Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center

Poetry Book Club
2021-04-21 18:30 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom
Join us for the latest edition of the MoSt Poetry Book Club! We’ll meet on Wednesday, April 21st at 6:30 pm. In the meantime, pick up a copy of Indigo Moor’s excellent new collection, Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something, now available at the front desk of the Modesto Library. Tom Myers and Tom Portwood will lead a discussion about the collection that evening. Please join us!
Zoom link: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/92507601303

Annual Benefit Gala
2021-04-25 14:00 - 16:00 | Zoom
SAVE THE DATE!
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center will hold its benefit on Sunday, April 25th, from 2-4 pm, on Zoom. There will be music, there will be poetry, and while we still won’t be able to be in person, we will share the amazing camaraderie of our poetry community and seriously rejoice in that!
To buy tickets, please go to most2021.eventbrite.com. If you would like to support our gala fundraising effort, please visit our Fundly page.
Our featured poets for the event will be longtime MoSt supporters Lee Herrick and Indigo Moor. To download a copy of the flyer, please click here.

Lee Herrick is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award, Gardening Secrets of the Dead and This Many Miles from Desire. He is co-editor of the anthology The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (Orison Books). His poems appear widely in literary magazines, textbooks, and anthologies such as HERE: Poems for the Planet, with an introduction by the Dalai Lama; Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice, with an introduction by Common; One for the Money: The Sentence as Poetic Form; and California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology. His prose has appeared in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, and elsewhere. He served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. Born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted to the United States at ten months, he teaches at Fresno City College, where he co-founded the forthcoming Social Justice and Cultural Center, and in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada University.
Indigo Moor is a multi-genre, award-winning writer and teacher. His second book of poetry, Through the Stonecutter’s Window, won the Northwestern University Press’s Cave Canem prize. His first book, Tap-Root, was published as part of Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Select Poetry Series. His stageplay, Live! at the Excelsior, was a finalist for the Images Theatre Playwright Award. Indigo is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA Program—where he studied poetry, fiction, and scriptwriting—and a graduate member of the Artist’s Residency Institute for Teaching Artists. A musician and photographer, Indigo’s collaborations include the Artists Embassy International Dancing Poetry Festival, the Livermore Ekphrastic Project, and the Davis Jazz Arts Festival.

MoSt Board Meeting
2021-05-06 18:30 - 19:30 | Zoom
Our next MoSt Poetry Board meeting will be held on Thursday, May 6th, at 6:30 pm via Zoom. If you are interested in attending, please email info@mostpoetry.org for more information.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog - on Zoom
2021-05-11 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and host Stella Beratlis are pleased to feature poets Lelania Fowler and Salvatore Salerno for Second Tuesday Poetry on Tuesday May 11, 2021. Join the reading via Zoom at 7 pm (https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/92855890148) and sign up for open mic (3 mins each poet, maximum 10 poets) following the featured poets.
Zoom link: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/92855890148
Open Mic signup: https://form.jotform.com/berattle/secondtuesday

Lelania Fowler
Born and reared on the Eastside of Santa Barbara, California, Lelania Fowler experienced a Chicano/Hippie hybrid childhood. Later as a homeless teen, she bounced between Long Beach, Hollywood, and her hometown of Santa Barbara before relocating to Sacramento. In the late 1980s, she became part of a thriving music and arts scene and she began songwriting for local musicians.She writes about PTSD, sexual violence, California nature themes, and is a mental health activist.Her poetry has most recently been published in Quiet Rooms, a global anthology published by Cold River Press. Under a Milk Glass Moon is her first collection of poetry.
About Under a Milk Glass Moon:
“An excellent debut collection of poetry. Lelania’s long strophic lines and sparkler-like images propel these excursions into another realm. The work is not lyrical or narrative but cuts a lovely landscape between these genres. Refreshing to read and re-read.” –D.R. Wagner
“Lelania Fowler’s Under A Milk Glass Moon is, I am convinced, a collection of hymns to the Hindu goddess Kali, Mother of All, adorned in her necklace of human heads. There is a female energy in this writing to which I, as a male, have been blind and deaf, a feminine language in which I am not fluent. Even so, the poems themselves contain keys to help me unlock doors I
never knew existed.” —Robert Lee Haycock

Salvatore Salerno
Salvatore Salerno has an M.F.A. from University of North Carolina, where he was awarded The Academy of American Poets University Prize. He is retired from teaching English and Drama at Grace Davis High School. More than 120 of his poems have been published in numerous periodicals. His latest poetry book is Hello, Posterity. He has also independently published volumes of nonfiction, plays, and short stories.
Salvatore is a board member of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, and he is also the president of the Stanislaus Audubon Society. He is the current poet laureate of Modesto.

