Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Tamer Mostafa & Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas
2023-02-14 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Tamer Mostafa and Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas
Hosted by Stella Beratlis
Date: Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023
Time: 7:00 pm PST
RSVP for Zoom link
Open Mic Signup: https://forms.gle/d51j2WqGmBrzrTLT9. 3 mins per reader, please.
TAMER MOSTAFA
Tamer Said Mostafa (pronouns: he/him/his), a radical social worker by day and poet by night, is a Stockton, California native whose poetry has appeared in over twenty literary journals and magazines, including Confrontation, Zone 3, and Freezeray. Tamer is a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee whose debut full-length book of poetry, Where Will I Find America? was released in August, 2021 and is available online. He is also the author of Which Way Will the Water Drag Our Bodies, published in 2020.Mostafa is a graduate of the Creative Writing program at University of California, Davis where he won the Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg Contest for Poetry. As an Arab-American Muslim, Tamer lives life through spirituality, community work, and the music of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.
CAROL LYNN STEVENSON GRELLAS
Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas lives in the Sierra Foothills and is a recent graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, MFA in Writing program, where she received a Merit Scholarship. She is an eleven-time Pushcart Prize nominee and an eight-time Best of the Net nominee. In 2012 she won the Red Ochre Chapbook Contest, with her manuscript, Before I Go to Sleep. In 2018 her book In the Making of Goodbyes was nominated for The CLMP Firecracker Award in Poetry, and her poem A Mall in California took 2nd place for the Jack Kerouac Poetry Prize. In 2019 her chapbook An Ode to Hope in the Midst of Pandemonium was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards and Epitaph for the Beloved was nominated for The Northern California Book Award. Her latest collection of poems, Alice in Ruby Slippers, was short-listed for the 2021 Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and awarded honorable mention in the Poetry category. You can find out more about Carol Lynn’s work by visiting her website: https://www.clgrellaspoetry.com/

Deadline for STANISLAUS COUNTY YOUTH POET LAUREATE Contest
2023-02-27 23:59
Please check our YOUTH POET LAUREATE Contest page for all the details plus application.
Applications for the 2023 Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate open January 1, 2023!

Are you a teen? Are you SUPER into poetry? We want to hear from you!
Introducing the Inaugural process to choose a Youth Poet Laureate for Stanislaus County!
Teens ages 15–19 who reside or go to school in Stanislaus County may submit up to five original works of poetry demonstrating their commitment to the mastery of the art and craft of poetry.
RULES:
● Poems may be in any style or form.
● You must submit at least 3 poems but no more than five poems.
● Poems must be the original creative work of the poet. Plagiarism will result in immediate disqualification from this and all future Youth Poet Laureate opportunities.
● All poems must be typed. Single or double spaced, 12 pt Times New Roman preferred unless the poem’s form dictates the format (example: blackout poetry, erasures, visual poetry, spoken word, etc.)
● Brief artist statement/biography describing why you want to be a Youth Poet Laureate. Who inspired you to write poetry?
● No gratuitous violence or sexual content. No hate speech. No slander.
Submission Dates:
SUBMIT APPLICATION
JANUARY 1 – FEBRUARY 27, 2023.
Email PDF application and poem attachment per instructions on application.

IF SELECTED, POET:

will receive $500
serve a one-year term from June 1, 2023 – May 31, 2024
must be available for public appearances throughout Stanislaus County
must either live in or be enrolled in a school in Stanislaus County at time of submission and for the entire term if chosen
must attest that their work is solely their own original creative work
will work with a mentor from the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center; display their poems in the Young Adult section of the Modesto Library and elsewhere; and will mentor others;
will write at least 3 poems during their term and present these at events to be decided

will be asked to participate in at least two poetry events in the community focusing on engaging other youth in poetry. Examples of these possible Youth Poet Laureate activities are as follows:

