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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Tom Myers and Stella Beratlis, with special guest Zoe Byron
2024-09-10 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Tom Myers and Stella Beratlis, with special guest Zoe Byron, Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate
Date: Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg, Modesto CA 95350 (Roseburg Square Shopping Center)
Join us for this special reading to celebrate the release of Tom Myer’s first full poetry collection, Tremor in my Bones. Also featuring Stella Beratlis, author of Dust Bowl Venus. With special guest Zoe Byron, new Youth Poet Laureate for Stanislaus County.
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Reading host: Gillian Wegener
Tom Myers
Tom Myers is a retired elementary school teacher and a founding board member of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt). He enjoys the wilds of nature and a sense of place frames much of his poetry. His poems have been published in hardpan, Quercus Review, More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets, Collision II and VII, Homestead Review, Cosumnes River Journal, and Steam Ticket. He has four chapbooks. His first full-length book, A Tremor in my Bones, was just published in August.
Stella Beratlis
Stella Beratlis is the author of Dust Bowl Venus (2021) and Alkali Sink, both published by Sixteen Rivers Press. Alkali Sink was a 2016 nominee for the Northern California Book Award. Stella’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies as well as in the grand rotunda of the San Francisco Transbay Terminal, as part of a giant LED installation by artist Jenny Holzer. Stella was Modesto’s poet laureate from 2016-2020; is the coordinator of the Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate program, and works as a librarian at Modesto Junior College. She also collects typewriters, if you want to sell yours.
Zoe Byron
Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Zoe Byron, a junior at Oakdale High School, was recently appointed to serve as the county’s second youth poet laureate. Zoe, whose parents are both English teachers, is a confirmed poetry fanatic whose initial exposure to performance poetry (thanks, Mom!) during the pandemic sparked a curiosity for and love of the form. Zoe’s early work was published in Oakdale Junior High’s annual poetry anthology; more recently, her work appeared in Penumbra, the Stan State literary journal. Zoe is also a regular participant in the Stanislaus County Poetry Out Loud competition.

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

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Patricia Caspers & Molly Fisk
2024-10-08 19:00 - 20:30 | The Artist Lab at Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Patricia Caspers and Molly Fisk
Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Artist Lab at the Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto CA 95354
Join us for this special reading featuring Patricia Caspers and Molly Fisk, both of Nevada City. Patricia’s collection The Most Kissed Woman in the World was published by Kelsay Books earlier this year; she is the editor of the poetry journal West Trestle Review. Molly Fisk is the poet laureate of Nevada City and received a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets to create the anthology California Fire & Water, A Climate Crisis Anthology. Her new collection, Walking Wheel, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2026.
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Hosted by Gillian Wegener
Patricia Caspers
Patricia Caspers is an award-winning writer and the founder/publisher of West Trestle Review. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections: The Most Kissed Woman in the World (Kelsay Books, 2024), Some Flawed Magic (Kelsay Books, 2021), and In the Belly of the Albatross (Glass Lyre Press, 2015). She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, and her work has appeared widely in journals such as Ploughshares, Malahat Review, and Sugar House Review.
About The Most Kissed Woman in the World:
“There is so much beauty in Patricia Caspers’ The Most Kissed Woman in the World, and a lot of darkness, too. In each “Portrait of God” Caspers finds the sacred somewhere unexpected: a pungent ginkgo tree; an assisted living facility; a dysfunctional family; the self in all its gorgeous imperfections. These lyrical, surprising poems look at the world with hard-won clarity and tenderness, embracing joy without turning away from suffering. “God is the kitchen knife that misses,” Caspers writes, as well as “the crash of abundance.” Exactly. The Most Kissed Woman is sharp and generous and wise, reminding us where we hurt and also, in its revelatory unfoldings, why we go on.” –Chloe Martinez, author of Ten Thousand Selves

Molly Fisk

Molly Fisk edited California Fire & Water, A Climate Crisis Anthology, with a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. Author of The More Difficult Beauty, Listening to Winter, and five volumes of radio commentary, her new collection Walking Wheel is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2026. Fisk, who lives in the Sierra foothills, has also won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She was the inaugural poet laureate of Nevada County and is current poet laureate of both KVMR-FM, Nevada City and Hell’s Backbone Grill in Boulder, UT.