Coffee, Tea, & Poetry
2021-05-22 09:00 - 10:00 | Zoom
Join us for Coffee, Tea, and Poetry! A Saturday morning conversation about the poetry you’re reading. You can read from the latest book you’re reading, and if you’d like, share a few poems from that book on your screen. Hosted by Sal Salerno.
May 22, 2021 09:00 AM Pacific Time
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For more information, please contact us at info@mostpoetry.org.

Poetry on Sunday Series
2021-05-23 14:00 - 16:00 | Zoom
Please join us for the May edition of MoSt’s quarterly Poetry On Sunday Readings on Sunday, May 23rd at 2:00 P. M. While we look forward to a time we can all gather again at the Carnegie Arts Center, this time we’ll be on ZOOM. Join us, too, for the Open Mic time following the featured readers!
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85841157090
Click here to download the PDF flyer.

Josiah Luis Alderete is a full-blooded Pocho, Spanglish-speaking poeta who has been an active part of la Area Bahia’s spoken word scene for over twenty years. He was a founding member of outspoken word group “The Molotov Mouths” and is the curator and host of the long-running monthly Chicanx/Latinx reading series “Speaking Axolotl” which happens the 3rd Thursday of every month in el Zoom mundo. Josiah’s book of poems, Baby Axolotls y Old Pochos is being released this April from Black Freighter Press.
Whether sharing stages with legendary beat poets or your favorite Hip Hop emcees, Andru Defeye’s unorthodox writing and performance style has made him a fixture behing microphones around the country. 2020 saw the release of his critically acclaimed Frequency album, followed shortly after by his crowning as the youngest Poet Laureate in California capitol history. From Sacramento to Staten Island and SXSW, Andru served as the Director of Communications for Sol Collective from 2009-2020. In 2014 Defeye founded Zero Forbidden Goals, a support system for creatives dedicated to innovating arts equity, experiences, and education. ZFG’s guerilla art activations including National Guerilla Poetry Month, Chainlink Poetry, and The Intersection have been covered and recreated around the globe.
Angela Drew is a mother, dancer, poet, and spoken word performer who has loved the rhythm of words for as long as she can remember. Born in Berkeley, CA, she began writing at age eight and has always understood that words have the power to soothe, stir, or solidify connection. Thus, her lifelong love affair with storytelling began. Angela has performed at various venues throughout Modesto, Sacramento and Bay Areas, including Modesto Junior College, Modesto’s inaugural “Ill List Poetry Slam” at the State Theater, the Gallo Center for the Arts, in a Sankofa Community Theater production of The Journey—The African American Experience, and the Hildegard Festival of Women in the Arts, Turlock and the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center’s poetry event “Words Worth Speaking,” to name a few. Angela’s spoken word piece, “BWE: The Black Woman Experience” was recently featured at the 2020 NAACP Modesto/Stanislaus Virtual Black Graduates Recognition Ceremony and her poetry was included in COLLISION VI, the February 2020 exhibit at the Mistlin Gallery which featured poet-photographer collaborations.

Submission Deadline: Song of the San Joaquin
2021-06-01 | CA
The deadlines for the Song of the San Joaquin have been changed to the first day of March, June, September, and December as more time is needed to get the books mailed before each of the readings. That means the next deadline is June 1, which is coming right up! See the Song of the San Joaquin website for more information: http://www.chaparralpoets.org/SSJ.html

MoSt Board Meeting
2021-06-03 18:30 - 19:30 | Google Meet
Our next MoSt Poetry Board meeting will be held on Thursday, June 3rd, at 6:30 pm via Google Meet. If you are interested in attending, please email info@mostpoetry.org for more information.

Second Tuesday @ Barkin' Dog - on Zoom!
2021-06-08 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and host Stella Beratlis are pleased to feature poets Indigo Moor and Jennifer K. Sweeney for Second Tuesday Poetry on Tuesday June 8, 2021. Join the reading via Zoom at 7 pm (https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/94454258218). Open mic (3 mins each poet, maximum 10 poets) following the featured poets.
Join reading: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/94454258218
Open mic following featured readers. To sign up: https://form.jotform.com/berattle/secondtuesday