If they’d like to create a poetry-related project of their own, the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center will offer assistance/support;
feature at a reading as part of the Second Tuesday Reading Series at the end of their term; and/or
write a poem for the City of Modesto’s Poet’s Corner event.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Rooja Mohassessey & Farnaz Fatemi
2023-03-14 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
We are so excited to feature Rooja Mohassessy and Farnaz Fatemi for our Second Tuesday reading in March.
Please RSVP to get Zoom link for reading: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYucOmqrzIrGdb0wNX9dF4OQqZv7IRjNEOT
Hosted by Modesto poet laureate emeritus Stella Beratlis; open mic follows featured poets. (Open mic sign-up.)
Rooja Mohassessy
Rooja Mohassessy is an Iranian-born poet and educator living in Northern California. She is a MacDowell fellow and a graduate of the Pacific University MFA program. Her first poetry collection, When Your Sky Runs Into Mine, was the winner of the 22nd Annual Elixir Poetry Prize and was published by Elixir Press earlier this year. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Poet Lore, RHINO Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, CALYX Journal, Ninth Letter, Cream City Review, The Rumpus, The Adroit Journal, Bare Life Review, Potomac Review, The Florida Review, New Letters, International Literary Quarterly, and elsewhere.
ABOUT WHEN YOUR SKY RUNS INTO MINE
“When Your Sky Runs Into Mine is a stunning debut collection … about personal revolution, the turning toward art in times of suffering, the claiming of a rich cultural heritage.”—Ellen Bass, author of Indigo
“Rooja Mohassessy’s debut collection belies any notion of a first book. It is a work of expansive vision and formal achievement, sounding an assured and unforgettable voice in poetry. “ —Shara McCallum, author of No Ruined Stone
Mohassessy’s intellectual power and penchant for image stand out in beautiful ways in this debut collection. She displays a painterly use of color, texture, and image that reflects her striking awareness of the physical world. Her capacity for efficient and elegant syntax and her fierce intelligence when dealing with political subjects and subjects of the female body in this world, constitute a most welcome addition to American poetry. This is a very impressive debut collection by a most promising poet.” —Kwame Dawes, author of UnHistory with John Kinsella
Farnaz Fatemi
Farnaz Fatemi, an Iranian American poet and writer, and Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate for 2023 & 2024, is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective. She was formerly a writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, was published in September 2022. It won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly. Some of her poems and lyric essays appear in Poem-a-Day (Poets.org), Tab Journal, Pedestal Review, Nowruz Journal, Grist Journal and Tupelo Quarterly.
ABOUT SISTER TONGUE
“Delicious, provocative, and incredibly wise, Farnaz Fatemi transcends years and oceans in these pages. Like gripping a cup and string to the ear, Sister Tongue is a hopeful missive, proof of words and their witnesses, an atlas of the wonder of becoming.”—T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
“Poet Farnaz Fatemi is the soulful Iranian American truth-teller and wonder-wanderer we’ve needed to hear. In Farsi, in English, in Tehran, or California, these poems cherish the miracle of connectedness by weaving family threads through time and space—through sisters, mothers, grandmothers, through a changed and changing world. Sister Tongue is a luscious love letter to language(s), spoken in a trusting, intimate voice. The poet recognizes the twinned solace of silence and song, of sister and self. Loss takes its seat, as it does, at the table, and Fatemi, with tea, family history, powerful memory, and a new/old tongue, inscribes it alongside the depths of beauty and joy in this radiant book of passionate understanding.”—Brenda Shaughnessy, author of The Octopus Museum
“I praise the present tense of these poems for its tensile strength, its ability to hold the struggle that is happening in the past, present, and future. The way it speaks of the perpetual, of what it is to be tongue-tied in the presence of one’s other self. ‘Language is geological,’ this speaker tells us, ‘a process of accumulation, and accretion accompanied by landslides.’ In setting out to speak the language of her blood, she finds herself at once estranged and embraced. Thrilled and defeated. What to do with such a natural disaster? These poems persist in their attempts to bridge worlds, offering hope of a complex and hard-won reconciliation, one richly crafted line at a time. In the words of Fatemi, ‘I want the foreigner in me / to meet the foreigner in me.’”—Danusha Laméris, author of Bonfire Opera“
Sister Tongue, Farnaz Fatemi’s debut poetry collection, transports us to a place where language must stretch to fit the largeness of human love and longing, and in doing so, fills the absences we did not even know we harbored. Sister Tongue begins to say what many of us already know—that borders and countries are too limiting to define us. Her poems offer us both a reckoning and a salve.”—Persis M. Karim, chair of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University

Deadline: City of Modesto Poet's Corner Contest
2023-03-24
The Parks, Recreation and Neighborhoods Department and the City of Modesto’s Poet’s Corner Committee are pleased to offer an Annual Poets’ Corner Contest. Please view the Poet’s Corner Contest Submission Form for full details.
Submissions
Poems will not be returned after the contest, so entrants should keep copies of their work.
Electronic Submissions

Include one cover page with poet’s name, address, email and title(s) of poem(s). If poet is a student, then indicate grade, school and name of teacher on the cover page.
Submit cover page and poem/poems in one file in .doc, .docx or .pdf format to the Poets Corner Contest Submission Email.

