The Dodge Poetry Festival is the largest poetry event in North America. Paterson-based poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan was a featured reader at the four-day festival in October 2018 in Newark, NJ.
Maria is the force behind the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College, and the author of more than 20 books of and about poetry. Her poems are about her life, including her strong memories of childhood in Paterson’s Italian immigrant community. She likes to talk about the “cave,” that place of memories and feelings inside us all that the best poetry takes us back to.
Producer Susan Wallner spoke to Maria Mazziotti Gillan at her home in Hawthorne, a suburb of Paterson.
The Jersey Arts Podcast covers New Jersey’s vibrant arts and entertainment scene.Discover Jersey Arts was co-founded by, and is currently supported by funds from, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Additional support for JerseyArts.com content is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
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.