretion accompanied by landslides.’ In setting out to speak the language of her blood, she finds herself at once estranged and embraced. Thrilled and defeated. What to do with such a natural disaster? These poems persist in their attempts to bridge worlds, offering hope of a complex and hard-won reconciliation, one richly crafted line at a time. In the words of Fatemi, ‘I want the foreigner in me / to meet the foreigner in me.’”—Danusha Laméris, author of Bonfire Opera“
Sister Tongue, Farnaz Fatemi’s debut poetry collection, transports us to a place where language must stretch to fit the largeness of human love and longing, and in doing so, fills the absences we did not even know we harbored. Sister Tongue begins to say what many of us already know—that borders and countries are too limiting to define us. Her poems offer us both a reckoning and a salve.”—Persis M. Karim, chair of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University

Deadline: City of Modesto Poet's Corner Contest
2023-03-24 | CA
The Parks, Recreation and Neighborhoods Department and the City of Modesto’s Poet’s Corner Committee are pleased to offer an Annual Poets’ Corner Contest. Please view the Poet’s Corner Contest Submission Form for full details.
Submissions
Poems will not be returned after the contest, so entrants should keep copies of their work.
Electronic Submissions

Include one cover page with poet’s name, address, email and title(s) of poem(s). If poet is a student, then indicate grade, school and name of teacher on the cover page.
Submit cover page and poem/poems in one file in .doc, .docx or .pdf format to the Poets Corner Contest Submission Email.

Mailed Submissions
Submit one copy of each poem along with one entry form for each poet to one of the following locations:

Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, C/O Poet’s Corner Contest, PO Box 578940, Modesto, CA, 95353
McHenry Museum, C/O Poet’s Corner Contest,1402 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354

Printed Entry Form and Contest Rules
May be picked up at the following locations:

Parks, Recreation & Neighborhoods Department Office – 1010 Tenth Street Place, Suite 4400
McHenry Museum – 1402 I Street
McHenry Mansion Visitor’s Center and Gift Shop – 924 15th Street
Stanislaus County Library – 1500 I Street

Deadline
Entries must be postmarked by Friday, March 24, 2023 or submitted electronically by 11:59 pm on Friday, March 24, 2023.
Requirements
The contest is open to all Stanislaus County residents.
Categories

General: Any kind of poetry on any subject, rhymed or unrhymed. Free verse and form welcome. Group of three haiku accepted as one entry.
Special: “Renewal: How do we restore and renew ourselves and our community after years of pandemic? How do we individually and collectively allow ourselves the space to mourn and feel what has been lost while holding optimism and being open to possibility? What might renewal look like in nature, ourselves, our families, and our communities? What does it feel like to be hopeful, imagine a better world, and create the future?”

Entry Limitations

Two poems per person
Each poem may not exceed 32 lines
All entries must be typed on standard 8.5″ x 11″ paper, double-spaced, in standard font
Entries must be unpublished at the time of submission
Entries may be two of one category or one of each category
At the top of each poem, indicate contest category and, if under the age of 18, grade in school
Do not put name of poet on any submitted poem: put name on cover page or entry form only
No plagiarism or offensive language.

Contest Winners
Contest winners will be notified by email (or mail, when email is unavailable). Poets will be invited to read their winning poems on Sunday, June 4, 2023 at 1:00 PM at the McHenry Museum, followed by light refreshments.
Winning poems will be printed in a booklet that will be placed in the Poets’ Bookshelf, which contains published works by local writers and will be kept at the McHenry Museum. Each winner will receive a copy of the booklet.

Deadline Aileen Jaffa Young Poets Contest
2023-04-03 | CA
AILEEN JAFFA YOUNG POETS CONTEST
Co-sponsored by MoSt (Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center) and the National League of American Penwomen (NLAPW), Modesto chapter.
This contest is offered as a means of encouraging young writers throughout Stanislaus County and as a way to remember poet Aileen Jaffa, the founding President of the Poets of the San Joaquin and member of the Modesto Branch of the National League of American Pen Women.
Eligibility and Deadline
Any student enrolled in a Stanislaus County school, grades K through 12, is eligible to submit up to 3 entries, at $1 per entry. Each entry, except for typing, must be the original creative work of the student, although parents or teachers may provide encouragement. Postmark deadline for submissions is April 3, 2023.

Details at Aileen Jaffa Youth Poetry Contest.