Mailed Submissions
Submit one copy of each poem along with one entry form for each poet to one of the following locations:

Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, C/O Poet’s Corner Contest, PO Box 578940, Modesto, CA, 95353
McHenry Museum, C/O Poet’s Corner Contest,1402 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354

Printed Entry Form and Contest Rules
May be picked up at the following locations:

Parks, Recreation & Neighborhoods Department Office – 1010 Tenth Street Place, Suite 4400
McHenry Museum – 1402 I Street
McHenry Mansion Visitor’s Center and Gift Shop – 924 15th Street
Stanislaus County Library – 1500 I Street

Deadline
Entries must be postmarked by Friday, March 24, 2023 or submitted electronically by 11:59 pm on Friday, March 24, 2023.
Requirements
The contest is open to all Stanislaus County residents.
Categories

General: Any kind of poetry on any subject, rhymed or unrhymed. Free verse and form welcome. Group of three haiku accepted as one entry.
Special: “Renewal: How do we restore and renew ourselves and our community after years of pandemic? How do we individually and collectively allow ourselves the space to mourn and feel what has been lost while holding optimism and being open to possibility? What might renewal look like in nature, ourselves, our families, and our communities? What does it feel like to be hopeful, imagine a better world, and create the future?”

Entry Limitations

Two poems per person
Each poem may not exceed 32 lines
All entries must be typed on standard 8.5″ x 11″ paper, double-spaced, in standard font
Entries must be unpublished at the time of submission
Entries may be two of one category or one of each category
At the top of each poem, indicate contest category and, if under the age of 18, grade in school
Do not put name of poet on any submitted poem: put name on cover page or entry form only
No plagiarism or offensive language.

Contest Winners
Contest winners will be notified by email (or mail, when email is unavailable). Poets will be invited to read their winning poems on Sunday, June 4, 2023 at 1:00 PM 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.

Deadline Aileen Jaffa Young Poets Contest
2023-04-03
AILEEN JAFFA YOUNG POETS CONTEST
Co-sponsored by MoSt (Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center) and the National League of American Penwomen (NLAPW), Modesto chapter.
This contest is offered as a means of encouraging young writers throughout Stanislaus County and as a way to remember poet Aileen Jaffa, the founding President of the Poets of the San Joaquin and member of the Modesto Branch of the National League of American Pen Women.
Eligibility and Deadline
Any student enrolled in a Stanislaus County school, grades K through 12, is eligible to submit up to 3 entries, at $1 per entry. Each entry, except for typing, must be the original creative work of the student, although parents or teachers may provide encouragement. Postmark deadline for submissions is April 3, 2023.

Details at Aileen Jaffa Youth Poetry Contest.

Saturday in the Park With Poetry
2023-04-08 12:00 - 13:30 | Davis Park, 2701 College Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
As April is National Poetry Month, Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is offering an outdoors event on Saturday, April 8, 2023 from noon to 1:30 p.m. The location is Davis Community Park at 2701 College Avenue in Modesto. The host will be Salvatore Salerno, poet laureate of Modesto. Participants can bring a bag lunch and read from their most recent favorite book of poetry. They are also invited to bring other poetry books to donate and trade with other participants. We will meet at the picnic tables near the parking lot. If the tables are otherwise occupied, be prepared by bringing a lawn chair, and we can gather elsewhere beneath the welcoming shade of a tree.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring 2023 Sixteen Rivers Press authors Matthew M. Monte & Joseph Zaccardi
2023-04-11 19:00 - 20:00
We are so excited to feature Matthew M. Monte and Joseph Zaccardi for our Second Tuesday reading on April 11, 2023.
Please RSVP to get Zoom link for reading: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUodeGrrzkjHdfBfZG3JJnhhyxHl8NFvfZ8
Hosted by Modesto poet laureate emeritus Stella Beratlis; open mic follows featured poets. (Open mic sign-up.)
MATTHEW MONTE
Matthew M. Monte grew up near San Francisco, California and went to the University of Hawaii-Manoa, where he studied botany. His fiction, poetry, book reviews, music reviews, journalism, and essays have appeared in Sidestream, Creosote Journal, Transfer, Ashcan Magazine, The Snackbar Collective, iNaturalist, Panorama, and the Poets 11 Anthologies (2014 and 2016). He lives in San Francisco with his wife and son. His debut collection, The Case of the Six-Sided Dream, won the 2017 Blue Light Poetry Prize.
https://www.matthew-monte.com/
All Tomorrow’s Train Rides is an odyssey of reading and poetic memory. What begins as a single day in a worker’s commute morphs into a Möbius loop of literary history and cultural consciousness. “Where do we read and whom?” is a question that drives the nostalgia, dread, and humor of this collection. Riddled with geographical coordinates and commentary, this book of interdependent poems explores the idea of “living in translation” and fuses the formal aesthetics of cartography to our relationships with people, places, books, and the natural world.
About ALL TOMORROW’S TRAIN RIDES
Through poetic cartography, Matthew Monte disembarks from a search of what ultimately is borderless. The topography of a land, of home, extending from San Francisco to Tepeyac to Downe places us in a position to feel the transit of time. We travel to where Monte coordinates the lingering as well as the vanishing points of a city. With a lush lexicon, he fuses historical allusions with aspects of spirituality to expound upon what each train ride reveals; in turn, around the next bend, we keep coming back. This is a ride to catch.
—Thea Matthews, author of Unearth [The Flowers]
Matthew Monte writes in the specifics of speech and memory, pulling the reader along his urban coastline of abandoned dreams and possible destinations. This extraordinary book is filled with the noise and silence of the everyday and is underscored throughout with beauty, examination, and compassion.
Read these fine poems and encounter some part of your own unvoiced life.
—Beau Beausoleil, author of A Glyphic House: New and Selected Poems 1976–2019
JOSEPH ZACCARDI
Joseph Zaccardi is the author of five books of poetry including, most recently, The Weight of Bodily Touches from Kelsay Books. His poems have appeared in Cincinnati Review, Poetry East, Atlanta Review, Rattle, and Salamander, among other journals. Zaccardi joined the Marin Poetry Center in 1996 and served as a board member from 2010 to 2013 and as the editor of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology in 2010–2012. Appointed poet laureate of Marin County, California, he served from 2013 to 2015. A member of the LGBTQ community, Zaccardi believes that to write a single poem is a minor miracle. He lives in Fairfax, California, with his husband, Dave, and their dog.

