Spoken Word Workshop at the Turlock Library with Faith Delgado
2023-10-28 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Turlock Library, 550 N. Minaret Ave, Turlock, 95382, United States
Join Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Faith Delgado as she leads a workshop for teens on spoken word poetry and performance. In the Community Room at the Turlock Library, 1-3 pm. For more info, please contact Faith at faithd@mostpoetry.org or the Turlock Library: (209) 664-8100.

MoSt Poetry on Saturday featuring Tama Brisbane and Linda Marie Prather
2023-11-04 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
MoSt Poetry On Saturday Reading
November 4, 2023
2:00 p.m. PST
Carnegie Arts Center
250 North Broadway Avenue, Turlock CA

Join host Gary Thomas for the latest edition of MoSt’s Poetry On Saturday in-person readings on November 4th at 2:00 p.m. at the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock. Our featured readers are Stockton Poet Laureate Emerita Tama L. Brisbane and Turlock poet Linda Marie Prather. An Open Mic will follow the featured poets. This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be provided.

Tama L. Brisbane: From 2015-2023, Tama has presented over 300 times, including the inauguration of Stockton’s first Black mayor, Michael Tubbs. Her debut Laureate project helped engineer the city’s 2015 return to All-American City status with an innovative 10-minute poem incorporating over two dozen multigenerational, multiethnic voices. Her performance as Guest Poet at The King Jr. Center and Ebenezer Baptist Church led Martin Luther King III to say, “your words matter.” She is the Executive Director of With Our Words, and County Coordinator for California Poets in the Schools. As a Literary Arts Consultant, she designs programs, curricula and events for young people across the United States and around the world.
“Mama T” is a published author, a Susan B. Anthony Award Winner for Creative Arts, a University of the Pacific Woman of Distinction, a Black Women Organized for Political Action Honoree, an Action on Behalf of Children Honoree, a Charter Member of the Brave New Voices National Network, and of the National Black Poet Laureates Group. She serves on several boards advocating for arts, youth, Black families and environmental stewardship. Her tireless work on behalf of young voices — particularly those of color and from marginalized communities — has been recognized by both houses of the California Legislature, by the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.
Tama stands in constant thanks to her Creator for her earthly assignment. She takes comfort and inspiration from two of her favorite quotes. The first is from Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The salvation of humanity lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.” The second is attributed to an Eastern proverb: “If you sit on the bank of the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy float by.”

Linda Marie Prather has been widely recognized, winning honors in both poetry and visual art. She has been featured in Stanislaus Connections and in KCBP and KQBM radio interviews. She was nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and was the recipient of the 2008 Pegasus Award from California Federation of Chaparral Poets. Linda co-edits the poetry quarterly Song of the San Joaquin and is an Arts and Letters member, National League of American Pen Women. Her eighth book of poems, New Walk & Old Dream, was released August 2023.

MoSt Poetry Book Club
2023-11-13 18:30 - 19:30 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
“The late W.S. Merwin might as well have been called Merlin, for the seemingly magical changes of his work during his long career. The poems in Present Company are like impressionist or even abstract paintings. If you scan them quickly, they will seem to be out of focus, but if you read more slowly, stopping and lingering, your patience will be rewarded by their beauty.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MARIAH BOSCH

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

Painless Poetry for Teens: Learn about the Stanislaus Youth Poet Laureate Contest
2024-01-13 14:00 - 15:00 | Turlock Library, 550 N. Minaret Ave, Turlock, 95382, United States
January 13, 2024. Future Youth Poets Laureate, Unite! In this first gathering, learn about the Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate program and learn tips for completing the contest application, which is due Jan. 27. Read on to find out about this monthly series.

Painless Poetry: Workshops for Aspiring Teen Poets/Spoken Word Performers
Join Faith Delgado, 2023-24 Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate, in a series of informal gatherings to explore the world of spoken word and performance poetry. Watch inspiring spoken word performances, learn about and practice spoken word technique, and socialize with fellow writers, poets, and performers. Light refreshments served. All events start at 2 pm and are held in the Turlock Library Makerspace. In partnership with the Stanislaus County Library.
January 13, 2024. Future Youth Poets Laureate, Unite! In this first gathering, learn about the Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate program and learn tips for completing the contest application, which is due Jan. 27.
February 24, 2024. Spoken Word: Learn from the Masters. Let’s view iconic spoken word performances and talk about what makes them so great.
March 16, 2024. Spittin’ Bars: Spoken Word/Performance Strategies. How do you inhabit the space on stage when performing a piece? How about holding a microphone and reading from a page? Let’s share strategies and explore what might work for us.
April 20, 2024. Spittin’ Bars Part 2/Open Mic Performance. Show off what you’ve been working on all these months!

Deadline to apply for Youth Poet Laureate
2024-01-27
Young poets: Don’t forget to apply for the Youth Poet Laureate contest by January 27, 2024. Open to poets ages 15-19 who live or attend school in Stanislaus County and who will reside in the area through the youth poet laureate term (June 1, 2024 – May 31, 2025). All details at the Youth Poet Laureate contest page.
Deadline is 11:59 pm on Saturday, January 27, 2024.

