The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College is presenting on Saturday, March 7, 2026, poetry workshops and readings by Barbara Crooker and Adele Kenny as part of their Distinguished Poets Series.
Registration is required for workshops. Coffee, tea, and a light breakfast will be provided for workshop participants. You can check registration availability by emailing Cynthia Pagan at the Poetry Center. Workshops are available for a fee of $20. In-person workshops will be held at the Poetry Center in Paterson from 10 AM to 12 PM.
Following their workshop, poets will give a reading. Poetry Center readings are always free and open to the public. These readings are recorded and archived for later viewing on the Poetry Center’s YouTube channel.
Barbara Crooker is author of twelve chapbooks and ten full-length books of poetry, including Some Glad Morning (Pitt Poetry Series, University of Pittsburgh Poetry Press), longlisted for the Julie Suk award from Jacar Press, The Book of Kells, which won the Best Poetry Book of 2019 Award from Poetry by the Sea, and Slow Wreckage (Grayson Books, 2024). Her other awards include Grammy Spoken Word Finalist, the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council fellowships in literature. Her work appears in literary journals and anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Her website is barbaracrooker.com
Adele Kenny is the author of 26 books (poetry and nonfiction). Her poems, reviews, and articles have been published in journals throughout the US and abroad, and her poems have appeared in books and anthologies published by Crown, Tuttle, Shambhala, and McGraw-Hill. She is the recipient of various awards, including two poetry fellowships from the NJ State Arts Council, a first-place Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, a Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and Kean University’s Distinguished Alumni Award. Her book, A Lightness… was a Paterson Poetry Prize finalist. A former creative writing professor (College of New Rochelle), she is the founding director of the Carriage House Poetry Series, poetry editor of Tiferet Journal, and has twice been a featured reader at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. her webiste is https://www.adelekenny.com/
Directions and parking information for the Poetry Center
The Poetry Center offers poetry writing workshops in-person and virtually in conjunction with the Distinguished Poets Reading Series. Over the years, distinguished poets have included poet laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, Inaugural poets and others of national and international reputation, such as Allen Ginsberg, William Stafford, Amiri Baraka, Lucille Clifton, Stanley Kunitz, Billy Collins, Marge Piercy, Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Kim Addonizio, Billy Collins, Dorianne Laux, Jan Beatty, Robert Sward, Patricia Smith, MartÃn Espada, Toi Derricotte and Richard Blanco.March 7, 2026 Barbara Crooker and Adele Kenny
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.