In his afterword to Songbirds of the Nine Rivers, Joseph Zaccardi recounts how, during his time as a Navy corpsman in the Vietnam War, he found refuge in a volume of ancient Chinese and Vietnamese poetry. His study, now lifelong, has borne fruit in this present volume, the ancients at his shoulder. At once a scholarly work, an homage, and a striking volume of new poems—not translations, not “versions”— this book provides readers with a multifaceted lens, forward, backward, yet always present—and always, even in grief, exultant.
About SONGBIRDS OF THE NINE RIVERS
The beauty of this book is in the lyric surprise, the parabolic of the Tang. If there are such things as true works of art, it is these poems that blend the physical and the eternal, the seen and the unseen. Zaccardi’s words draw from the uncanniness of nature in a startling way and reveal to us a sometimes violent, often beautiful, but always necessary world. A work such as Songbirds of the Nine Rivers,derived from both earth and heaven, is rare indeed.
––Ann Robinson, author of Stone Window
Historical, philosophical, and alchemical, these poems reenact the cosmos of the classical poet-ancestors of China and Vietnam through the awakened mind of an American poet. Joseph Zaccardi’s poetry enlarges human empathy and connects separated worlds. Listen to these songs! Every note is clear, fresh, and alive.
-–Jie Tian, author of Native Songs and Migration Songs
It is said that to hear music it is best to close your eyes, and that to hear poetry it is best to read the poems aloud. Joseph Zaccardi’s poetry is music to the ear. He lets us feel what he feels, lets us touch what he touches. His voice is song; his sounds are prayers. They wash over me, the way the sea washes over the sound of itself.
––Mai Sato, Yokohama College of Art and Design

MoSt Poetry Reading
2023-04-22 13:00 - 14:00 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
To celebrate National Poetry Month, MoSt Poetry will have a reading featuring poets who serve on our non-profit’s board followed by an open mic. Please join us at 1:00 p.m. PT on Saturday, April 22, 2023 in the Stanislaus County Library. This event is free and open to the public.

MoSt Poetry Book Club
2023-04-24 17:30 - 18:30 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
MoSt Poetry Book Club will meet at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, April 24 in person at the downtown Modesto library. We’ll be reading Katie Farris’ book Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, available at the library reference desk to borrow after April 4th.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Bryan Medina, Joseph Rios, Michael Meyerhofer, and Kenneth Chacón
2023-05-09 19:00 - 20:00
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Four Fresno Poets: Bryan Medina, Joseph Rios, Michael Meyerhofer, and Kenneth Chacón.
Hosted by Gillian Wegener
Date: Tuesday, May 9, 2022
Time: 7:00 pm PDT
on Zoom–RSVP required:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAuceuuqDIjG9D7nH7UsdTrO5qDQlW6f7Lp
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Bryan Medina
Bryan Medina has been a fixture in the Fresno literary community for over 25 years. A former student of California Poet Laureate Emeritus Juan Felipe Herrera, his poetry has graced stages in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Kansas City. He founded the Inner Ear Poetry Slam as a way to free poetry from the confines of academic institutions, making it accessible to all. Bryan has been awarded two City of Fresno Commendations for contributions to Fresno’s rich artistic and cultural heritage and has been featured as one of the four “Fresno Poets” from writer Nick Belardes’s Distinguished Valley Writers series as well as appeared in journals such as Poetry, Flies, Cockroaches, and Poets, In The Grove, The San Joaquin Review, Jubilee, and Invisible Memoirs and was an Honorable Mention in the ‘06 Larry Levis Poetry Prize. He is a graduate of Fresno Pacific University and teaches Special Education.
Joseph Rios
Born in Clovis, Joseph Rios is the author of Shadowboxing: Poems and Impersonations (Omnidawn), winner of the American Book Award; he was named one of the Notable Debut Poets by Poets & Writers Magazine for 2017. His poems can be found at Poem A Day, Huizache, The Rumpus, the San Francisco Chronicle, and on Metro buses and trains in Los Angeles. He was recently named a Stegner Fellow by Stanford University. He lives in Fresno.
Michael Meyerhofer
Michael Meyerhofer’s fifth book, Ragged Eden, was published by Glass Lyre Press. He has been the startled recipient of fourteen national writing awards including the James Wright Poetry Award, the Liam Rector First Book Award, the Brick Road Poetry Book Prize, and several chapbook prizes. His work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry, Rattle, Brevity, Ploughshares, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and other journals. He is also the author of a fantasy series.
Kennth Chacón
Kenneth Chacón is the author of The Cholo Who Said Nothing & Other Poems(Turning Point, 2017). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Colorado Review, Cimarron Review, Palette Poetry, Blackbird, and Huizache among others. Chacón is a native of Fresno, California and teaches English at Fresno City College.