Jennifer K. Sweeney
Jennifer K. Sweeney is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Foxlogic, Fireweed, winner of the Backwaters Prize from Backwaters Press/University of Nebraska. Her other collections are Little Spells (New Issues Press, 2015), How to Live on Bread and Music (Perugia Press), and Salt Memory (Main Street Rag). She is the recipient of many awards, including the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Perugia Press Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. She teaches poetry workshops at the University of Redlands in California, and is known for a decade-long practice of private instruction and manuscript critique.
Foxlogic, Fireweed can be purchased from the University of Nebraska Press, linked from Jennifer’s website: https://www.jenniferksweeney.com/
About FOXLOGIC, FIREWEED
“Foxlogic, Fireweed is a torn map of a state where all words are proximate to mystery. Venturing into terra incognita, into territory that might be anima mundi, maybe, reader, you think you know the lineaments, but they are altered. Altared. Yes, to dream space, but wilder, wider—this metal into bird, stone into air, mother into vulpine. Sweeney is breathing strangeness into a small body of words, and the expanses open exponentially.”—Marsha de la O
​“The logic of Foxlogic, Fireweed is human and humane; it’s the logic of a penetrative tenderness and an embodiment always on the verge of dispersing into fox, or deer, or rain. . . . These are not bandwagon poems. They don’t mug for the camera. Rather, they enact a love ‘sourced in loneliness’ where ‘with our little keys of witness’ we find each other—the very definition of the lyric poem.”—Diane Seuss

Indigo Moor
Indigo Moor is the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Sacramento. His fourth book of poetry, Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something, took second place in the University of Nebraska Press’ Backwater Prize. His second book, Through the Stonecutter’s Window, won Northwestern University Press’s Cave Canem prize. His first and third books, Tap-Root and In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers, were both part of Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Select Poetry Series. Indigo is an adjunct professor at Dominican University and visiting faculty for Dominican’s MFA program, teaching poetry and short fiction.
Indigo is a former faculty member at the Stonecoast MFA Program, where he graduated in 2012 with an MFA in poetry, fiction, and scriptwriting. He’s a playwright as well: his full-length stageplay, Live! at the Excelsior, was a finalist for the Images Theatre Playwright Award, and the subsequent screenplay has been optioned for a full-length film.
Indigo is a Cave Canem fellow, former resident artist at 916 ink, and a graduate member of the Artist’s Residency Institute for Teaching Artists.
A 10-year veteran of the US Navy and a twice-decorated Gulf War Veteran, Indigo divides his time between writing, teaching, and Integrated Circuit Layout Designer for computer companies.
About EVERYBODY’S JONESIN’ FOR SOMETHING
“Narratives don’t always belong to history’s victors,’’ writes Indigo Moor. If this line gives you pause, I strongly suggest you carry Moor’s brilliant book, Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something, home with you. In this dazzling book, you will read just how closely this poet has been paying attention, to us, to his histories, foreign and domestic, to our mighty (and sometimes mighty confusing) nation. Jonesin’ is a verse flashlight to all the corners you thought no one was supposed to pay attention to, line by beautifully crafted line, truth by earned truth. You’ll reach the last line of the last poem, and trust me, that’s when the hunger for more will begin.”—Cornelius Eady, author of The War Against the Obvious
“Indigo Moor’s new collection shuttles between searing rebuke and hopeful anguish with accents of hard-edged humor. What I love most is the clarity of thought—the no-holds-barred, no-punches-pulled sharpness of the language that carries the reader through each poem, jonesin’ for the next. Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something invites you out of your complacency and fuels a restlessness that reminds you that you’re alive, that this is no time for sleeping.”—Tim Seibles, author of One Turn around the Sun

Coffee, Tea, & Poetry
2021-06-13 17:00 - 18:00 | Zoom
Join host Sal Salerno for June’s edition of Coffee, Tea, and Poetry on June 13 at 5:00pm. Share some poems from a recent book of poetry you’ve read or are reading. You can even share your screen ahead of time to show us a poem or two as you read.
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Summer Poetry Workshop
2021-06-19 13:00 - 14:30 | Zoom
MoSt Board member Linda Scheller will be teaching our first summer poetry writing workshop, “Lyricism in Narrative Poetry,” on June 19 from 1:00-2:30. This will be a great afternoon of creating new poetry and thinking deeply about what makes a narrative poem sing. As always, this workshop is free and open to the public.
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Meeting ID: 973 4975 8852

Poetry Book Club
2021-07-07 18:30 - 19:30 | Zoom
Join host Gary Thomas for a discussion of The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser, published by Graywolf Press (2021) and winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets in 2020, selected by Harryette Mullen. 5 copies of the book are available (while they last) to check out at the Modesto Library (1500 I Street.)
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Coffee, Tea, and Poetry
2021-07-10 08:00 - 09:00 | Zoom
Join host Salvatore Salerno for Coffee, Tea, and Poetry on July 10th at 8:00am Pacific Time. Share some poems from a recent book of poetry you’ve read or are reading. You can even share your screen ahead of time to show us a poem or two as you read.
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MoSt Annual Meeting
2021-07-11 09:00 - 11:00 | Davis Park, 2701 College Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Save the date for our annual meeting on Sunday, July 11th at 11:00 9:00 AM.
UPDATE: Due to the forecast heat for Sunday, we’ve opted to go back to Zoom for the annual meeting. Time remains at 9 am.
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Meeting ID: 914 2346 8395