12th Annual MoSt Poetry Festival with Maya Khosla
2024-02-03 10:00 - 14:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
MoSt Poetry Festival
Saturday, February 3, 2024
“Writing the Way Through Wild Spaces”
Workshop leader: Maya Khosla, Wildlife Biologist, Poet, Filmmaker
Carnegie Arts Center 250 N. Broadway Turlock, CA
10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Doors open at 9:30 a.m. — continental breakfast included
$40 RSVP at https://poetryfestival12.eventbrite.com

Maya Khosla is a biologist and writer. As Sonoma County Poet Laureate (2018-2020), she brought Sonoma’s communities together to heal through gatherings, field walks, and shared writing after the recent wildfires. Her books include “All the Fires of Wind and Light” (Sixteen Rivers Press; 2020 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award), “Keel Bone” (Bear Star Press; Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize). She is the winner of the 2023 Fund for Wild Nature Grassroots Activist Award and co-winner of the Environmentalist of the Year Award from 2020 Sonoma County Conservation Council (SCCC). Her work has been featured in For the Wild, her writing was part of the award-winning documentary films including “Village of Dust, City of Water,” about the water crises in rural India.

Scan to purchase your ticket

This event is supported in part by Poets & Writers.

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

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

MoSt Poetry Book Club - Information Desk by Robyn Schiff
2024-02-17 10:00 - 11:00 | BakeShop, 940 Eleventh Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
MoSt Poetry Book Club meets at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 17, 2024 at BakeShop, 11th Street in downtown Modesto to discuss Information Desk by Robyn Schiff. You can pick up a copy of the book at the Stanislaus County Library’s Modesto Branch. Here’s what the publisher, Penguin Random House, has to say:

ABOUT INFORMATION DESK
New York Times Book Review Edtitors’ Choice
“Among the year’s highlights . . . groundbreaking, epic . . . Like visitors exiting the Met’s galleries, readers will emerge from Information Desk bedazzled by the transformative horizons of art.” —Washington Post
“An effluvial rush of memory, desire, data, and metaphor . . . It’s bracing to encounter a mind so voracious, so unapologetic in its intelligence.” —New York Review of Books
A book-length poem set in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from a writer whose work offers “something few poets ever discover: a vision of the whole world” (Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker)
Robyn Schiff’s fourth collection is an ambitious book-length poem in three parts set at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s information desk, where Schiff long ago held a staff position. Elaborately mapping an interconnected route in and out of the museum through history, material, and memory, Information Desk: An Epic takes us on an anguished soul-quest and ecstatic intellectual query to confront the violent forces that inform the museum’s encyclopedic collection and the spiritual powers of art.
Novelistic in its sweep, frantically informative, and deeply intimate in its private recollections, Information Desk: An Epic wayfares with riveting lyric intensity through an epic array of topics and concerns, including illusion, deception, self-deception, complicity, lecherous coworkers, the composition of pigment, the scattering of seeds, ideas, and capital, and insect infestations spreading within artwork. Along the way, Schiff pauses to invoke three terrifying muses—parasitic wasps—in desperate awe of their powers of precision and generative energy. Information Desk: An Epic undertakes a hemorrhaging ekphrastic journey through artifice and the natural world.

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

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

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

RHONY BHOPLA

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

LYNN HANSEN

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

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

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

Sponsored by Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center

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

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

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

Light refreshments will be served while they last.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Susan Cohen
Susan Cohen’s third collection, Democracy of Fire (Broadstone Books: 2022), was praised by Ellen Bass as a “wise and wonderful” vision of “our interconnectedness.” Her poetry honors include the Red Wheelbarrow Prize judged by Mark Doty, the Terrain Annual Poetry Prize judged by Arthur Sze, and a special mention in Pushcart Prize XLIII. A former journalist and contributing writer for the Washington Post Magazine, she lives in Berkeley and has appeared in 32 Poems, Prairie Schooner, Southern Review, Verse Daily, and many anthologies.
Praise for Susan Cohen & Democracy of Fire
A thread of elegy runs through Democracy of Fire, Susan Cohen’s wise and wonderful new poetry collection. Tenderly, precisely, these poems record a litany of the world’s ongoing losses: “Greenland’s ice sheet pooling like tears into the ocean,” elephants, beetles, democracies, “languages left behind like cloaks,” and “our own bones interred without ceremony.” Cohen shows us our interconnectedness, a reminder of both the beauty and value of what’s at stake. Yet, paradoxically, this vision makes Democracy of Fire a deeply comforting book. Of the planet Mercury she writes, “…a pinprick ablaze for longer than our species will exist…Between us and it, there’s a distance far beyond air, and beyond despair.” —Ellen Bass, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets & author of Indigo
At this historical, political and ecological moment, with democracy and our earth aflame, could there be a more timely or relevant collection than Susan Cohen’s powerful, wise and deeply humane book of poetry, Democracy of Fire? Here, the many losses we experience both daily and across time—losses both cultural and personal—are mitigated by the act of memory and a faith in, well, the facts of our world and our capacity for intimate reckonings. Once again, Susan Cohen has shown herself to be one of the most compassionate recorders of our complicated times. —David St. John, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets & author of The Last Troubadour: Selected and New Poems
Lenore Weiss
Lenore’s past poetry collections form a trilogy about love, loss, and being mortal: Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012); Two Places (Kelsay Books, 2014), and The Golem (Hakodesh Word Press, 2017). Her most recent collection, Video Game Pointers (WordTech Editions, 2024) issues a call for peace. Ethelzine published her hand-sewn poetry chapbook, From Malls to Museums. Alexandria Quarterly Press published her prize-winning flash fiction chapbook, Holding on to the Fringes of Love.
Lenore serves as the Associate Editor (Creative Nonfiction) for the Mud Season Review and lives in Oakland, California with Zebra the Brave and Granola the Shy. She earned an MFA in fiction from San Francisco State University. You may find her at www.lenoreweiss.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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