2023 Aileen Jaffa Young Poets Awards Ceremony
2023-05-13 14:00 - 16:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
AILEEN JAFFA YOUNG POETS CONTEST
Co-sponsored by MoSt (Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center) and the National League of American Penwomen (NLAPW), Modesto chapter.
This contest is offered as a means of encouraging young writers throughout Stanislaus County and as a way to remember poet Aileen Jaffa, the founding President of the Poets of the San Joaquin and member of the Modesto Branch of the National League of American Pen Women.
Awards and Recognition
First, second and third place winners in each category will receive cash awards from the MoSt Poetry Center. Prizes are: First Place $25, Second Place $15, Third Place $10. In addition, the Modesto Branch of the National League of American Pen Women will award a $60 Aileen Jaffa Outstanding Poem award in each of two combined categories, Categories 1 and 2, and Categories 3 and 4.
The current president of the NLAPW Modesto chapter will present the awards, and the winning poems will be read at an Awards Ceremony at 2 P.M. on Saturday May 13, 2023 at the Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock.
For more information, contact info@mostpoetry.org

City of Modesto Poet's Corner Reading/Reception
2023-06-04 13:00 - 15:00 | McHenry Museum, 1402 14th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us at McHenry Museum on Sunday, June 4 at 1 pm for a reading featuring the winners of the 2023 Poet’s Corner Contest, sponsored by the City of Modesto.
For contest information, please visit the City of Modesto Poet’s Corner page. (Contest info will be updated soon.)

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Lynn Hansen, Richard Robbins, and Thomas Mitchell
2023-06-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
Join the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center as we present poets Lynn Hansen, Richard Robbins, and Thomas Mitchell in a free on-line poetry reading hosted by Gillian Wegener.

ABOUT LYNN HANSEN
Lynn M. Hansen is a retired Modesto Junior College professor of marine biology. A member of the Ina Coolbrith Circle, Orinda, CA; MoSt Poetry Center, Modesto; and National League of American Pen Women, her work reflects her sense of place and the art of storytelling. In 2013 a collection of her poems was published by Quercus Review Press entitled Flicker: Poems. She is currently writing an historical novel about her maternal grandmother, Mernie Daisy Lewis, 1882-1963.

ABOUT RICHARD ROBBINS
Richard Robbins was raised in California and Montana, taught in Minnesota for many years, and recently moved back west to Oregon. Robbins has received awards or residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, the Anderson Center, Willapa Bay AiR, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers. From 1986 to 2014, he directed the Good Thunder Reading Series at Minnesota State Mankato, which the Minnesota Humanities Commission called, “the premier small-town reading series in the country.”
“Part balm, part prayer, part revelation, the quietly moving and incantatory poems in Richard Robbins’s The Oratory of All Souls reveal a poetic voice that is masterful, adept, and profoundly compelling. These supple poems unfold seamlessly, with the muscular music of moving water: elegant, clear, fierce. Robbins has the gaze of a painter, with a gorgeous insistence on image, line, shadow, and light.” —Lee Ann Roripaugh, author of tsunami vs. the fukushima 50

ABOUT THOMAS MITCHELL
Thomas Mitchell is a shrewd and trusted observer of the natural world. In this third book, Where We Arrive, Mitchell listens to “the counsel of water” and moves “from one silence to another.” And as such, he spies “a red-tailed hawk drifting in absolute loneliness.” More often than not, Mitchell is a poet of intimate feelings. He remarks time and again upon various stars and moons, towhees and starlings. His poetry is a poetry bent on reimagining the world.
—Thomas Aslin, author of Salvage and A Moon Over Wings

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Jun 13, 2023 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqcuqvrDkrHN0lTrVUQlB77MvaiI83W4zMAfter registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Poetry Writing Workshop
2023-06-24 13:00 - 15:00 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Please join us in the Modesto Library’s Makerspace on Saturday, June 24, 2023 from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. for “Questions, Lies, & Repetition,” a poetry writing workshop facilitated by Linda Scheller. Participants will read, discuss, and write poetry in this free, in-person workshop open to the public. All ages are welcome, and no prior poetry experience is required!

