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

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

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

MoSt Poetry Book Club
2022-02-23 18:30 - 19:30
Dust Bowl Venus by Stella Beratlis (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2021)
Join our online discussion of Dust Bowl Venus by Stella Beratlis on Wednesday, February 23, 2022 at 6:30pm PT. Prior reading is not required. Copies of the book are available to borrow at the circulation desk of the Modesto Stanislaus County Library. To check on the books’ status, please call 209-558-7808.
Register in advance for the Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0vc-Gtqz0pHdQn9dapR_G_8EvWCeuvrtvg

“With tenderness, wit and humor, Dust Bowl Venus explores the fragility of love, good health an:d the earth. Rooted not just in the places of the City of Modesto but also in the music, legends, and community of the Central Valley, these poems brilliantly reflect a struggle to find beauty in the contradictions of our contemporary lives. Amazingly thoughtful and musical, these are poems we should all read.” —July Halebsky, author of Sky=Empty, Tree Line, and Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged)
“Stella Beratlis’s Dust Bowl Venus animates California’s Central Valley as a postmodern Prometheus, an eco-sapient Frankenstein with whom we wrangle, wrestle, and fall madly in love. Marked with sass and grit and grace, Beratlis’s imagistic associations jolt and jump cut in powers of ten. These poems stir us with the urgency of the Anthropocene, excite ‘a thicket of nerves,’ and form a ‘mycorrhizal web’ that connects us to the mantle of deep time.” —Rosa Lane, author of Chouteau’s Chalk and Tiller North
“The poems in Stella Beratlis’s Dust Bowl Venus ring with the clarity of a shovel strike against stone, each line cracking against the next, igniting spark after glorious spark. And yet, like the seasonal lake bed on which Modesto sits, like the many hands ‘making mud out of dry soil,; every poem aches toward tenderness. In one poem, Beratlis asks ‘What grows here?’ before revealing the bounty—heirloom tomatoes, holy basil, kindness—that can be coaxed from this ‘city of drought.’ But darker things grow here, too: a tumor ‘the consistency of a potato,’ fear, terror that ‘builds cell by sticky cell.’ Here, to grow, and to love, is to risk vulnerability. These ‘bone and ligament narratives’ of grief and yearning, illness and healing, perseverance and resistance, beat with so much heart in this fiercely beautiful book.” —Erin Rodoni, author of Body, in Good Light and A Landscape for Loss

Stella Beratlis grew up in a second-generation Greek-American family in Northern California. Her latest collection, Dust Bowl Venus, was published in May 2021. She is also the author of Alkali Sink (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2015). Her work has also appeared in numerous journals, including Harbor Review, Penumbra, Song of the San Joaquin, In-Posse Review, and California Quarterly, as well as in the anthologies The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010) and California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology (Story Streets, 2020). She is coeditor of the collection More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets (Quercus Review Press, 2011) and served as the poet laureate of Modesto from 2016–2020. Beratlis lives in Modesto and is a librarian there.
You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Feb 23, 2022 06:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0vc-Gtqz0pHdQn9dapR_G_8EvWCeuvrtvg
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Modesto Poetry Festival with Danusha Laméris & Gary Thomas
2022-02-26 10:00 - 13:30
Danusha Laméris will lead a workshop on Knowing and Not-Knowing: Navigating Certainty and Uncertainty Through Poetic Gesture in the morning. Following a brief break, Gary Thomas will lead an afternoon workshop.
Writing is a way of knowing. It asks us to examine memory, certainty, and the possibility of revelation. We will explore how we can use the pivots of gesture to complicate our work, layer certainty with uncertainty, knowing with not-knowing. Let’s learn how to engage ourselves, and our readers, by unraveling what we’ve just said. You’ll see how this brings work to life, and can lead us to our own epiphanies. While I will be sharing sample work from poems, this can be applied to poetry and prose.
Danusha Laméris is the author of The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), which was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her poems have been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The SUN Magazine, Tin House, The Gettysburg Review, and Ploughshares. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and winner of a 2021 Northern California Book Award. The 2020 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, she teaches poetry independently, and is a Poet Laureate emeritus of Santa Cruz County, California. She is currently on the faculty of Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program.
About: Laméris is an American poet born to a Dutch father and a Caribbean mother from the island of Barbados. She was raised in the California Bay Area, spending her early years in Mill Valley, then moving to Berkeley, where she attended The College Preparatory School. Since graduating with a degree in Studio Art from The University of California at Santa Cruz, she has lived in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains.
Gary Thomas: Shoulds and Shelters: Carving Out Corners of Presence
Amid the duties we think we “should” be performing for the benefit or opinions of others, how—to paraphrase James Crews— do we give ourselves permission to do nothing and allow for the space from which a sudden gratefulness can naturally arise? How do we carve out a space and time—and shelter—to practice?
Prior to retirement, Gary Thomas 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 students. He has had poems published in In the Grove, Time of Singing, and The Comstock Review, among others, and in the anthologies More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets and three of the Collision series. He is currently vice president of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center. He has a forthcoming book published by Finishing Line Press titled All the Connecting Lights.
Tickets $15; RSVP on Eventbrite (https://2022festival.eventbrite.com) for Zoom link.