Second Tuesday Poetry with David Campos and J.J. Hernandez
2021-07-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Fresno poets David Campos and J.J. Hernandez
DAVID CAMPOS, the son of Mexican immigrants and a CantoMundo Fellow, is the author of two collections–his newest, American Quasar, was just published by Red Hen Press and is a textual-visual collaboration with the artist Maceo Montoya. His debut collection, Furious Dawn, was the winner of the 2014 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize. Campos’s work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and The Normal School. He’s the winner of Annual Prairie Schooner Strousse Award for the best group of poems in Prairie Schooner. He teaches English at Fresno City College and he lives in Clovis, California.
“David Campos’ American Quasar is a true force of collaboration that implores a new vision of exegesis with the renowned artist, Maceo Montoya. How can we love what hurts us, and how can we love the things we hurt? Here is a speaker kneeling in reverence to a god, a lover, or a self which we can acutely love and hurt at the same time. Set in the storied landscape of the California Central Valley, this book is an indictment of what America has burned or buried, and a document of all that has nonetheless survived in the ashes: the name of a distant father, the gravity of the past on our chest. Powerfully surreal and imagistic, Campos is a necessary voice both tender and unrelenting, a voice that is both wound and salve. How fortunate we are for the gifts of poet and artist at the height of their powers.”—Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, author of Centzontle
J.J. HERNANDEZ is a Colorado-born poet with roots in the California Central San Joaquin Valley. He earned both a BA in English Education and an MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry from CSU, Fresno. While attending Fresno State, J.J. was the inaugural Graduate Artist in the Laureate Lab: Visual Words Studio, working under the supervision of Juan Felipe Herrera. J.J. Is currently a writing/composition instructor at various colleges across the Central San Joaquin Valley. His work has been supported by the Community of Writers and has been published in various literary journals.
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Summer Poetry Workshop "Time Travel Through Poetry"
2021-07-31 13:00 - 14:30 | Zoom
In this workshop we will explore the past and future through poetry. Our history, science, mythology, and, most importantly, our imaginations will be our guides. Facilitated by Karen Baker, this free poetry writing workshop will begin at 1:00pm Pacific Time on Saturday, July 31, 2021. “A poem is the most efficient form of time travel” –Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker and new director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Topic: Poetry Workshop, Time Travel Zoom Meeting
Time: Jul 31, 2021 01:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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Second Tuesday Poetry Reading with Nicca Ray and Michelle Cernuto
2021-08-10 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center features authors Nicca Ray and Michelle Cernuto for the August installment of Second Tuesday Poetry. Join us for a great mix of poetry, ghost fiction, and punk rock memoir on Tuesday, August 10 at 7 pm on Zooom. Hosted by Stella Beratlis with open mic following the featured readers.

Zoom: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/91909197367
Open mic signup: https://form.jotform.com/berattle/secondtuesday

NICCA RAY
Nicca Ray’s poetry collection, BACK SEAT BABY, was recently published by Chris D.’s Poison Fang Books. In the forward, Ann Magnusun writes, “Plumbing the depths of uncertainty and loneliness, Ray finds gold in the collective swamplands of our souls.” The poet, Charles Plymell, calls Back Seat Baby the “High Noon of poetry.”

Nicca Ray’s memoir RAY BY RAY: A DAUGHTER’S TAKE ON THE LEGEND OF NICHOLAS RAY (Three Rooms Press, 2020) has been called “harrowing, beautifully written and near-impossible to put down” by Shelf Awareness and “a daring revelation of strength and survival, told unflinchingly, bravely, with empathy, sympathy and ultimately an understanding of a great artist who is almost impossible to fathom,” by Ronee Blakely, actress, singer and Academy Award nominee.
Nicca is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a 2020 Acker Award recipient.

MICHELLE CERNUTO
Michelle Cernuto is the author of the recently published YOU USED TO KNOW ME, a fictional coming-of-age account of growing up in Las Vegas in the 80s.

“A mash note from beyond the grave to a lost Vegas. 1980s punk teen dysfunction… a melancholic travelogue through a spiritual wasteland. The self-effacing murder victim gives us a matter-of-fact, blow-by-blow commentary as she haunts both her friends and her predator in a suburban, desert dystopia…. We see ominous harbingers of Death rushing headlong towards us, much like an out-of-control carnival ride…locked into one final, endlessly accelerating rollercoaster to oblivion. There’s no getting off, and the effect is harrowing and masterful.– Chris D. (author of No Evil Star, Dragon Wheel Splendor and Other Love Stories of Violence and Dread, Mother’s Worry, et.al.; singer/songwriter of the bands The Flesh Eaters and Divine Horsemen)

