Italian American Writers Reading and Panel Discussion at Hofstra University

Italian American Writers Search for Home
Reading and Panel Discussion
1:15 - 2:30 p.m.
Hofstra University
143 Mack Student Center, North Campus
Hempstead, NY

Maria Mazziotti Gillan will chair a panel with author Rachel Guido DeVries, Fred Gardaphe of The John D. Calandra Italian American Institute and Josephine Gattuso Hendin of New York University.

Documentary Screening at Hofstra University

All That Lies Between Us

A Documentary on the Life and Work

of Poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Written, Produced and Directed by

Kevin Carey and Mark Hillringhouse

Friday, November 30  

2:45 – 4:00 p.m.           Free

Hofstra University, Plaza Room West, Mack Student Center, North Campus
Hempstead, NY

After the film, Kevin Carey will chair a panel with Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Mark Hillringhouse, and Anthony Julian Tamburri of The John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.


See the movie trailer for All That Lies Between Us, and listen to Crows of Paterson, a song from the movie, written and performed by Bob Evans.

Maria Gillan Reminisces About Her Childhood Radio Memories and Poetry

Andrew Fielding interviewed Maria Gillan this month for his online radio program. They talked about her poetry, but also about the radio programs which were a part of her childhood.

Maria read a radio-related poem, “I Grew Up with Tom Mix" from her collection The Place I Call Home.  

The interview is available online at luckystrikepapers.com [45 minutes; audio copyright Radio Once More]

Andrew Fielding has written for The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Providence Journal, The Philadelphia Daily News, Horizon Magazine, and other publications. He has also worked as a radio talk show host in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New Jersey. Currently, he is the host of a weekly talk show on the Old-Time Radio and nostalgia-oriented Internet radio station Radio Once More. His book about early television, The Lucky Strike Papers, was published in December, 2007 by BearManor Media.

Poem: I Grew Up with Tom Mix

Here is the poem that Maria read on Andrew Fielding's radio program.

I Grew Up with Tom Mix

I grew up with Tom Mix

and Roy Rogers,

Hopalong Cassidy,

the Lone Ranger and Tonto.

The good guys always were wore

white hats so it was easy to tell them 

from the bad guys.  Little boys had cap

guns and six shooters with holsters. 

Some of the boys

even wore cowboy vests and boots. 

We believed the story.  We listened

to the brown counter top radio,

made of imitation mahogany tan netting

over its speakers.  We’d pull kitchen chairs

up to the counter on the built in china closet,

and in the kitchen, heated by a huge black iron

coal stove, we’d listen to the programs.

We had to imagine their horses, their white hats,

miles of open space and mountain ranges we

had never seen, our imaginations filling in the

gaps left by whatever we didn’t know,

 the places we’d never been.

The radio let us leave behind that Paterson

apartment, transported us to the great valleys 

of the West, to covered wagons, the saloons,

the shootouts on dirty, unpaved streets. 

Our real world had boundaries built by my

Italian parents and the streets 

we were allowed to travel, 

the Riverside Oval on one end and Fourth

Avenue and Mastalia’s grocery store 

and Burkes’s candy store on the other, 

and in between, the children we played

with each day. But huddled near the radio 

we could go anywhere, be anyone,

imagine lives

so different from our own, exciting 

and dangerous, where at the end of each

program we knew no hero we loved 

and admired ever died.  

copyright 2012, The Place I Call Home, NYQ Books.

 

Live Radio Interview Tonight

Tune in tonight at 9:30 to the LIVE Show with host Andrew Fielding on www.radiooncemore.com.

Maria will read from her new book and talk about old-time radio--shows she listened to as a child, like The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy.

At the top of the home page, click on the "Live 365" link to hear the station.  An archived version of the program will be avaialble later and linked from this blog.

IT'S A PARTY FOR MARIA!!!

Publication Celebration for The Place I Call Home has been rescheduled for:

Thursday, December 6

at 7 p.m.

at the Montclair Public Library in the Auditorium. 

The Library is located at 50 South Fullerton Ave. in Montclair. 

This free event will be followed by an Open Reading. 

For more info, contact the Library at 973-744-0500

or Smita Desai at 973-684-6555. 

