By Paula Treick DeBoard
April is poetry month, and we started celebrating early at Bookish! Something about spring—maybe the rain and the flowers, the idyll before high temps and mosquitoes—practically breathes poems into the air.
We hosted poets Bob Stanley and Dane Cervine at Second Tuesday Poetry, sponsored by the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center on March 11, and Stanislaus County’s youth poet laureate Zoe Byron led an all-ages workshop and open mic on March 22.
Also, our Five Mondays in March kept plugging away, with writers showing up week after week, laptops in tow, stories ready to spill from their fingers.
Our biggest poetry event yet is coming on Saturday, April 5, which coincidentally is the one-year anniversary of Bookish opening its doors. We’re honored to have California’s Poet Laureate Lee Herrick grace our space for a reading at 6:30pm. This event is free and open to all—but space is limited, so come early. Born in Daejeon, Korea, Herrick was adopted and raised in Modesto and as a professor at Fresno City College maintains his deep ties to our region. We’ll have copies of his books, including In Praise of Late Wonder (2024) available on hand for purchase.
If you’re a reader or writer and interested in connecting, check out www.bookishmodesto.com/events<www.bookishmodesto.com/events> for more information.