Dos Rios State Park Nature Poetry Walk
2024-10-27 09:00 - 12:00 | Dos Rios State Park, 3559 Shiloh Rd, Modesto, CA, 95358, United States
A special event for poetry lovers! Join a State Park Interpreter and special guest, poetry author, Salvatore Salerno. Bring your favorite poem or poetry book about nature and share with other poetry enthusiasts. Walk 2.5 miles round-trip to the amazing pond Oaks. Share or just listen to poems that connects us to nature. Please bring good walking shoes, sunscreen, snack, and water. Bring lunch to eat at the day use area, along the pond, following the poetry walking tour. Register: https://www.parks.ca.gov/EventDetails/16477

MoSt Poetry on Saturday featuring Christina Lloyd & Alice Templeton
2024-11-09 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
MoSt Poetry On Saturday Reading
November 9, 2024
2:00 p.m. PST
Carnegie Arts Center
250 North Broadway Avenue, Turlock, CA

Join host Gary Thomas for the latest edition of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center’s (MoSt’s) Poetry On Saturday in-person readings on November 9 at 2:00 p.m. at the Carnegie Arts Center (250 North Broadway Avenue) in Turlock. Our featured poets are Christina Lloyd and Alice Templeton, both with new books out from Sixteen Rivers Press. An Open Mic time will follow the featured poets. This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be provided.

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Manila and San Francisco, Christina Lloyd holds a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University. Her work appears in a wide variety of publications, including Canadian Woman Studies, EcoTheo, Hive, Meniscus, Poetry Daily, Poetry Ireland, Poet Lore, The North, and SWWIM. Women Twice Removed, published by Sixteen Rivers Press, is her first full-length collection. She lives in San Francisco.

Alice Templeton’s poems and short stories have appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Bellingham Review, Calyx, North American Review, Poetry, and other publications. Her work was a finalist for the 2020 Neruda Prize from Nimrod, and her chapbook Archaeology won the 2008 New Women’s Voices Prize in Poetry from Finishing Line Press. She is also the author of a critical book on Adrienne Rich’s poetics and scholarly articles on contemporary poetics, cultural criticism, and literary theory. Originally from Tennessee, Templeton lives in Point Richmond, California.

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

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

Poetry Reading and Open Mic featuring Youth Poet Laureate Zoe Byron
2024-11-23 12:00 - 13:00 | Oakdale Library, 151 South First Avenue, Oakdale, CA, 95361, United States
Please join Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and Stanislaus County Library at a poetry reading and open mic at the Oakdale Library, featuring Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Zoe Byron. Bring a poem—your own or a favorite–to share at open mic. Reading starts at 12:00; free and open to all.
Zoe, a student at Oakdale High School, was selected by a panel of judges to serve as the county’s second Youth Poet Laureate. The Youth Poet Laureate program is a partnership between MoSt Poetry, Stanislaus County Library, SCOE, and MJC’s School of Language Arts & Education. For more info: ypl@mostpoetry.org.