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Aideed Medina and Ramón García
2023-07-11 19:00 - 20:00
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Aideed Medina and Ramón García, hosted by Stella Beratlis
Date: Tuesday, July 11, 2023
Time: 7:00 pm PST on Zoom–RSVP required:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYld-CrrzIiE9f-nC5FZF4UnTu3ZCbULvXC. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Open mic: 3 mins per poet, follows the featured readers. Open mic sign-up.
Aideed Medina
Aideed Medina is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, award winning spoken word artist and a playwright. She is a California Naturalist, and practices “flor y canto” as part of her poetic process and exploration of California’s natural history. Her work has appeared in Fresno State’s Club Austral Literary Magazine, Chicano Writers and Artists Association Journal, La Bloga, Poets Responding, Art of the Commune, Split This Rock, Nueva York Poetry Review, Di-Liio Revista Literaria, Artivista Anthology, as part of a collection of original art songs composed for The Opera Remix, Fresno Grand Opera, and co-writer of Eclectic Collective plays: Encounter Intuitive and Artista Invisible. Her debut collection, 31 Hummingbird, was just published earlier this year by Xingao Press. Aideed has a forthcoming full-length poetry collection, Segmented Bodies, from Prickly Pear Press coming later this year. In 2024, the Editorial Universitaria of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León in Mexico will be publishing her work poetry in a series that pairs Chicano-Mexican poets.
About 31 Hummingbird
31 Hummingbird | A suite of poems is the debut collection by Chicana poet Aideed Medina. 31 Hummingbird chronicles a human relationship, and ascends with the flights of hummingbirds. The hummingbird is a unique being and a metaphor of the racing of hearts, whose beating never fluctuates whether in mid-flight, hovering, being rejected, ejected, accepted or dive-bombing for the nectars and sugared waters of the embraces.
Aideed Medina’s hummingbird poems are cross-pollinators: She brushes our tongues and eyes with the poetics of aerodynamic words.
Her debut collection of humming-poems is an invitation to risk flying on the wings of feathered lightning. Up, down, across, forward, backward, fluttering like thunder and lightning, 31 Hummingbird invites close and patient reading, waiting for the hummingbird to appear and disappear in the flash of a few lines.
Ramón García
Ramón García is the author of two books of poetry The Chronicles (Red Hen Press, 2015) and Other Countries (What Books Press, 2010), and a monograph on the artist Ricardo Valverde (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). The Chronicles was a finalist for the Latino International Book Award for Best Poetry Book in English in 2016.
García has published poetry, fiction and scholarly work in a variety of journals, anthologies and museum catalogs. His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry anthology, The Floating Borderlands: Twenty-Five Years of US-Hispanic Literature, The American Journal of Poetry, Los Angeles Review, and Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas. He has contributed to the art work and projects of various visual artists, including Berta Jottar, Harry Gamboa Jr., Susan Silton, David John Attyah, and Sandra de la Loza.
Ramón García was born in Colima, Mexico and grew up in Modesto, California. He has a B.A. in World Literature from University of California, Santa Cruz and a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego. He is a Professor at California State University, Northridge and lives in downtown Los Angeles.
About The Chronicles
“Ramón García’s The Chronicles is wondrously deceptive. At first we may think we know the folkloric stuff dreams are made of, but soon one is inside a unique world where, through language and ritual, an edgy authority speaks through metaphor, chronicling the underbelly of the spoken and unspoken, and at times even the unspeakable. The Chronicles unearths things we didn’t know we knew—surprising, new, clear-eyed twists and turns. This collection of urgent poems, partly woven from stories inherited, sings through the past to the present and future.”—Yusef Komunyakaa

Free Poetry Workshop--Playing with our ABC's: Poetry Using the Alphabet as Structure
2023-07-22 13:00 - 15:00 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Please join us in the Modesto Library Auditorium for “Playing with our ABC’s: Poetry Using the Alphabet as Structure,” a poetry writing workshop facilitated by Gillian Wegener. This workshop will focus on using the alphabet as structure for new poems. We’ll try our hand at abecedarians, observational alphabet poems, and dictionary poems. Walk-ins welcome.