Saturday in the Park With Poetry
2023-04-08 12:00 - 13:30 | Davis Park, 2701 College Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
As April is National Poetry Month, Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is offering an outdoors event on Saturday, April 8, 2023 from noon to 1:30 p.m. The location is Davis Community Park at 2701 College Avenue in Modesto. The host will be Salvatore Salerno, poet laureate of Modesto. Participants can bring a bag lunch and read from their most recent favorite book of poetry. They are also invited to bring other poetry books to donate and trade with other participants. We will meet at the picnic tables near the parking lot. If the tables are otherwise occupied, be prepared by bringing a lawn chair, and we can gather elsewhere beneath the welcoming shade of a tree.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring 2023 Sixteen Rivers Press authors Matthew M. Monte & Joseph Zaccardi
2023-04-11 19:00 - 20:00 | CA
We are so excited to feature Matthew M. Monte and Joseph Zaccardi for our Second Tuesday reading on April 11, 2023.
Please RSVP to get Zoom link for reading: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUodeGrrzkjHdfBfZG3JJnhhyxHl8NFvfZ8
Hosted by Modesto poet laureate emeritus Stella Beratlis; open mic follows featured poets. (Open mic sign-up.)
MATTHEW MONTE
Matthew M. Monte grew up near San Francisco, California and went to the University of Hawaii-Manoa, where he studied botany. His fiction, poetry, book reviews, music reviews, journalism, and essays have appeared in Sidestream, Creosote Journal, Transfer, Ashcan Magazine, The Snackbar Collective, iNaturalist, Panorama, and the Poets 11 Anthologies (2014 and 2016). He lives in San Francisco with his wife and son. His debut collection, The Case of the Six-Sided Dream, won the 2017 Blue Light Poetry Prize.
https://www.matthew-monte.com/
All Tomorrow’s Train Rides is an odyssey of reading and poetic memory. What begins as a single day in a worker’s commute morphs into a Möbius loop of literary history and cultural consciousness. “Where do we read and whom?” is a question that drives the nostalgia, dread, and humor of this collection. Riddled with geographical coordinates and commentary, this book of interdependent poems explores the idea of “living in translation” and fuses the formal aesthetics of cartography to our relationships with people, places, books, and the natural world.
About ALL TOMORROW’S TRAIN RIDES
Through poetic cartography, Matthew Monte disembarks from a search of what ultimately is borderless. The topography of a land, of home, extending from San Francisco to Tepeyac to Downe places us in a position to feel the transit of time. We travel to where Monte coordinates the lingering as well as the vanishing points of a city. With a lush lexicon, he fuses historical allusions with aspects of spirituality to expound upon what each train ride reveals; in turn, around the next bend, we keep coming back. This is a ride to catch.
—Thea Matthews, author of Unearth [The Flowers]
Matthew Monte writes in the specifics of speech and memory, pulling the reader along his urban coastline of abandoned dreams and possible destinations. This extraordinary book is filled with the noise and silence of the everyday and is underscored throughout with beauty, examination, and compassion.
Read these fine poems and encounter some part of your own unvoiced life.
—Beau Beausoleil, author of A Glyphic House: New and Selected Poems 1976–2019
JOSEPH ZACCARDI
Joseph Zaccardi is the author of five books of poetry including, most recently, The Weight of Bodily Touches from Kelsay Books. His poems have appeared in Cincinnati Review, Poetry East, Atlanta Review, Rattle, and Salamander, among other journals. Zaccardi joined the Marin Poetry Center in 1996 and served as a board member from 2010 to 2013 and as the editor of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology in 2010–2012. Appointed poet laureate of Marin County, California, he served from 2013 to 2015. A member of the LGBTQ community, Zaccardi believes that to write a single poem is a minor miracle. He lives in Fairfax, California, with his husband, Dave, and their dog.

In his afterword to Songbirds of the Nine Rivers, Joseph Zaccardi recounts how, during his time as a Navy corpsman in the Vietnam War, he found refuge in a volume of ancient Chinese and Vietnamese poetry. His study, now lifelong, has borne fruit in this present volume, the ancients at his shoulder. At once a scholarly work, an homage, and a striking volume of new poems—not translations, not “versions”— this book provides readers with a multifaceted lens, forward, backward, yet always present—and always, even in grief, exultant.
About SONGBIRDS OF THE NINE RIVERS
The beauty of this book is in the lyric surprise, the parabolic of the Tang. If there are such things as true works of art, it is these poems that blend the physical and the eternal, the seen and the unseen. Zaccardi’s words draw from the uncanniness of nature in a startling way and reveal to us a sometimes violent, often beautiful, but always necessary world. A work such as Songbirds of the Nine Rivers,derived from both earth and heaven, is rare indeed.
––Ann Robinson, author of Stone Window
Historical, philosophical, and alchemical, these poems reenact the cosmos of the classical poet-ancestors of China and Vietnam through the awakened mind of an American poet. Joseph Zaccardi’s poetry enlarges human empathy and connects separated worlds. Listen to these songs! Every note is clear, fresh, and alive.
-–Jie Tian, author of Native Songs and Migration Songs
It is said that to hear music it is best to close your eyes, and that to hear poetry it is best to read the poems aloud. Joseph Zaccardi’s poetry is music to the ear. He lets us feel what he feels, lets us touch what he touches. His voice is song; his sounds are prayers. They wash over me, the way the sea washes over the sound of itself.
––Mai Sato, Yokohama College of Art and Design

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.

MoSt Poetry Book Club
2023-04-24 17:30 - 18:30 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
MoSt Poetry Book Club will meet at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, April 24 in person at the downtown Modesto library. We’ll be reading Katie Farris’ book Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, available at the library reference desk to borrow after April 4th.