Reading/Open Mic & Book Launch for Gary Thomas's O YES WE BREATHE
2024-11-26 19:00 - 20:00 | Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto, CA, United States
O Yes We Breathe is a collection of earthborn connections, a ragged inquiry into our commonalities and yearnings as humans. Divided into four sections (Hard News & Kittens in Trees, If Memory Serves, Liaisons Ordinaires, and Ready to Step Into Waves) these poems address “current” events, the acts of recollection and reminiscence, mortal-to-mortal relationships, and unexpected spiritual encounters and connections. Embedded and resting at rock bottom in this landscape of dusty farms, remnants from news and history, summonings of childhood scraps and souvenirs, and arguments for and within love is the awareness that each of us matters simply because of what we all share.
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Gary Thomas writes with a gentility that belies razor-sharp observations of the human condition, and the humans conditioned to excuse, ignore and embrace it. O Yes We Breathe is stuffed full of poems posing questions. Will you reminisce, nodding in agreement, despair and clench in anger, gasp at a sudden nuance, squirm with uncomfortable recognition? Yeah, you will. But mostly you’ll just marvel…
——Tama L. Brisbane, Literary Arts Consultant, Stockton Poet Laureate Emerita
In his new collection, O Yes We Breathe, Gary Thomas seamlessly weaves days-gone-by boyhood pastoral with the post-pandemic political and spiritual present. Moving between poems, I was transfixed by the gentle music within these pages. “I am beholden to beauty that breathes any way it can—” As inhale, Thomas’ keen eye for detail sharpens the blade of these poems on the sandstone grit of his father’s lessons on life. As exhale, Thomas delivers poignant and tender incantations summoning the deeper, higher self. “If all we ever have is what we trade invisibly in our hulls of flesh and fluidity, we can learn to care for what we have. We can partake our full portion as family. We can breathe easy.” Each poem is a circle within itself “still working with some astonishment,” rippling outward, a whole world. This collection: “Let it light the corners.”
——Kai Coggin, Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, Arkansas, author of Mother of Other Kingdoms and Mining for Stardust
O Yes We Breathe chronicles a poet’s joyful boyhood and explores, with wonder, a changing world. A farmer’s son, Thomas writes with precision and imagination about nature and human nature through the lens of a “sandstone fireplace,” “ten prayer things,” or the miracles of everyday life. He writes, “I wish we were us again instead of our shadows. I wish/ you were the weather and here. I wish I was abundance.” This is a large-hearted poet, a book of abundance, a pleasure through and through.
——Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate, author of In Praise of Late Wonder:
New and Selected Poems and Scar and Flower

Gary Thomas grew up on a peach farm outside Empire, California. Prior to retirement, he taught eighth grade language arts for thirty-one years and junior college English for seven. He has presented poetry workshops for literary organizations, festivals, and conferences. His poems have been published or accepted for publication in The Comstock Review, MockingHeart Review, Atticus Review, River Heron Review, Barzakh, Blue Heron Review, Split Rock Review, Book of Matches, Hole in the Head Review, and The Banyan Review among others, and in the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. He is a founding member of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt) and of the Stanislaus County writing group known as The Licensed Fools. A full-length collection, All the Connecting Lights, was released in August 2022 from Finishing Line Press.

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

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

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

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

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

Second Tuesday Feb. 11: Joseph Rios & Vielka Solano
2025-02-11 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Vielka Solano and Joseph Rios
Date: Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Orangeburg Ave, in the Roseburg Square shopping center
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Hosted by Gillian Wegener.

Vielka Solano
Born in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, Vielka Solano obtained her Doctor of Medicine degree from the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo. After immigrating to Modesto, California, Vielka started working for Golden Valley Health Centers, providing healthcare to the underserved, rural community of Patterson, California. Professionally and as a poet, Vielka’s work focuses on social injustice, the trauma of war, and domestic violence. She is the founder of “Poesia y Arte Curando el Alma,” an outreach program designed to give those who have suffered domestic violence a voice through the arts. She is the founder of Noche de Poesia and host of Grito de Mujer in Modesto. In 2019, Vielka was among the recipients of the Outstanding Woman of the Year award from the Stanislaus County Commission for Women, and has also received the Concilio Unsung Hero Award. Vielka is part of Influencers4Justice, a program funded by Blue Shield of California Foundation.
Joseph Rios
Joseph Rios headshot
Joseph Rios was born in the San Joaquin Valley in 1987. He is a Xicano writer and the author of Shadowboxing: Poems & Impersonations (Omnidawn, 2017), winner of a 2018 American Book Award. A Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, Rios is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from Community of Writers, CantoMundo, Letras Latinas, and the California Arts Council. Rios lives on Yokuts land in Fresno, California, where he served as poet laureate from 2022-2024. In 2024, he received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. He is the founder of Doña Helen’s, a poet’s residency at his grandparents’ longtime home in the San Joaquin Valley.
As an exuberant collection of relentless declamations against the existing economic order, “Shadowboxing” contains fresh poems of elemental protest, open reflections on politically motivated murders and disappearances, and lyric proclamations praising the inherent superiority of collective identity over the relic of the personal. —Sonja James, The Journal

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Bob Stanley and Dane Cervine with Open Mic
2025-03-11 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Bob Stanley and Dane Cervine.
Date: Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Orangeburg Ave, in the Roseburg Square shopping center
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Hosted by Modesto poet laureate emeritus & author Gillian Wegener.

