Women’s / Trans’ Poetry Jam & Open Mike

Women’s / Trans’ Poetry Jam & Open Mike

Bluestockings Bookstore

172 Allen St., New York City

$5 suggested donation

Tuesday Feb 25th 7pm – 9pm 
Featured Writers: Maria Mazziotti Gillan & Lisa Marie Basile

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is the Founder and Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She is also the Director of the Creative Writing Program and Professor of Poetry at Binghamton University-SUNY. Maria has published fifteen books of poetry. In her new book, The Place I Call Home (NYQ Books), she paints wonderful pictures of her life via her narrative poems that will make you laugh and cry and experience every emotion in between.

Lisa Marie Basile has recently released a chapbook entitled, “triste: mourning poems” from Dancing Girl Press. The work is a diary entry-like collection of poetic stories, notes and epistolary pieces about people that have vanished or won’t vanish. She is an assistant editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal and a contributor to Thethepoetry. She also is a managing member of the Poetry Society of New York, which produces the Annual NYC poetry Festival.

Bluestockings Bookstore is a bookstore, fair trade cafe, and activist center in the Lower East Side of Manhattan at 172 Allen St. (between Staton & Rivington) in  New York City.     http://www.bluestockings.com

There will also be an open mike, so bring your poetry, prose, songs or spoken word.

'The Place I Call Home' Reviewed by The Pedestal Magazine

Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest collection, The Place I Call Home (NYQ Books) was recently reviewed by CL Bledsoe on The Pedestal Magazine.

"In these fifty-two poems, Gillan chronicles the life of an Italian immigrant girl, presumably herself, the child of immigrants who worked and sacrificed to give her and her siblings a better life. Gillan’s collection is a meditation on home, whether the home of her childhood, the home of her married life, or the home she lives in now. Location is an important element, but the people who share the home are the true glue Gillan focuses on. She begins with “That Sound Carries Me toward Childhood,” a meditation on her mother’s voice: “It is dark. I swear I hear my mother calling, though it is/ fifteen years since she died and more than fifty years/ since we lived in the 17th Street apartment that I think of/ when I think of my childhood….” Gillan paints a vivid portrait of her childhood home, its garden full with “corn stalks taller/ than any of us, its vines heavy with tomatoes, the air/ tangy with herbs, rosemary, oregano, and mint and the tart/ aroma of zucchini and eggplant." She describes capturing fireflies, eating homemade snacks, listening to radio programs, and playing games. All of these things Gillan describes no longer exist; as she explicitly states, the mentioned family members are all dead, but they live on in her memory. Even though there’s pain and loss in these memories, there’s also hope and joy. As Gillan states in “My Mother Used to Wash My Hair,” she is still surprised by beauty, “the broken world/ still filled with so much surprising grace.” Her hope and salvation walk hand-in-hand with her poetic spirit..."

continue reading

2013 Inaugural Poem

For the text and video of the inaugural poem by Richard Blanco, go to Poetsonline.

Reading By Winners of the 2012 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards February 2

The winners of the 2012 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards will be featured at a reading on Saturday, February 2, 2013 at 1 p.m. at the Hamilton Club Building, 32 Church Street, Paterson, NJ. The reading is free and open to the public. (directions)

The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College has received a "Citation of Excellence" from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in 2011, as well as being named a "Distinguished Arts Project" several times over the years by the Council.

Over the years, the Poetry Center has been accorded international recognition for many of its activities including the Distinguished Poets Series, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Paterson Fiction Prize, and the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People.

The annual Paterson Literary Review, the monthly New Jersey Poetry Calendar and the New Jersey Poetry Resource Book are also published by the Poetry Center. 

Prior to the reading, poetry workshops will be held from 10 a.m. – noon with poets Joe Weil & Jim Reese. There is a $15 fee and pre-registration is required. Please send a check for $15 payable to "Passaic County Community College" (memo: "Poetry Center") and indicate your first choice of a workshop leader. Mail to: The Poetry Center, PCCC, One College Blvd.,Paterson, NJ 07505-1179. Note: there will be a bounced check fee of $50 for checks returned for insufficient funds. Sorry, no refunds on workshop fees.