July Book Club: FELON by Reginald Dwayne Betts
2023-07-24 17:30 - 18:30 | Stanislaus County Library, 1500 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Please join at the Modesto Library to discuss Felon: Poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts. Copies of the book are available at the check-out desk of the Modesto Library, courtesy of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center. Facilitated by Tina Marie Curiel-Vega.

Second Tuesday Poetry Reading with Molly Fisk & Ingrid Keriotis
2023-08-08 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
Please join us for a poetry reading featuring Molly Fisk and Ingrid Keriotis with an open mic to follow.
RSVP with the link below.

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Aug 8, 2023 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIud-yorzMjG9Nu0FHzh0Uy7TVpsE81x9PiAfter registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Poetry on Saturday Reading featuring Connie Post and Francesca Bell
2023-08-12 14:00 - 16:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
MoSt’s Poetry On Saturday Reading
August 12, 2023 2:00 p.m. PST
Carnegie Arts Center (250 North Broadway Avenue, Turlock, California)
Join host Gary Thomas for the latest edition of MoSt’s Poetry On
Saturday readings in person on August 12 at 2:00 p.m. at the Carnegie
Arts Center in Turlock. Our featured readers are Livermore poet laureate
emeritus Connie Post and Marin County poet laureate Francesca Bell
(both with new books out!) followed by our Open Mic time after the
featured poets. This event is free and open to the public, and light
refreshments will be provided.

Connie Post served as first Poet Laureate of Livermore, California. Her
work has appeared in Calyx, Comstock Review, One, Cold Mountain
Review, Slipstream, Spillway, River Styx, Spoon River Poetry Review,
Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Verse Daily. She has two full-length
books from Glass Lyre Press, entitled Floodwater and Prime Meridian.
Her most recent book, Between Twilight, is from New York Quarterly
books, and she has a recent chapbook, Broken Metronome, about her
brother’s journey with Parkinson’s.

Francesca Bell is the author of Bright Stain, a finalist for the Washington
State Book Award and the Julie Suk Award, and What Small Sound,, and is

the translator of Max Sessner’s Whoever Drowned Here, all from Red Hen
Press. Her work appears in B O D Y, ELLE, Los Angeles Review of Books,
New England Review, North American Review, Mid-American Review, and
Rattle. She is the former poetry editor of River Styx, the translation editor
of Los Angeles Review, and the poet laureate of Marin County. She lives
with her family in Novato, California.

Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Reading and Reception
2023-08-26 14:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
Please join us to celebrate our finalists for the Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate contest 2023-2024. Meet our finalists, Janelle Yulo of Modesto and Zoe Byron of Oakdale, and our Youth Poet Laureate Faith Delgado. With readings and refreshments.
At The Loft, 3rd floor of the Carnegie Arts Center,
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 Chloe Martinez and Emma Trelles
2023-09-12 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
Hosted by Stella Beratlis
Date: Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Time: 7:00 pm PST
RSVP for Zoom link
Open mic signup; 3 mins per reader please.
Please join us this month as we feature poets Emma Trelles and Chloe Martinez on Zoom. Emma Trelles, author of Tropicalia, is the immediate past poet laureate for Santa Barbara, a CantoMundo fellow and Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow. Chloe Martinez, author of Ten Thousand Selves, is a scholar and poet who also serves as associate director of programming at the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at Claremont McKenna College. Her poems and translations have been widely published and have received numerous awards and honors.
Chloe Martinez
Chloe Martinez is a scholar of South Asian religions and a poet. She lives in Claremont, CA with her husband and two daughters. She is the Associate Director of Programming at the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at Claremont McKenna College, as well as Lecturer in CMC’s Department of Religious Studies.
She is a graduate of Barnard College, where she was a Mellon Mays Fellow, and received the MA/PhD in Religious Studies from UC Santa Barbara. Her research and teaching interests include creative writing; religions of South Asia; medieval North Indian devotional movements; poetry and autobiography in South Asia; and South Asian American religious worlds. Her research has appeared in journals including The Medieval History Journal and South Asia​, and has been funded by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, AIIS, and SSRC-Mellon Mays.
She is also a graduate of Boston University’s Creative Writing MA and the MFA for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where she was a Holden Scholar. The author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works, 2021) and chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press, 2020), her poems and translations have appeared in Ploughshares, POETRY, The Common, AGNI, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere, and have been nominated multiple times for a Pushcart Prize, as well as for Best New Poets and Best of the Net. Her translations have won the Robert Fitzgerald Prize and the Anne Frydman Prize. She is a visiting editor at Beloit Poetry Journal and the poetry editor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.
See more at www.chloeAVmartinez.com
About The Ten Thousand Selves