BOB STANLEY
Bob Stanley studied poetry at Caltech and UCLA, and he taught English and Creative Writing at Solano College, Sac City College, and Sac State before retiring in 2021. Sacramento’s Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2012, Bob has organized poetry events in California for many years. His collections include Walt Whitman Orders a Cheeseburger (2009), Miracle Shine (2013), and Language Barrier (2024). Bob and his wife Joyce live in Sacramento and organize online poetry seminars that help support nonprofit organizations.
Bob’s most recent collection, Language Barrier, which is published by CW Books, is available on the Random Lane Press website: randomlanepress.com
ABOUT LANGUAGE BARRIER
“Language is no barrier to our enjoyment of the experiences Bob Stanley has distilled and decanted in these poems. His keen eye for detail takes us first on a passionate tour of China and then on a reminiscent journey through America, described through the prism of many poetic forms. As he says, ‘I could write with both care and abandon,’ and he has done just that. Here you will find tragedies in miniature, but also wonder at nature and the past. Through it all runs Stanley’s raconteurial charm, a Poundian respect for the world of the senses, and a tireless yearning for song: ‘keep the discord in the chord, / sing what’s hard to sound soft.’ The result, in Stanley’s own words, is ‘peach-perfect.’”—Brad Buchanan

DANE CERVINE
Dane Cervine’s recent books of poetry include DEEP TRAVEL – At Home in the [Burning] World (Saddle Road Press), The World Is God’s Language (Sixteen Rivers Press), Earth Is a Fickle Dancer (Main Street Rag), and The Gateless Gate – Polishing the Moon Sword (Saddle Road Press). Dane’s poems have won awards from Adrienne Rich, Tony Hoagland, the Atlanta Review, Caesura, and been nominated for multiple Pushcarts. His work appears in The SUN, the Hudson Review, TriQuarterly, Poetry Flash, Catamaran, Miramar, Rattle, Sycamore Review, Pedestal Magazine, among others. Dane lives in Santa Cruz, California. Visit his website at: https://danecervine.typepad.com/
ABOUT DEEP TRAVEL
“I love the way [Dane has] taken the haibun back to its origins with Bashō—what a brilliant and perfectly executed form for [his] observations and musings. It’s such a rich book. Some of [the] haiku are so beautifully apt, little marvels, and one of my favorites is the one inspired by Ocean Vuong:
I am a book—of bone,
raft and river
That seems to me emblematic of the entire book and [Dane’s] intents—to offer insights and responses without any trace of self-importance, and then to return to shore. –Lynne Knight

City of Modesto Poets' Corner contest deadline
2025-04-04
The Parks, Recreation and Neighborhoods Department and the City of Modesto’s Poets’ Corner Committee are pleased to offer an Annual Poets’ Corner Contest.

Entries Due byFriday, April 4, 2025.

Contest Winners

Winners will be notified by email (or mail, when email is unavailable.)

Poets will be invited to read their winning poems on Sunday, June 1, 2025 at 1:00 P.M. at the McHenry Museum, followed by light refreshments.

Winning poems will be printed in a booklet that will be placed in the Poets’ Bookshelf, which contains published works by local writers and will be kept at the McHenry Museum. Each winner will receive a copy of the booklet.

Who May Enter

Rules

Submissions

Deadline

Poets of any age who reside in Stanislaus County

General: Any kind of poetry on any subject, unrhymed or rhymed. Free verse and formal poetry is welcome. Group of three haiku accepted as one entry.

Special: The Natural World — beautiful, destructive, sustaining. Write about nature — the wildness of it, the beauty of it, how it inspires and moves us, or how it can destroy with thoughtless abandon.