“A vivid recollection of a crazy time in the crazy place of the American Southwest…a transitional time before entire cities were turned into theme parks. Magically real, her story echoes the truth of the women I grew up with, who fought an oppression they could feel empirically but not always articulate with street smarts and sheer guts. And then there are the ghosts…” – Victor Krummenacher (of bands Camper Van Beethoven, Monks of Doom and The Third Mind)

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Poetry On Sunday Series featuring Dane Cervine & Stella Beratlis
2021-08-15 14:00 - 16:00 | CA
Join host Gary Thomas and our featured readers Stella Beratlis and Dane Cervine for the Sunday, August 15th edition of MoSt’s Poetry On Sunday Series readings on Zoom, beginning at 2:00 P. M. Pacific Time.
Stella Beratlis is the author of Alkali Sink (2015) and her latest collection, Dust Bowl Venus (May 2021). Her poems have appeared in the anthologies The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Franciso Bay Watershed (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010) and California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology (Story Streets, 2020). Beratis served as Modesto’s poet laureate from 2016-2020 and works as a librarian there.
Dane Cervine is a poet whose recent books include Earth Is a Fickle Dancer (Main Street Rag), and The Gateless Gate – Polishing the Moon Sword, from Saddle Road Press in Hawaii. Previous poetry books include Kung Fu of the Dark Father, How Therapists Dance, The Jeweled Net of Indra, and What a Father Dreams. Dane’s poems have won awards from Adrienne Rich, Tony Hoagland, the Atlanta Review, Caesura, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His work appears in The SUN, the Hudson Review, TriQuarterly, Poetry Flash, Catamaran, Miramar, Rattle, Sycamore Review, and Pedestal Magazine, among others. You can read more about Dane at his blog: https://danecervine.typepad.com/
Here is the Zoom link to the reading:
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Stella’s latest book, Dust Bowl Venus, and Dane’s new book, The World is God’s Language, have recently been published by Sixteen Rivers Press. For more information about the authors and the books, go to these pages on the Sixteen Rivers site:
https://sixteenrivers.org/authors/stellaberatlis/
https://sixteenrivers.org/authors/dane-cervine/
Our usual Open Mic Time will follow the featured readers. We look forward to seeing you!

Coffee, Tea, and Poetry with Sal Salerno
2021-08-22 16:00 - 17:00 | Zoom
Join Modesto Poet Laureate Sal Salerno & friends at 4 pm, and bring along some poetry you’ve been reading to share with others.
Topic: Coffee, Tea, and Poetry
Time: Aug 22, 2021 04:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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Writing Your Poetry Manifesto: The Ars Poetica Poem
2021-08-28 13:00 - 14:30 | CA
Join us in this free poetry workshop where we focus on ars poetica poems. Ars poetica poems examine the role of poets themselves as subject, their relationships to the poem, and the act of writing. We’ll look at ars poetica poems by other poets and note what’s going on in those poems, then we’ll write through a few prompts intended to get us to write our own ars poetica poems. Facilitated by Stella Beratlis; free and open to the public, all writing levels welcome, no pressure with a focus on relaxed creativity.

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Second Tuesday Poetry Reading
2021-09-14 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
Localpalooza features a smorgasbord of poetry by local writers from Modesto and the greater Stanislaus County area via Zoom on Tuesday, September 14th, 2021 at 7:00pm Pacific Time. Please join us!

Topic: Second Tuesday Reading: Poetry Localpalooza
Time: Sep 14, 2021 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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Coffee, Tea, and Poetry
2021-09-19 16:00 - 17:00 | CA
Join Modesto Poet Laureate Salvatore Salerno and share a few poems from a book you’re currently reading or an old favorite.

Topic: Coffee, Tea, and Poetry
Time: Sep 19, 2021 04:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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Coffee, Tea, and Poetry
2021-10-09 16:00 - 17:00 | Zoom
Salvatore Salerno is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting on behalf of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center. Share a few poems from the latest poetry book that you are reading. You can even show the poems to us on a screen that you share with us.

Topic: Coffee, Tea, and Poetry
Time: Oct 9, 2021 04:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Julia B. Levine & Matthew Lippman plus open mic
2021-10-12 19:00 - 20:00 | CA
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and host Stella Beratlis are pleased to welcome poets Julia B. Levine and Matthew Lippman on Tuesday, October 12, 2021. Join the reading via Zoom at 7 pm: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/91357899430. Sign up for Open Mic (3 mins each poet) following the featured poets.
JULIA B. LEVINE
Julia B. Levine has won numerous awards for her work, including the 2015 Northern California Book Award in Poetry for her fourth collection of poetry, Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight, (LSU press 2014), first prize in the 2019 Bellevue Literary Review poetry contest, 2019 Public Poetry Awards, 2018 Tiferet Poetry Prize, as well as the 2003 Tampa Review Poetry Prize for Ask, and the 1998 Anhinga Poetry prize as well as a bronze medal from Foreword magazine for her first collection, Practicing for Heaven. Her fifth and most recent collection, Ordinary Psalms, is now available from LSU press.
MATTHEW LIPPMAN
Matthew Lippman’s collection Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful (2020) is published by Four Way Books. It was the recipient of the 2018 Levis Prize. He is the author of 5 other poetry collections.
Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 7 pm PDT
Zoom link: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/91357899430
Open Mic signup: https://forms.gle/j6dsvm31MA2377Pu6
————
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Meeting ID: 913 5789 9430