2013 Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco

Watch Richard Blanco's reading at yesterday's Inauguration on YouTube.

In the days leading up to the big event, the Academy of American Poets staff spoke with Blanco.

Poets.org: The theme of this Inauguration is "Our People, Our Future." How might the poem you will offer help explore or speak to this theme?

Blanco: The theme was something I immediately connected with. In my writing I focus mostly on my immediate family, but because I'm Cuban, that means a lot of people. My family is big. There's plenty to write about...

Read the full interview, Blanco's bio and a new selection of his poetry on Poets.org. 

The 2013 Inaugural Poet, Richard Blanco, shown here
with Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Patricia Smith at a reading at
the Poetry Center on December 8, 2012.

Cape Cod Writers Center announces key note speakers and faculty for summer conference

Maria Mazziotti Gillan will be among the faculty at the Cape Cod Writers Center's summer conference to be held August 4 - 9, 2013 at the Resort and Conference Center of Hyannis.  To sign up or for more details, see the conference website.   

February Poetry Workshops at the Poetry Center at PCCC

On February 2, 2013, the winners of the 2012 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards will be the featured readers at 1 p.m. at the Hamilton Club Building, 32 Church Street, Paterson, NJ. The reading is free and open to the public.

Prior to the reading, poetry workshops will be held from 10 a.m. – noon with poets Joe Weil & Jim Reese. There is a $15 fee and pre-registration is required. Please send a check for $15 payable to "Passaic County Community College" (memo: "Poetry Center") and indicate your first choice of a workshop leader. Mail to: The Poetry Center, PCCC, One College Blvd.,Paterson, NJ 07505-1179. Note: there will be a bounced check fee of $50 for checks returned for insufficient funds. Sorry, no refunds on workshop fees.

Maria Interviewed on Cover to Cover

Maria Gillan spoke with Jack Foley for his Cover to Cover radio program on KPFA about the life of the poet, editor and teacher while she was on her recent West Coast reading tour to promote The Place I Call Home (NYQ Books).

Barbara Stewart wrote in The New York Times that Mazziotti Gillan “is an immensely energetic and devoted doer in the arts, especially poetry. All over Paterson, and in much of New Jersey, she finds poets and pulls them into the readings...[She] was born and grew up in Paterson, moved away and came home. Now she cultivates for others what she loves best.”

“I don't like poems that are solely intellectual exercises,” says Maria. “I think you should write out of your own background and life. Don't neaten it up. What poetry needs is to be un-neatened.”

Her interview will be presented in two parts on January 23 and the 30th on KPFA at 3 pm and these shows will be available in the archive later.

Maria Gillan to Read at Cornelia Street Cafe on MLK Day

NYQ Books will feature a reading with Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Iris Lee and Maria Nazos on Monday, January 21, 2013 at the Cornelia Street Cafe , 29 Cornelia Street, NYC.

Maria will read from her new book, The Place I Call Home and What We Pass On:  Collected Poems 1980 - 2009. 

Visit Cornelia Street Cafe  for more details and a list of performances. The $8 cover charge gets you a free drink.

Maria Gillan Donates Poetry Collection to Seton Hall's Walsh Library

Maria Mazziotti Gillan, a Seton Hall Alumni, recently donated 386 new books of poetry to the circulating collection at the Walsh Library.

All of the books are contemporary American poetry from the past three years and are titles the poet has accumulated from judging contests.

“As long as I’m judging contests I will continue to donate books to that collection,” Gillan said.

Gillan attended Seton Hall University as an English major and she says that the opportunities provided at Seton Hall gave her solid foundation to her career. She hopes the collection of books may do the same for aspiring writers.

“If you’re going to write, you have to read. You have to read everything that you can get your hands on,” Gillan said.

Source: www.thesetonian.com

Richard Blanco Is 2013 Inaugural Poet

On December 8, Richard Blanco read in the Poetry Center's Distinguished Poets Series with Patricia Smith.  Four days later Richard learned that he would be the 2013 Inaugural Poet, joining the ranks of notables like Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. 

Today the news was made official. See The NY Times article, Poet’s Kinship With the President. Congratulations Richard!  Well deserved!