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

City of Modesto Poets Corner Contest Deadline
2022-03-18
The Poets Corner Poetry Contest is sponsored by the Modesto Poets’ Corner Committee, a subcommittee of the Modesto Culture Commission.
WHO MAY ENTER
Poets of any age who reside in Stanislaus County*
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: Gratitude and Hope: How can we be grateful and
hopeful in these challenging times? How could we be open to our
need to discover and share hope and chances for joy? How do we
create time and space to care about being alive? What might happen
with gratitude and hope?
Deadline
Entries must be postmarked by Friday, March 18, 2022 or submitted electronically by 11:59 pm on Friday, March 18, 2022.

WINNERS
Winners will be notified by email (or mail, when email is unavailable.)
Poets will be invited to read their winning poems on Sunday, May 15, 2022 at 1:00 P.M. at the McHenry Museum, followed by light refreshments.
All building uses are subject to COVID-19 protocols and restrictions. All uses are subject to change and may be canceled or adjusted at owner’s discretion for compliance. Winning poems will be collected in a booklet. Each winner will receive a booklet, and a copy will be added to the Poets’ Bookshelf at the McHenry Museum.
PLEASE GO TO the City of Modesto’s Poets’ Corner Page for the entry form and full submission instructions.

Coffee, Tea, and Poetry
2022-03-26 14:00 - 15:00
Join us to talk about poetry you’ve been enjoying.

You are invited to a Zoom meeting. Coffee, Tea and Poetry
When: Mar 26, 2022 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAtf-yprz4sGtV6Un3kWL9tjH_ZdUt8zIOt

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

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

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

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

MoSt Poetry Book Club: Amanda Moore's Requeening
2022-04-18 18:30 - 19:30 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
The MoSt Poetry Book Club will continue in April with a discussion of Amanda Moore’s book Requeening (Ecco Press, 2021). Copies can be borrowed at the reference desk of the downtown Modesto Library. The Book Club will meet IN PERSON on Monday, April 18 at 6:30 in the MakerSpace room. We hope to see you there!

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

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

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

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

Poems of Connection & Joy
2022-06-11 13:00 - 15:00 | 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
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry, featuring Clay Hunt and Briana Muñoz, hosted by Stella Beratlis.
Tuesday, June 14, 2022
7:00 pm PST w/ open mic
on Zoom–RSVP required: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcvcOqvrz8pG9Yi9Z0cV9-AoGodS4mymh-Q
RSVP Open Mic (3 min per poet): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSezxMg1qBq4z4NyNQWRckkONw_hR-JWWJ8HsJ__XjSDKx34GA/viewform

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

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

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

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
[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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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!
