Winter In-person Poetry Weekend Intensive with Maria Gillan and Kevin Carey

The winter 2025 in-person Poetry Weekend Intensive with Maria Gillan and Kevin Carey December 12th to December 14th, 2025 in Mendham, NJ. 

Held at a Retreat House situated on 93 acres of wooded land with pathways for exploring the property, this serene, beautiful setting is perfect for contemplating nature and nurturing the creative spirit. 

Retreat House

Download the information and registration form

 

Payment must be submitted and attendance confirmed by November 15, 2025.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is the winner of the 2014 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from AWP, the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us. She has also received the Clara Lemlich Award for Social Activism (May 2022),

and a Lifetime Achievement in the Arts award from the Center for Creative and Performing Arts at Salem State University. She is the Founder/Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College, editor of the Paterson Literary Review, and Professor Emerita in creative writing at Binghamton University—SUNY. She has published 23 books, including her latest book, When the Stars Were Visible (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2021). 
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com, and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com

Kevin Carey is the Coordinator of Creative Writing at Salem State University. He has published a chapbook of fiction from Red Bird Chapbooks, The Beach People (2014), and three books of poetry, The One Fifteen to Penn Station (2012), Jesus Was a Homeboy (2016) which was an Honor book for the Paterson Literary Prize, and Set in Stone (2020) all from CavanKerry Press. His poems have twice appeared on The Writers Almanac on National Public Radio and on The Academy of American Poets Poem a Day. Kevin is also a playwright and filmmaker. He has co-directed and co-produced two documentaries about poets, All That Lies Between Us and

Unburying Malcolm Miller, which premiered at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival in 2017. Kevin has also co-authored a screenplay Peter’s Song which won Best Screenplay at the New Hampshire Film Festival in 2009. His latest stage play The Stand or Sal is Dead, a murder-mystery-comedy, premiered at the Actor’s Studio in Newburyport, MA in June, 2018. His first crime novel, Murder in the Marsh, from Darkstroke Books, was released in 2020, and a new middle-grade novel Junior Miles and the Junkman was published in 2023 from Fitzroy Books, an imprint of Regal House Publishing.  More about Kevin at  Kevincareywriter.com

Submissions for the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award Now Open Using Submittable

The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, honoring Allen Ginsberg’s contribution to American literature and his Paterson upbringing, are now open for submissions.

For 2026, submissions for this annual poetry competition will be using the online Submittable website. Entries will not be accepted using email or snail mail. A free Submittable account is required to submit poems using the service.

This competition awards a first prize of $2000, a second prize of $1000, and a third prize of $500 for a single poem.

GUIDELINES

Submit up to five unpublished poems per person, with each poem no longer than two manuscript pages.

Pages with poems should not include the poet’s name. A separate cover section of the online form will list the poet’s name, mailing address, and e-mail address.

Please do not submit poems that imitate Allen Ginsberg’s work.

A fee of $20.00 must accompany your submission through Submittable.  

The submission period is October 1 - February 1 (11:59 ET)

Poems by the Winners, Honorable Mentions, and Editor's Choice recipients are included in the Paterson Literary Review (PLR), and the poets are invited to read at The Poetry Center in historic downtown Paterson. Winners will be announced in spring 2026 on this website and through your Submittable account.

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings.
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

Poem: In Third Grade I Fell in Love (With Commentary)

In Third Grade I Fell in Love

with language. The poems and stories, read aloud to us
in the dusty classrooms of PS 18 in Paterson, New Jersey,  
had a music that lifted me up above the scarred desks,
names and hearts carved into them
by generations of children, bored from the torture
of sitting still for hours.
 
For me, in my shy skin, the spaces in the school
meant for recess or gym were terrifying,
but inside the classroom, I loved
the books we read and the ones the teachers read to us.

At home, we spoke a southern Italian dialect
that brought Italy to 17th street.
But outside, I was in America.
though wary that I wasn't American enough.

