Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center

Second Tuesday Poetry presents Poems That Found Us Open Mic
2026-08-11 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Poems That Found Us
An Open Mic Reading
What poem has stayed with you? What lines do you return to again and again?
Join us for an evening where readers share poems by other poets—words that have meant something, sparked something, changed something. Each reader brings one poem– one voice and 3-4 minutes of space to read the poem.
Whether you’re a longtime poetry lover or curious about the form, whether you’ve found your poem already or you’re still looking, you’re welcome to joins us.
Event free; books and refreshments available for purchase.
August 11, 2026 | 7:00 PM
Bookish Modesto

MoSt Poetry's Saturday at the Carnegie with featured readers Carolyn Miller & Lenore Myers
2026-08-15 14:00 - 16:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
Join host Gary Thomas for the latest edition of MoSt’s Poetry at the Carnegie readings on August 15 at 2:00 p.m. at the Carnegie Arts Center, 250 North Broadway Avenue in Turlock, CA. Our featured poets are Sixteen Rivers Press poets Carolyn Miller and Lenore Myers (both with new books out!) followed by our Open Mic time. This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be provided.
Carolyn Miller lives in San Francisco, where she writes, paints, and works as a freelance book editor. Her books of poetry are After Cocteau and Light, Moving, both from Sixteen Rivers Press; Route 66 and Its Sorrows from Terrapin Books; and four limited-edition letterpress chapbooks from Protean Press. Her poems have been featured on Poetry Daily and The Writer’s Almanac and have appeared in Smartish Pace, SALT, ONE ART, The Southern Review, and The Gettysburg Review, among other journals, as well as in several anthologies, including Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems: American Places. Her honors include the James Boatwright III Award for Poetry from Shenandoah and the Rainmaker Award from Zone 3.
About Random Universe: “Carolyn Miller’s new poetry collection is a remarkably inclusive work, with a playfulness in form and structure that feels wonderfully inventive. In these pages, she takes on ekphrastic responses to Cy Twombly’s art, “mistranslations” of Milosz and Tranströmer, and her own translation of an ancient Egyptian text. She creates list-poems of “Lost Language” and “New Lines for Fortune Cookies” and writes about the lives of objects. And through it all, she shows her remarkable talent for writing about sensuous joy, joy that is earned, though haunted by history and the poet’s place in it. I am glad to sit at the banquet table of her Random Universe and feast.” —Julia B. Levine, author of Lullaby for the Sixth Extinction
LENORE MYERS was born to artist parents who tried to live as semi-bohemians in the suburbs. When that fell apart, the author spent her childhood and youth moving between different towns in Northern California. After spending more years moving around the United States and abroad, she returned to the greater Bay Area to be near family while raising her son. Her chapbook, Regards to Balthus, was published by Seven Kitchens Press in 2023. Her poems and essays appear in a variety of literary journals.

About Afterimages: “Conventional forms of ekphrasis are often little more than poetic descriptions of art. But there is nothing conventional about Lenore Myers’s Afterimages. The poems in this fabulous collection go beyond description, beyond the page, beyond the canvas, beyond looking and seeing, beyond interpretation and reflection, beyond decoding. They participate in what we might call an expanded ekphrasis that takes the dialogue between art and poetry to new levels of interactivity. This is a book that asks big questions about how we perceive and process the acts of making art and engaging with its aftereffects. Art lasts. It lingers. In our heads and in our hearts.” —Dean Rader, author of Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly

MoSt Summer Workshop - Biographical Poetry
2026-08-22 13:00 - 15:00 | Salida Public Library, 4835 Sisk Road, Salida, CA, 95368, United States
Biographical poetry combines fact with imagination to depict an aspect or overview of an actual person’s life. In this MoSt Poetry Summer Workshop, we’ll read and discuss examples of biographical poetry featuring historical figures and selected authors’ ancestors. Workshop participants will write first drafts in response to poetry prompts offered by facilitator Linda Scheller, MoSt Poetry board member and the author of two collections of biographical poetry, Fierce Light and Laurels. Emerging poets, experienced writers, and everyone in between is welcome, and there’s no need to register in advance for this free workshop. Please join us Saturday, August 22nd, 2026 from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. in the Salida Public Library, 4835 Sisk Road, Salida CA 95368.