Second Tuesday Poetry with Soul Vang and Gary Thomas
2025-04-08 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Gary Thomas & Soul Vang
Date: Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Orangeburg Ave, in the Roseburg Square shopping center
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Hosted by Gillian Wegener
SOUL VANG
Soul Vang is the author of three collections of poetry: Of Tigers and Wars (Sahtu Press, 2024); Song of the Cluster Bomblet (HER Publisher, 2024); and To Live Here (Imaginary Friend Press, 2014).
Poet, educator, and U.S. Army veteran, Vang received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from California State University, Fresno, and is an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle (HAWC).
Vang’s writing has appeared in Academy of American Poets (poets.org), Water~Stone Review, Abernathy Magazine, Asian American Literary Review, Fiction Attic Press, In the Grove, The Packinghouse Review, Southeast Asia Globe, and The New York Times, among others.
His awards and honors include the 2014 Imaginary Friend Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Horizon Artist Award from the Fresno Arts Council.
About TO LIVE HERE
To Live Here is a triumph: a pure and graceful portrait of the poet from Sky Mountain and the Dragon River, as a young man in the United States Army, and as a parent and poet in Fresno. Part emotional cartography and pure mastery of the craft, this vital glimpse into the Hmong American experience is a heart, a history, and a gift of hard-earned wisdom. Each poem is an artifact, a piece of art, and an important addition to American literature. This is poetry built to last. You will not forget it. –Lee Herrick, Fresno Poet Laureate
GARY THOMAS
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. His poems have been published in The Comstock Review, MockingHeart Review, Atticus Review, River Heron Review, Barzakh, Blue Heron Review, Split Rock Review, Book of Matches, and Hole in the Head Review, among others, in the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets, and in Tule Review 2024. He is a founding member of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt) and of the Stanislaus County writing group known as The Licensed Fools. A full-length collection, All the Connecting Lights, was released in August 2022 from Finishing Line Press. His latest poetry collection, O Yes We Breathe, was published in November 2024 by Manzanita Writers Press.
ABOUT O YES WE BREATHE:
In his new collection, O Yes We Breathe, Gary Thomas seamlessly weaves days-gone-by boyhood pastoral with the post-pandemic political and spiritual present. Moving between poems, I was transfixed by the gentle music within these pages. “I am beholden to beauty that breathes any way it can-” As inhale, Thomas’ keen eye for detail sharpens the blade of these poems on the sandstone grit of his father’s lessons on life. As exhale, Thomas delivers poignant and tender incantations summoning the deeper, higher self. “If all we ever have is what we trade invisibly in our hulls of flesh and fluidity, we can learn to care for what we have. We can partake our full portion as family. We can breathe easy.” Each poem is a circle within itself “still working with some astonishment,” rippling outward, a whole world. This collection: “Let it light the corners.”
-Kai Coggin, Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, Arkansas, author of Mother of Other Kingdoms and Mining for Stardust

Stanislaus Cty Youth Poet Laureate Reading & Open Mic with Zoe Byron
2025-04-19 12:00 - 13:30 | Nick W. Blom Salida Regional Library Branch, 4835 Sisk Road, Salida, 95368, United States
Join Zoe Byron, 2024-2025 Youth Poet Laureate of Stanislaus County, as she reads poems in celebration of National Poetry Month. Be sure to bring a poem or two to share at the Open Mic, following Zoe’s reading. They don’t have to be poems you’ve written! Just come have some fun with us.
At the Salida Library, April 19 at noon.

Nature Poetry Reading and Walk: Dos Rios State Park
2025-05-03 09:00 - 11:00 | Dos Rios State Park, 3559 Shiloh Rd, Modesto, CA, 95358, United States
NATURE POETRY READING AND WALK
DOS RIOS STATE PARK

Saturday, May 3, 2025 – 9:00-11:00 a.m.
Hosted by Sal Salerno, member of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and state park volunteer.
Share your own nature poetry or poems on nature from other authors. The reading (9:00 a.m.)will be at the tables by the parking lot, followed by an optional hike (10:00) around the oxbow pond.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Tama Brisbane & Rosa Lane
2025-05-13 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Rosa Lane (Maine, East Bay) & Tama Brisbane (Stockton)
Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Orangeburg Ave, in the Roseburg Square shopping center
Limited open mic; sign up at the event. Hosted by Gillian Wegener & Stella Beratlis