Poetry Workshop Day
2021-10-16 10:00 - 14:00 | CA
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents a poetry workshop with acclaimed Mexican poet and translator Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, “Poetry in the Age of Pandemics.”
As the months of the pandemic wear on, it has been increasingly difficult for creative individuals to stay productive. In the wake of uncertainty, overwhelming chaos, and general apathy at the state of the world, it can be incredibly difficult to put pen to paper. We may ask ourselves, what can art do? In this workshop with Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, we will work through exercises to not only stimulate writer’s block, but also investigate the virtues that we can learn from the distances that have grown between ourselves and give light to the narratives that have sprouted in these uncertain times. We will make art that can restore, heal, and awaken our sensibilities to the pain around us. We will create original texts that will bear witness to the power of art to make substantial change in our lives.
Our workshop will be held on Saturday, October 16, 2021 from 10:00am to 2:00pm with a musical interlude.
$15.00 Please register and access Zoom link via Eventbrite.
“Castillo compresses the emotional resonances of lived experience into poetic narratives of devotion, eroticism, family, labor, and migration. He make displays of fragility and power by turn, a duality drawn into relief by the precarious condition of the undocumented immigrant.” –Publisher’s Weekly
“In the spirit of Whitman, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo slips in silently to lie down between the bridegroom and the bride, to inhabit many bodies and many souls, between rapture and grief.” –DA Powell
“Castillo’s forms feel airy and fragile, but the strength of his revelations are unquestionable.” –Major Jackson
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, translator, and immigration advocate. He is the author of Cenzontle (BOA editions, 2018), chosen by Brenda Shaughnessy as the winner of the 2017 A. Poulin Jr. prize and winner of the 2018 Northern California Book Award. Cenzontle maps a parallel between the landscape of the border and the landscape of sexuality through surreal and deeply imagistic poems. Castillo’s first chapbook, Dulce (Northwestern University Press, 2018), was chosen by Chris Abani, Ed Roberson, and Matthew Shenoda as the winner of the Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize. His memoir Children of the Land (Harper Collins, 2020) is his most recent publication and explores the ideas of separation from deportation, trauma, and mobility between borders.
Castillo was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and immigrated at the age of five with his family to the California central valley. As an AB540 student, he earned his B.A. from Sacramento State University and was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. His immigration case was used by the Supreme Court to justify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) under president Obama. Castillo is a founding member of the Undocupoets campaign which successfully eliminated citizenship requirements from all major first poetry book prizes in the country and was recognized with the Barnes and Noble “Writers for Writers” award from Poets &Writers Magazine. Through a literary partnership with Amazon Publishing he has helped to establish The Undocupoet Fellowship which provides funding to help curb the cost of submissions to journals and contests.
He is the translator of the Argentinian modernist poet, Jacobo Fijman and is currently at work translating the poems of the contemporary Mexican Peruvian poet Yaxkin Melchy whose poems combine digital, environmental, and indigenous studies into a cosmopolitan melée specific to Mexico City. Castillo also co-translated the work of the Mexican poet Marcelo Uribe with C.D. Wright before her untimely passing.
Castillo’s work has been adopted to Opera through collaboration with the composer Reinaldo Moya and his work has appeared or been featured in The New York Times, PBS Newshour, People Magazine en Español, The Paris Review, Fusion TV, Buzzfeed, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, New England Review, and Indiana Review, among others. He currently teaches in the Low-Res MFA program at Ashland University. He lives in Marysville, California, with his wife and son.

Second Tuesday Poetry Reading featuring Cristina Sandoval & Manny Moreno
2021-11-09 19:00 - 20:00 | Google Meet
The‌ ‌Modesto-Stanislaus‌ ‌Poetry‌ ‌Center‌ ‌features‌ ‌poets Cristina Sandoval and Manny Moreno for the November installment‌ ‌of‌ ‌Second‌ ‌Tuesday‌ ‌Poetry.‌ ‌Join‌ ‌us‌ ‌to hear these two poets read for us as first-time featured poets on Tuesday,‌ November 9, at‌ ‌7‌ ‌pm‌, ‌on‌ ‌Google Meet. Hosted‌ ‌by‌ ‌Stella‌ ‌Beratlis‌ ‌with‌ ‌open‌ ‌mic‌ ‌following‌ ‌the‌ ‌featured‌ ‌readers.‌ ‌
Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/yzr-effe-nrh
Otherwise, to join by phone, dial +1 760-654-5100 and enter this PIN: 914 592 889#

