Best Poetry Writing Books of All Time

The website mostrecommendedbooks.com set a goal to find the best poetry writing books according to the internet (not just their or one random person's opinion). Included in their top six books is Maria Mazziotti Gillan's Writing Poetry to Save Your Life. Her craft book is used by poets and teachers of poetry and combines Gillan's personal story about her journey as a writer with her suggestions for writers at all stages of development. 

The voice in this book is the voice of a friend who sits with you in a warm kitchen sipping espresso or a cup of herbal tea, while offering support and encouragement. It is designed to help you find the stories you have to tell and the words to tell them. It is based on the belief that when you find the courage to explore your memories, you will find the source for evocative writing. 

Writing Poetry to Save Your Life is a book about the writing process rather than about the craft of writing. It can be used in classrooms, by writer's groups, or by an individual while writing at home or in a coffee shop. This book will encourage you to write, and in the process, will give you confidence, help you overcome writer's block, and silence the critical voice of the being Gillan calls "The Crow." It will jumpstart your creativity, and give you permission to use the power of words to save your life.

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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.

2024 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award Winners

Honoring Allen Ginsberg’s contribution to American literature and his Paterson upbringing, this annual poetry competition awards the first prize of $2000, the second prize of $1000,

and the third prize of $500 for a single poem.

FIRST PRIZE

Mark Hillringhouse, Verona, NJ “Giving Away All My Books”

Colleen Michaels, Beverly, MA “Round Table”

SECOND PRIZE

Jennifer Martelli, Marblehead, MA “Auntie’s Sliced Pear”

Jason Craig Poole, South Orange, NJ “Sentence”

THIRD PRIZE

R. Bremner, Glen Ridge, NJ “I was a young child, then”

Cindy Veach, Snoqualmie, WA “Drop Leaf Table”

A reading for the award will be held Fall 2024 at The Poetry Center at PCCC.

Download a complete list of the winners, Editor’s Choice, and Honorable Mention poems and poets

Guidelines for Submissions for the 2025 Award

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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 Gillan Talks and Reads from 'When the Stars Were Still Visible'

A video from the Planet Poet-Words in Space podcast with Sharon Israel from January 2022 featuring Maria Mazziotti Gillan.

Maria is a poet, teacher, artist, and the visionary founder of the renowned Poetry Center at the Passaic Community College in Paterson, N.J.. Here she speaks and reads from her new book, When the Stars Were Still Visible.

On When the Stars Were Still Visible
“… It is as if this book rose out of an alchemist’s compound comprised of Calabrian limestone and the cement of the back stoop on 17th Street in Paterson, New Jersey, where Mazziotti Gillan grew up. By the end of this poignant and resonant book, the poet accepts her double heritage with all its pain and obstacles and with all its beauty and grace.” 

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.

Finding Ourselves and the Poetry of Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Poet Anna Citrino has written an online essay, "Finding Ourselves and the Poetry of Maria Mazziotti Gillan." 

The essay begins"
"While looking for new ideas for teaching poetry this past week, I discovered a wonderful writer, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, an Italian American poet whose poetry recreates scenes with such vivid detail that you are literally inside the setting with her, living what it is she relates. In her poem, “My Daughter at 14: Christmas Dance,” Gillan puts the reader directly into the scene and the mind of a mother’s discussion with her daughter about her daughter’s experience at a dance. You feel the tension the mother experiences in wanting to support her daughter as at age 14, she learns to navigate emotions and relationships. While reading, you’re firmly aware of the difficulty and tension the mother experiences as she walks the line between affirming and cautioning her daughter..."

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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: Everything We Don't Want Them to Know.

Poet George Bilgere has started a website called Poetry Town with a daily poem along with an image that complements the poem and a bit about why he likes the poem.

For June 23, George selected Maria Gillan's poem "Everything We Don't Want Them to Know." His comment on the poem: "Novelists work in vast, open vistas, whole prairies of pages. Poets work in their tiny Dutch gardens, where a lot has to happen in very little space. This need for compression can lead to wonderful moments, where jarringly different realities are forced to exist side by side, as here: the speaker’s daughter was “married / in a fairy-tale wedding, divorced…” A whole marriage fails inside a comma. Barely a heartbeat between the dream and the disaster. More than anything we want to protect our kids from the world. But…it’s the world. There’s nowhere else to live."

Everything We Don’t Want Them to Know

From What We Pass On: Collected Poems 1980–2009

At eleven, my granddaughter looks like my daughter

did, that slender body, that thin face, the grace

with which she moves. When she visits, she sits

with my daughter; they have hot chocolate together

 and talk. The way my granddaughter moves her hands,

the concentration with which she does everything,

knocks me back to the time when I sat with my daughter

at this table and we talked and I watched the grace

with which she moved her hands, the delicate way

she lifted the heavy hair back behind her ear.

My daughter is grown now, married

in a fairy-tale wedding, divorced, something inside

 

her broken, healing slowly. I look at my granddaughter

and I want to save her, as I was not able

to save my daughter. Nothing is that simple,

all our plans, carefully made, thrown into a cracked

pile by the way love betrays us.

 

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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.