Rosa Lane
Rosa Lane, poet and architect, was found to be the youngest girl to have built a house. She was 11 years old when she built her 1st home, which is featured in a book entitled Making Ourselves at Home: Women Builders and Designers (Papier Mache Press, 1995). But Lane’s primary love is poetry. She is the author of four poetry collections: Called Back (Tupelo Press, 2024); Chouteau’s Chalk (University of Georgia Press, 2019); Tiller North (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2016); and Roots and Reckonings, a chapbook published by Granite Press East under a grant from the Maine Arts Commission.
Most recently, her work was selected as the Best of Poetry for the 2024 Geminga Prize, winner of the 2023 Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Award, runner-up for the 2023 River Heron Poetry Prize, and named finalist for the 2023 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition (Cork, Ireland) and the 2023 Australian Book Review‘s Peter Porter Prize (Melbourne) among other awards.
Lane’s latest poems have appeared in Catamaran, Crosswinds, Five Points, Nimrod, RHINO, River Heron Review, Southword, Third Coast, and elsewhere. She splits her time between the North Bay and coastal Maine, her native home where she lives with her wife. Website: www.rosalane.com

About CALLED BACK
“Rosa Lane’s Called Back breaks through the membrane that separates us from Dickinson’s time. Here, we enter Dickinson’s world brand new with the vigor of research re-imagined, obsession expressed with prolific inventiveness and mounting urgency, and language that astonishes in its apt, abundant, and irresistible embrace of sound. This is a book fearless in its approach and lavish in its accomplishment.”
– Rebecca Kaiser Gibson, author of The Promise of a Normal Life: A Novel

Tama Brisbane
TAMA L. BRISBANE is the City of Stockton’s Poet Laureate Emerita. She served four historic terms
from 2015-2023, presenting well over 300 times, including the inauguration of the city’s first Black
Mayor, Michael Tubbs. Her debut Laureate project helped engineer Stockton’s return to All-American
City status with an innovative spoken word presentation incorporating dozens of multigenerational,
multiethnic voices. Her performance as Guest Poet at The King Center and Ebenezer Baptist Church in
Atlanta led Martin Luther King III to say to her, “your words matter.” She remains in constant demand as
a keynote speaker and spoken word artist.
Tama is also President of With Our Words LLC, and a Program Director with Concrete Development Inc.
In her capacity as a literary and performing arts consultant, she develops curricula, programs, and events
across the United States and around the world. The impact of her words and her works have positively
shifted creative and cultural landscapes in Stockton and beyond.
“Mama T” is a published author, a Susan B. Anthony Award Winner for Creative Arts, a Black Women
Organized for Political Action Honoree, a University of the Pacific Woman of Distinction, an Action on
Behalf of Children Honoree, and a founding member of the National Black Poet Laureates Group. Her
tireless efforts on behalf of youth – particularly youth of color and from marginalized communities – have
been celebrated and recognized by both houses of the California Legislature, by the United States House
of Representatives, and the United States Senate.
Tama is grateful to her Creator for her earthly assignment. She takes inspiration and guidance from her
two favorite quotes. The first is from Dr. 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.”

Youth Poet Laureate Send-Off Reading & Open Mic: Zoe Byron
2025-05-17 13:00 - 15:00 | Oakdale Library, 151 South First Avenue, Oakdale, CA, 95361, United States
Please join us as we bid a fond farewell to 2024-2025 Youth Poet Laureate Zoe Byron, whose tenure as youth laureate is complete at the end of May. She’s the second ever Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate and has done a beautiful job representing the voice of youth through her poems.
This final reading will take place at the Oakdale Public Library, 151 S. First Avenue, Oakdale CA 95361. Please bring a poem to share at open mic! Reading starts at 1:00 p.m. in the Community Room just inside the front entrance.