Sign up for Open Mic: https://forms.gle/v8J9cK9RXn4YDwwc9
CRISTINA SANDOVAL
Cristina Sandoval is an MFA student at Fresno State University and a poet to the bone. Cristina has been a purveyor of words since she can remember. She is a proud Chicana and is desperately in love with language. She often mixes her two languages, Spanish and English, in an attempt to bridge the beauty and hurt in both. Her work often focuses on family, mental health, and finding meaning in the terrible. She has two books on Amazon, Moon Ride, and We Need Bad Bitches. Her work has been featured in Penumbra, Artifact Nouveau, Exist(ir), and Dystopian Dance Party. Her thesis work is centered around the nature of family, culture, and hair. She is from Modesto, California, and now lives in Fresno. And if you were wondering, yes, she misses Mr. T’s Donuts!
MANNY MONOLIN
Monolin “Manny” Moreno is the author of four books, the most recent of which is a collection of poems, Longview Road. Manny’s previous works include Scared–Coming Full Circle: A Memoir; his first poetry collection, The Bridge Is Gone; and The Elder: A Tribute, about the importance of elders in the community and about two Native American elders in particular.
His poems are about growing up in Livingston, where his family’s roots were established in the early 1900s, and about a wide range of topics.
Manny is a Member of the Black Wolf Honor Society Gourd Clan, a member of Native American Church and Sundances yearly in South Dakota. Manny is of Yaqui/Tarascan descent. Manny has been featured in interviews on Native Voice TV, Channel 10, Sacramento and Company, KKUP Radio/Indian Time and Two Roads Productions. He has been a speaker at Modesto Junior College and various events. He was nominated for the Pushcart Award in 2011.
ACCESS THE READING:
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Poetry Book Discussion: Laure-Ann Bosselaar's THESE MANY ROOMS
2021-11-17 18:30 - 19:30 | CA
“Think of it: the worlds in this world. “ L.A. Bosselaar
Come join us for conservation about Laure-Anne Bosselaar ‘s most recent book of poetry, These Many Rooms. There will be readings of her poetry during our time together which will be on Zoom, November 17, 2021 at 6:30, facilitated by Janette Jameson.
Prior reading of the book is NOT a requirement of joining us! This is an opportunity simply to learn about the poet and her work.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar is a Belgian-American poet, translator, professor, and former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California. She is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently, These Many Rooms (Four Way Books, 2019). Her collection, Small Gods of Grief (BOA Editions), won the 2001 Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry. A New Hunger, (Ausable Press 2008) was an American Library Association Notable Book in 2008.
She grew up in Belgium, and moved to the United States in 1987. She earned her M.F.A. from the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. She taught poetry workshops in Colorado and co-directed the Aspen Writers’ Conference from 1989 to 1992. She is fluent in four languages, and has published poems in French and Flemish. She was a Breadloaf Fellow, was awarded the McEver Chair at Georgia Tech, taught at Emerson College, Sarah Lawrence College, at the College of Creative Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, and is part of the founding faculty at the Solstice Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College. She is the widow of poet Kurt Brown and currently lives in Santa Barbara, California
Copies of the book will be available from the Modesto Library–ask at check-out desk or call (209) 558-7808.
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Meeting ID: 811 3241 7349

