Maria Mazziotti Gillan - poet and artist

February 21, 2026

Poetry Weekend March 2026

The next in-person Poetry Weekend Intensive with Maria Gillan and Kevin Carey will be held Friday evening, March 27, through Sunday, March 29, 2026, 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. This is an opportunity to retreat from the noise and busyness of everyday life and invite the muse to inspire us. In the workshops, we will capture our stories and memories on paper, and discover how poetry can, so often, save our lives. Participants will draft poems in the workshops and share their work from the workshops. They may also bring previously-written work for one-on-one critiquing sessions with Maria and Kevin, and to share at the group readings.

If you would like to register, please send the registration form with your check payable to Maria Gillan and sent to 40 Post Avenue, Hawthorne, NJ 07506. Payment must be submitted and attendance confirmed by March 15th.

Download the complete information and registration form

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 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

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

Retreat House

February 17, 2026

Poetry Reading February 21 with Nicole Santalucia

On Saturday, February 21, 2026, poet Nicole Santalucia will conduct a virtual workshop followed by a reading as part of the Poetry Center at PCCC's Distinguished Poets Series.

Workshops via Zoom will run from 1 PM – 2:30 PM (EST) and be followed by the poet’s reading from 2:30 PM – 3 PM (ET). Poetry Center readings are always free and open to the public. Registration is required for all workshops with a fee of $20. You can check registration availability by emailing Cynthia Pagan at the Poetry Center.

Nicole Santalucia is the author of The Book of Dirt (NYQ Books), Spoiled Meat (Headmistress Press), and Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press). Her work has appeared in publications such as Colorado Review, Palette Poetry, The Best American Poetry, Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Sonora Review, Fourteen Hills, The Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus, The Normal School, Out Magazine and elsewhere.

She is a Professor of English, the Director of First-Year Writing, co-chair of the LGBTQ+ Advisory Council, and serves on the steering committee of the Institute for Social Inclusion at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.

link for live and archived video https://youtube.com/live/CHwyRtrjmt8?feature=share

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.

February 12, 2026

Poem: What Do I Know About Grief

What Do I Know About Grief

What do I know about grief

or how Death would follow me
like a determined lover,

taking first my mother, father, sister,

my best friend of forty-two years?

Then my husband.

How his bony finger
would point at the next person.

Once, I walked into a spider web

and I think grief is like that —

it catches in your hair and your lashes.

My friend’s husband died after a short and brutal illness.

They were as close as two spoons.
When he died, she told me she had always been happy

just to be in their apartment with him,

that even passing him in the hallway felt like an act of love.

In the weeks after my husband died,

in the months waterlogged with tears,

I thought I would not survive, but gradually

I began to imagine that he came back to visit me.

A shadow in the corner of the room,

a presence sitting in a chair beside me,

though, of course, he could never stay long.

I am comforted by his ghost self.

I am sure he is telling me that he is content

in that other world where I cannot touch him.

I am grateful there is a door

through which he can pass to visit me,

even for a moment, his ghost hand on my cheek.

by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

January 21, 2026

Maria Gillan Judges the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize 2025

Congratulations to Jeff Walt for earning the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize 2025, and to Steve McDonald and Pat Owen for earning second and third places. The 2025 entries were judged by Maria Mazziotti Gillan.

The award ceremony will be held April 21, 2026t atop of the San Diego Public Library, downtown.

For information see The Steve Kowit Poetry Prize – San Diego Poetry Annual