“Martinez understands the power of story to transmute experience into knowledge, and the power of poetry to question story’s power. Her scope is global, her vision historical, and her voice—by turns tender, sardonic, full of rage or humbled awe—is eloquently contemporary. Here is a book that presses back against reality. ‘Not a story, not an image. It is a map.'” —Suzanne Buffam, author of A Pillow Book
“…the selves in these beautifully wrought poems are wide-eyed in their wisdoms and whole-hearted in their songs. In poem after poem, they show the myriad possibilities in our extraordinary and surprising lives.” –Adrian Matejka, author of Somebody Else Sold the World

MoSt's 10th Anniversary Fundraiser w/ CA Poet Laureate Lee Herrick & Stan Cty Youth Poet Laureate Faith Delgado
2023-09-23 14:00 - 17:00
Join us on the afternoon of Saturday, September 23, 2023 for an afternoon of wine, hors d’oeuvres, and readings by California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick and Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Faith Delgado.
Your ticket supports poetry in Stanislaus County, including monthly reading series in Modesto and Turlock; sets of poetry books for area schools; Poetry Out Loud; poetry readings at senior communities; free poetry workshops and poetry book discussions at the Modesto Library; the Youth Poet Laureate program; poetry on the spot at events across the county; annual workshops by noted poets from across California, the Modesto Poetry Festival every February, and much more!
TICKET SALES END FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15th AT MIDNIGHT. $50 purchase through https://poetrygala2023.brownpapertickets.com/.
Please email info@mostpoetry.org to request sliding scale price.

Poetry on the Spot at the Gallo Family Fun Festival
2023-09-24 13:00 - 16:00 | Gallo Center for the Arts, Gallo Center Plaza, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
FREE FOR EVERYONE! SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2023
1 PM – 4 PM
The Gallo Center for the Arts presents its first annual Family Fun Festival—a community event that will take over the Gallo Center Plaza and the Modesto Rotary Music Garden with a host of FREE activities. We’ll be typing poems for anyone who wants one–but you can also enjoy music, dancing, chalk art, lawn games, exotic reptiles, face painting, balloon animals, and more. Free; no ticket purchase required.
Food trucks will be on site for those wishing to purchase hot dogs, frozen yogurt, and other treats.

Feels Like All of It: A Sensory, List-Inspired Poetry Workshop
2023-10-07 13:00 - 15:00 | Ceres Library, 2250 Magnolia Street, Ceres, 95307, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center will present a free, in-person workshop facilitated by Tina Marie Curiel-Vega 1:00-3:00 p.m.on Saturday, October 7th at the Ceres Library. Please join us!

Second Tuesday Reading Series with Brynn Saito and Cristina Sandoval
2023-10-10 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
Join us for this reading with Brynn Saito and Cristina Sandoval.

Brynn Saito’s third book of poems, Under a Future Sky, was published in August 2023 by Red Hen Press. A 2023 California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellow, Brynn is the recipient of the Benjamin Saltman Award, and her poems have appeared in the New York Times and American Poetry Review. Brynn lives in the traditional homelands of the Yokuts and Mono peoples (aka, Fresno, CA) where she teaches in the MFA program at Fresno State. She’s co-editing with Brandon Shimoda an anthology of poetry written by descendants of the Japanese American / Nikkei incarceration, forthcoming in 2025 from Haymarket Books.

Cristina Sandoval is a recent graduate of the Fresno State MFA program, and a resident of Modesto, CA.

Register here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAkdOupqTkvH9bNir_T5d69J9taVP3SkR4P

You’ll receive a confirmation email with the Zoom link for the evening.

Fall Poetry Workshop with Susan Rich
2023-10-21 10:00 - 12:45
Get your tickets for the great online workshop with poet Susan Rich. Tickets $20; + ticket fees; purchase through Eventbrite. https://mostfallworkshop.eventbrite.com
Seattle poet Susan Rich is the author of six books of poetry; her work has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, PEN USA, Peace Corps Writers, and more. She teaches at Highline College and is co-founder and executive director of Poets on the Coast: A Weekend Writing Retreat for Women.

Poetry Out Loud - Informational Meetings on Zoom
2023-10-25 14:30 - 17:00 | Zoom
Bring Poetry Out Loud to your school!
Poetry Out Loud is a national poetry Recitation Contest for high
school students that starts at the school level with students
memorizing and reciting poems. School winners move on to the
county contest run by Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center in early
February 2024. The finalist there goes on to the state contest in
Sacramento in March, 2024.
Please attend one of these informational Zoom meetings to find out
more: Wednesday, October 25 at 2:45 and at 3:45. (Same meeting,
two different times for your convenience.)
https://us02web.zoom.us/i/87048923866?
pwd=[REDACTED]
This link can also be found at www.mostpoetry.org, the website of
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center. Contact us with any questions.

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

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

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

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

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

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