Each day brings its own images

In “Driving into the Dark Sky,” Maria Gillan writes about her ill husband:

I am ashamed that I drive faster
and faster to escape the image of you with your lost
frightened eyes, your hands that can no longer hold
a piece of toast or a cookie, your head so bent it is like an iris
with a broken stalk. I am ashamed
at how hard I try to leave you behind.

Gillan read her poetry this month in South Dakota as part of the Great Plains Writers’ Tour. Jim Reese, an associate professor of English at Mount Marty College, brought Gillan there in 2008 after she had received the American Book Award. She also visited the writing program at the Yankton Federal Prison.

“Twenty minutes into her reading and talk on craft, she had the men in tears,” Reese says. “She makes you go to places and relive emotions that you’ve had hidden in your head. That is the goal I give my students at the prison camp. I want them to come to terms with the emotional instabilities that brought them to prison.”

Maria recalls that visit, her first time speaking in a prison.

“I was nervous before, wondering how they would respond, but they just wrote fantastic poems for me,” she says. “They were very brave in what they wrote.”

Maria's two new poetry collections deal with the courage it takes to look at hard stories in our lives.

In Ancestors' Song, she particularly writes about the women in her life, what they teach one another and what they pass on to their children - intentionally and unintentionally.

In The Silence in an Empty House, she writes about her husband's 25-year-long illness and her own grief after his death, as well as fears and guilt that she didn't do as much as she might have when he was ill. The poet also deftly mixes into the collection poems about the destruction of our natural world, such as the BP Gulf oil spill in 2010.

Loss comes in many forms in the poems.

“When I was a kid we lived in a ghetto, a very immigrant community in Paterson (N.J.), but we would go out when snow fell and my mother would scoop it up, put a little espresso in it, sprinkle a little sugar on it, and that was our ice cream. You couldn’t do it now, not here. The sky’s too polluted. I can remember looking up at the stars in the sky in Paterson, so many of them. Now you can’t see them at all. I think you can still see the stars in South Dakota, but not in New Jersey, and that’s a loss for all of us.”

As she writes in "Leaving New Jersey and Autumn Behind":

...Each day brings
its own images. How grateful I must
remember to be., to hold
so much in my hands.

More: Poet's work tracks 'trajectory of my life'

Thanksgiving, mothers, food, and unspoken love

From the blog of J. P. Bohannon, click here for some heartfelt words about Maria's new book, Ancestors' Song and to read her poem, "Conjuring Up My Mother." 

December Readings in NYC

Thursday, December 12, 2013 6:30 PM

MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLAN

and

CONNIE McPARLAND

Italian American Museum

155 Mulberry Street

New York, NY 10013

Contact: 416-576-9403     conniemcparland@guernicaeditions.com

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Monday, December 16, 2013 6 PM

New York Quarterly Poetry Reading

AMANDA J. BRADLEY

MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLAN

TONY GLOEGGLER

The Cornelia Street Café

29 Cornelia Street

New York, NY 10014

Contact: 212-989-9319

http://corneliastreetcafe.com

Poem: "What Animals Teach Us" by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

From The Silence in an Empty House   (NYQ Books, 2013)

Crows of Paterson

At Bogart's, a bookstore in Millville, NJ, Bob Evans performs the song, "Crows of Paterson," which he wrote for the film documentary of Maria's life and work, "All That Lies Between Us."  The film is written, produced and directed by Kevin Carey and Mark Hillringhouse.  

 To listen to "Crows of Paterson," click here.

Maria in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader

Maria shared her poems at a prison and two colleges during her recent visit to South Dakota. For more on the prison workshop, click here.

Poem: 'What If' by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

From The Silence in an Empty House   (NYQ Books, 2013)

Maria Mazziotti Gillian's 'Ancestor’s Song'

Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s Ancestors' Song (Bordighera Press) takes the reader on a journey, one in which she recognizes deep within herself “the voices of the women who came before,” their words blending together, forming, as she tells the reader, “the beat I move to.” This beat is very much a part of the narrative she weaves in her characteristic honest, intimate, humorous voice. This beat is true, hard working, strong; a beat that began in the villages on the mountaintops in San Mauro, Italy, and continues to the present day, illuminating the path for those that will follow.

Based in New York City, Bordighera Press has an international presence as the foremost publisher of Italianità in North America. Bordighera Press has been a non-profit publisher of Italian-American literature since 1989, publishing works spanning award-winning poetry and prose to groundbreaking scholarship and research.