Poetry on Sunday Series
2021-11-21 14:00 - 16:00 | Zoom
Poetry On Sunday Series Reading: November 21, 2021
Join host Gary Thomas and our featured readers Gerald Fleming, Michael Meyerhofer, And Melchor Sahagun III for the November 21st, 2021 edition of MoSt’s Poetry On Sunday Series readings on Zoom, beginning at 2:00 P. M. Pacific Time.
Gerald Fleming‘s The Bastard and the Bishop is his third Hanging Loose Press title. Previous are Night of Pure Breathing and One, an experiment in monosyllabic prose poems. He’s published two books with Sixteen Rivers Press (Swimmer Climbing Onto Shore and The Choreographer) and recently edited The Collected Poetry and Prose of Lawrence Fixel, also a Sixteen Rivers title. He’s edited literary magazines traditional, vitreous, and epistolary.
Michael Meyerhofer’s fifth poetry book, Ragged Eden, was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2019. He has been the startled recipient of the James Wright Poetry Award, the Brick Road Poetry Book Prize, and other honors. He is also the author of a fantasy series, and serves as the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. For more information and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit troublewithhammers.com.
Melchor Sahagun III says, “I do stuff; like Poetry, Skateboarding, Music, Comic Books, that sort of stuff. I’m in my late thirties, but I somehow feel simultaneously younger and much older than I am—it’s weird. I’m weird. You’re weird. Life is weird. I don’t really know what I’m doing, to be honest, but that’s all right because neither do you. I like my cats, A LOT. I like you a lot, too.”
Our usual Open Mic Time will follow the featured readers. We look forward to seeing you!
MoSt Poetry Center is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: MoSt’s Poetry On Sunday Series Reading–November 21, 2021
Time: Nov 21, 2021 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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Meeting ID: 815 1564 9176
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Second Tuesday Poetry featuring George Higgins and Rick Bursky
2021-12-14 19:00 - 20:30 | CA
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to welcome poets George Higgins and Rick Bursky on Tuesday, December 14, 2021. Register in advance for this meeting: https://tinyurl.com/2p8k6saw. Sign up for Open Mic (3 mins each poet) following the featured poets: https://forms.gle/vYexC9AiS7d7Cgeo7. Hosted by Stella Beratlis.
George Higgins’s book, There There, was published by Kelsay Books/White Violet Press. He has been published in Best American Poetry and more recently in Prairie Schooner and Catamaran.
Rick Bursky’s most recent book, Let’s Become a Ghost Story, is out from BOA Editions. His previous book, I’m No Longer Troubled by The Extravagance, is also from BOA Editions. He teaches poetry for The Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Erin Rodoni & Dana Koster
2022-01-11 19:00 - 20:00 | CA
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center invites you to the first Second Tuesday Poetry reading of 2022, featuring Erin Rodoni and Dana Koster.
When: Tuesday, January 11, 2022 at 7 pm PST
Where: Zoom (RSVP https://tinyurl.com/4c3byekj)

ERIN RODONI
Erin Rodoni’s most recent book is And if the Woods Carry You, winner of the 2020 Southern Indiana Review Michael Waters Poetry Prize. Her two previous collections are: Body, in Good Light and A Landscape for Loss. Her poems have been published in journals and anthologies such as Blackbird, Poetry Northwest, and Best New Poets. She has won awards from AWP, Ninth Letter, and the Montreal International Poetry Prize. She teaches at the Writing Salon in San Francisco and serves on the board of the Marin Poetry Center.
And if the Woods Carry You, Winner of the 2020 Michael Waters Poetry Prize: On the brink of climate catastrophe, a mother grappling with her choice to bring children into an apocalyptic world sends her daughters into the woods of fairy tale as a rite of initiation. The woods carry her fears of extinction— devastating fires, rising seas, and the predatory dangers of girlhood—but also contain the transformative magic of love, interdependence, and renewal. And if the Woods Carry You roots into the wild heart of motherhood, where worry and wonder intertwine.
“Like all great fairy tales, Erin Rodoni’s poems are a glorious marriage of the domestic and the dangerous. There are tests and transformations, solitudes and sacrifices, births and burials. Everything is changing into something else, something energized, erotic, and enchanted. But it is the poet’s attention to craft that lifts these poems from the beguiling world of mere narrative into the more magical realm of art. In language that feels both ancient and current, Rodoni manages to craft lyrics that seem to come from some other world while speaking truths to this one. This is a marvelous book with a poetic voice to enliven even the wildest woods.” –Dean Rader, author of Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry and Landscape Portrait Figure Form
DANA KOSTER
Dana Koster was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and grew up in Ventura, California. She earned her English degree from UC Berkeley and MFA in poetry from Cornell University. From 2011-2013, she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. She lives in Modesto, California with her husband and two sons, where she works as a wedding photographer, occasional freelance writer and half of the art partnership Broad Sides with her collaborator, Chelsea America.
Dana’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in EPOCH, Indiana Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Cincinnati Review, PN Review, Clackamas Literary Review, THRUSH Poetry Journal and many others. She has work in the anthologies America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience, Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books, Haiku of the Living Dead and More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. In 2012, she was the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize and a Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award. Her first book, Binary Stars, was published by Carolina Wren Press in 2017. She makes a lot of claims about immortality and ghosts on her twitter account.
“We need a new word (astro-tropism?) for the poetry of Binary Stars. For the way it leaps into stellar depths to cast a gaze sharp as a hummingbird’s beak back on the extended family cluster. Two stars, a larger and a smaller, in tight rotation, yield binary poems in clumps and couplets in the first-person dual and second-person singular: to the baby, the husband (with orbiting cows, horses, and almonds), the burned-out but still gravitational father-in-law and mother, and the therapist, whose analytical gaze is returned with equal intensity. Koster has written a domestic poetry not “of the heart,” not soft-focused, but of the barycenter, the binary center of gravity, in which the familiar, thrown off kilter, becomes alienated, estranged, and new. Dare you read a poetry at the white heat? Then open Binary Stars, an incandescent book of the first magnitude.”
—John Shoptaw, author of Times Beach