Poets Who Edit On the Page and On the Stage at Harvard University

 

Poets Who Edit - On the Page and On the Stage,
a free poetry reading event featuring poets Maria Mazziotti Gillan
and Vivian Shipley

Sunday, November 11th
3 pm at Harvard University's Yenching Library (Common Room 136, 2 Divinity Avenue in Cambridge - off Kirkland, near Memorial Hall)

Contact: info@nepoetryclub.org - 617-744-6034

Maria Gillan in the News at Binghamton University

Excerpted from the article "Documentary examines life of professor/poet" by Meghan Perri on the Binghamton.edu/inside/ website about the documentary "All That Lies Between Us".

Maria Mazziotti Gillan, professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program at Binghamton University, was followed by filmmakers Kevin Carey, professor of writing at Salem State University, and Mark Hillringhouse, professor of English at Passaic County Community College, for more than a year. She was filmed teaching classes, reading poetry, and revisiting Paterson, where she grew up.

“The filmmakers took me to the house I was born in, the house I lived in after that, my high school, and the factory where my father worked,” Gillan said. “Paterson is very important to me. My formative years were spent there. It influenced a lot of my stories.”

“When I look back, I realize how lucky I was to have a loving, supportive family,” Gillan said. “When I told my mother I wanted to be a writer, she thought I was crazy and would make no money, but she went out with the two cents she made sewing at the factory and bought me a typewriter in a pink case. She supported me even when she was afraid it was a very impractical ambition.”

At 13 years old, Gillan published her first poem. Since then, she has written 15 books of poetry, has co-written four anthologies with her daughter, and has won numerous awards including the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Awards and the 2008 American Book Award. The documentary celebrates these successes, as well as details the ways in which Gillan has given back to the city where it all began for her.

Carey said that the idea for the film came to him and Hillringhouse years ago when they attended Gillan’s poetry workshops and found themselves inspired.

“Maria had done so much for me personally and was such an important force in the poetry world at large,” Carey said. “I would describe the film as a documentary about the life of a poet, what made her who she was, the life she’s built around her poetry, and the influence she’s had on other poets.”

Leslie Heywood, a Binghamton University creative writing professor interviewed in the film, said that she, too, is inspired by Gillan.

“She has an amazing body of work that grabs readers in the most powerful ways through its specificity, through the way it invokes people’s daily lives and gives them meaning,” Heywood said. “Her work is about how we live and why, what we do to each other and ourselves, and how, ultimately we can be stronger ourselves and more generous to others. The movie captures all these things about her life and work, and is a fitting tribute to the poet we all know and love so well.”

Despite the occasionally dark subject matter, Gillan says that she is an optimist and hopes that her work will help bridge the gap between people.

“We are all human. We all feel grief. We feel joy. We feel love,” she said. “Nothing makes me happier than having someone write to me from Montana and telling me that they read my poem, and it reminds them of something in their life. I’ve never been to Montana, and we could be from two different situations in life, but somehow my poems reach across that boundary to them.”

Not content to stop with Paterson, Gillan has also left her mark on Binghamton University. She established the Binghamton Center for Writers, one of the centers of excellence at the university, and the Writing Life Series, which brings in editors to help students and faculty get their work published. She also created the Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Award and the Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Book Award, awards that have encouraged acclaimed authors like Jonathan Franzen to read at the university.

With all this, Gillan still finds time to teach graduate and undergraduate classes and counts teaching students among her greatest successes.

“I love teaching. The students are the best and most rewarding part of my job,” she said. “They are very open and not arrogant. I love the way they keep in touch with me after they graduate.”

Gillan will read from her latest book The Place I Call Home at Binghamton at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, November 13 in Science 1, room 149.

Maria Gillan and Vivian Shipley to Read at Harvard University

Sunday, November 11

MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLAN

VIVIAN SHIPLEY

Poets who edit: On the Page and On the Stage

Harvard University

Yenching Library

Common Room 136

2 Divinity Avenue

Cambridge (off Kirkland, near Memorial Hall)

3 PM

Free

Contact: info@nepoetryclub.org      617-744-6034

Poetry Events Rescheduled Due to Hurricane Sandy

The November 3 Publication Celebration of PLR #40 originally scheduled at 1 p.m. in Paterson
and the 10 a.m. workshops that day by Maria Gillan & M. L. Liebler will not take place. New dates will be posted.


Also, Maria's reading to celebrate her new book, The Place I Call Home, scheduled for tonight, Thursday, November 1, at the Montclair Public Library will also be postponed.