Welcome 2025-2026 Youth Poet Laureate: Reading & Reception
2025-05-31 13:00 - 14:00 | Modesto Junior College West Campus, 2201 Blue Gum Avenue, Modesto, CA, 95358, United States
We’ll be celebrating our incoming youth poet laureate, Valentina Zeff, at a reading/reception at Modesto Junior College’s Science Community Center. Come listen to a few poems, meet youth poets, and learn about the youth poet laureate program.
Valentina Zeff is a sixteen-year-old poet from Modesto, California who is currently enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program at Modesto High School. Zeff has been writing free verse and ballad poetry since her freshman year of high school.
Zeff is active within her community and school through social and environmental activism, extracurricular projects, and volunteering. She was selected to be a member of the Park’s Youth Committee (April 2024-current), Modesto Youth Commission (October 2024-current), and student representative for Modesto High School’s Student Senate for both ninth and tenth grade. During the 2023-2024 Speech and Debate season, she was a top finalist for Original Spoken Word Poetry at State Qualifications. She is also the founder and Co-President of Modesto High School’s Book Club where she leads discussions on novels and poems of interest. Additionally, she is the Secretary and head layout editor/designer of the Panther Press, Modesto High School’s monthly newspaper.
Please welcome our incoming Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate, Valentina Zeff!
The Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate program is administered by Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt Poetry) with partners MJC Library & Learning Center & MJC School of Language Arts & Education, Stanislaus County Office of Education, Stanislaus County Library, and Stanislaus Library Foundation.

City of Modesto Poets' Corner Reading & Reception
2025-06-01 13:00 - 15:00 | McHenry Museum, 1402 14th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
The Parks, Recreation and Neighborhoods Department and the City of Modesto’s Poets’ Corner Committee are pleased to offer an Annual Poets’ Corner Contest.
Contest Winners
Poets will be invited to read their winning poems on Sunday, June 1, 2025 at 1:00 P.M. at the McHenry Museum, followed by light refreshments.
Winning poems will be printed in a booklet that will be placed in the Poets’ Bookshelf, which contains published works by local writers and will be kept at the McHenry Museum. Each winner will receive a copy of the booklet.
Winners will be notified by email (or mail, when email is unavailable.)
For more info go to https://www.modestogov.com/558/Poets-Corner-Contest

Second Tuesday Poetry with Aideed Medina and Russell Reza-Khaliq Gonzaga
2025-06-10 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Fresno’s newest Poet Laureate and spoken word artist Aideed Medina with Tracy poet, teacher, and spoken word artist Russell Reza-Khaliz Gonzaga

Date: Tuesday, June 10, 2025Time: 7:00 pm PSTWhere: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Orangeburg Ave, in the Roseburg Square shopping center

Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Hosted by Gillian Wegener

Russell Reza-Khaliq Gonzaga
Russell Reza-Khaliq Gonzaga has hosted and organized events and workshops including the Sierra Poetry Festival, the Center Camp Spoken Word Stage at Burning Man, and the weekly ELYSEUM Writers Workshops at Harbin Hot Springs. Russell is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Lake County (2012-2014) and has represented San Francisco for three years at the National Poetry Slam. As an Arts Educator, he has worked with several organizations including YouthSpeaks and WritersCorps. He is also the recipient of the Certificate of Honor from the Board of Supervisors and a Mayor’s declaration of “Russell Gonzaga Day” in San Francisco. Currently, Russell is Poetry Editor for The Fabulist, hosts the monthly Word Bubbles Open Mic in Tracy CA, and is caretaker for his beloved Auntie Rosie.

Aideed Medina

Aideed Medina is Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, award-winning spoken word artist and playwright, and is the author of 31 Hummingbird: A Suite of Poems (Editorial Xingao, 2023) and Segmented Bodies (Prickly Pear Press, 2024). Her poetry and prose have been featured in many publications, including Fresno State’s Club Austral Literary Magazine, Chicano Writers and Artists Association Journal, La Bloga, Poets Responding, Split This Rock, and Nueva York Poetry Review, among many others, as well as in compositions for the 559 Mural Project and Fresno Grand Opera’s Opera Remix. Aideed is also a California Naturalist, and practices “flor y canto” as part of her poetic process and exploration of California’s natural history. This past April, Aideed was appointed Fresno’s seventh poet laureate. She will serve through March 2027.