In the classroom, I learned that English had a different kind of music,
one I could move to as if I were dancing.
I loved the poems that repeated themselves in my brain.
After I memorized a poem, I could carry it with me,
as though I had slipped it in my pocket
and could slip it out whenever I was alone and afraid.

My parents could not read to us in English,
but those teachers, all the ones I never thought to thank,
opened the door into a world far from my Italian family,
its aroma of tomato sauce bubbling on the stove,
of rosemary and mint growing outside the back door,
bread baking in the oven.

In books, I could find the way to leave the skin I was born in,
to enter the worlds that appeared on the very first page.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Was your poem, “In Third Grade I Fell in Love,” geared to a specific audience or for anyone who would listen?

Well, I hope when I write a poem that it is clear and direct enough to reach anyone who reads it. I was prompted out of my own need to explain my love of poetry written in English, particularly since I was an immigrant child who did not speak English when I went to school. I also wrote it in gratitude to all the teachers I never thanked for reading aloud to us in English and for making me hear the music of the language when it was spoken aloud. My own parents couldn’t speak English and couldn’t read to us in English, but those teachers gave me a gift that I can never repay. It’s only now, so many years later, that I wish I had written to them to thank them. Of course, now it’s too late. But wherever their spirits are, I hope they feel my love for them and my gratitude.

I hope this poem speaks to other people who also learned to love the way the language sounded when read aloud and learned to speak through writing when they couldn’t articulate what they felt inside to have conversations, as I could not, because I was so shy.

In the poem, you say that “The poems and stories read aloud to us in the dusty classroom of PS 18 in Paterson, New Jersey had a music that lifted me up above the scarred desks, names and hearts carved into them by generations of children bored with what, for many of them, must have been the torture of hours sitting still.” 

Could you say more about what you mean by “music” there? Is there a danger that fewer will hear that music today because of all the distractions around us, such as the constant temptation of social media?

When I say music, I mean that in a poem, there is a kind of interior music that carries you along— at least it’s music that I can hear. Certainly, Italian has its own kind of music because it is my first language. I will always love the sound of it; but English opened so many doors for me and led me to worlds I could not have imagined when I was a child. If you close your eyes and listen to a point where out loud, you hear a rhythm and a sound, it helps you to memorize the poem in order to carry it with you. For me, even when I revise poems, I have to read them out loud to hear when the sound falls flat. It helps me to revise the poem. I also find it helpful when working with my students to assist them with revisions, if I read the poem out loud so they can hear where it goes off.

There is a constant temptation today to spend so many hours on social media. I think it’s not just that we don’t listen to poetry being read out loud, but that we don’t read. I would suggest to students who are not particularly fond of reading that they might want to get audiobooks and listen to them in the car. The more you get to hear the language, the more it becomes a part of your body. The more it becomes a part of that instinctive place where poems come from, the more you will be changed by the writing and by what the writer is trying to tell you.

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings.
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan To Be Honored

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is to be honored during the 57th Annual Italian American Studies Association (IASA) Conference at Montclair State University held November 6-9, 2025.

Intersecting Transitalia in Communities: Nation(s), Transnation(s), Neighborhood(s) is the theme of this year’s conference. Community in the Italian diaspora, historically and in the present day will be explored in programs and panels addressing how, historically, Italians have worked in building their local communities and how they have attempted (successfully or not) to bridge (linguistic, cultural, etc.) gaps across communities throughout the country or even the world.

On Thursday, November 6, the conclusion of the conference's first day, there will be the Opening Plenary and Welcome Reception at the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center, 8 Yogi Berra Drive on the Montclair State University campus. 

Information and registration at https://www.italianamericanstudies.net/cpages/2025-montclair 

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is an artist, poet, and professor. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey, and is the founding editor of the Paterson Literary Review. Gillan is a Bartle Professor and Professor Emerita of English and creative writing at Binghamton University-SUNY. She has published more than 20 books of poetry and four literature anthologies. Her newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings. Gillan is the recipient of the 2014 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs), the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions).  Her  website is MariaGillan.com.