These poems will move you to laughter, to tears, and a mixture of both, and are proof that Gillan is at the peak of her career. She is truly one of America’s most beloved poets.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is a recipient of the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions). She is the founder /executive director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She is also director of the Binghamton Center for Writers and the creative writing program, and professor of poetry at Binghamton University-SUNY. She has published 18 books, including: What We Pass On: Collected Poems 1980-2009 (Guernica Editions), The Place I Call Home and The Silence in an Empty House (NYQ Books) and Writing Poetry to Save Your Life: How to Find the Courage to Tell Your Stories (MiroLand, Guernica). With her daughter Jennifer, she is co-editor of four anthologies.

Spotlight on Maria!

Maria is the Geraldine R. Dodge Poet of the Day!

Click here for an interview and poetry by Maria.

Book Launch and Film Screening at the Calandra Institute

On Thursday, November 14 at the Calandra Institute on W. 43rd Street in Manhattan, Maria read poems and signed copies of her new book, Ancestors' Song, which was released by Bordighera Press earlier this month.  

The audience was also treated to a screening of a documentary film of her life and work, entitled "All That Lies Between Us," written, produced, and directed by Kevin Carey and Mark Hillringhouse (pictured below at the table with Maria).

Ancestors' Song can be purchased at amazon.com,  b&n.com, and spd.com.

All That Lies Between Us Screening in Montclair November 24

Sunday, November 24

All That Lies Between Us

A documentary film on the life and work of Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Salvation Army Citadel

13 Trinity Place, Montclair

3 PM

$15 - $10 Students & Seniors

Contact: Donato DiGeronimo 973-809-9586

Poem: "All His Life My Father Worked in Factories"

All His Life My Father Worked in Factories

Or mills as we called them, back when Paterson
was the silk capital of the USA and was known as Silk City.
When my father was thirty he had a large tumor on his spine,
and after the doctors at St. Joseph’s removed it
he spent three months in the hospital and then a year
at home. He couldn’t work and wouldn’t let my mother apply


for welfare so we lived for a year on $300, and while $300
in 1943 was a lot more than it is now, it still wasn’t enough
for a family of five to live on. We ate spaghetti and farina
and my mother’s homemade bread every day. When my mother
was dying, she worried that the year without money –
when she couldn’t give my sister five cents to buy milk in school –
was why my sister got rheumatoid arthritis at thirty, a disease
that progressed, eventually invading her lungs and eyes.


After the surgery my father had a limp that became gradually
worse as he grew older. He was no longer strong enough
to lift heavy rolls of silk, so he got a job as a janitor
in Central High School and when that became too much
for him, he took a job as a person who watched the pressure
gauges on steam boilers to make sure they didn’t explode.
All his life, my father walked, dragging that dead leg behind him.


All his life, he worked menial jobs, though he did income taxes
each year for half the Italians in Riverside by reading
the two hundred page income tax book, and he could add,
multiply and divide in his head faster than an adding machine.
He was fascinated by politics and read news magazines
and newspapers, and knew the details of world crises and war.


When I was a girl, I worked in factories during the summers
and I moaned and complained about how boring it was,
how dusty and tiring, how I’d shoot myself if I had to do this job
for one more day, and I think of my father with his sharp intelligence,
forced each day for fifty years to work eight hours a day at jobs
so repetitive they would have bored a mouse, and the way
he never complained, never said I can’t do this anymore.

by Maria Gillan

Maria Gillan Readings in South Dakota

The Department of English and Journalism at Augustana College in Sioux Falls  presents "An Evening of Poetry with Maria Mazziotti Gillan," at 7 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 18, in Humanities Center, room 123.

The event is free and open to the public.

For information, http://www.augie.edu/events/2013-11-18/evening-poetry-maria-mazziotti-gillan 

Next, Maria will be reading her poetry as part of Great Plains Writer Tour at Mount Marty College. Located on the bluffs of the Missouri River, Mount Marty College is a private, Catholic, Benedictine co-educational liberal arts college located in Yankton, South Dakota, a town of 15,000 people.

Maria will be giving a reading and book signing on November 19 from 7 – 8 p.m. in the Marian Auditorium on the on the Mount Marty College campus.

Earlier that day, Maria will also be conducting a workshop at a South Dakota prison.

Maria will also teach a writers' workshop at Mount Marty College on November 20 from 5:30 - 7:30 pm on "The Poet Within: Poetry of Memory and Place."

Maria Gillan at Film Screening and Book Launch November 14 in New York City

Thursday, November 14, 2013, 6 pm

Film Screening and Book Launch

All That Lies Between Us (2013), 55 min.

by Kevin Carey and Mark Hillringhouse, filmmakers.

Ancestor's Song

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

This presentation features Maria Mazziotti Gillan reading from her forthcoming collection of poetry, Ancestor’s Song, along with a screening of Kevin Carey and Mark Hillringhouse’s documentary about Gillan, All That Lies Between Us.

Blending interviews, poetry, photography, and music, the film is a moving account of Gillan’s life and work. An award-winning author and poet, Gillan’s upbringing in an Italian-American community in Paterson, New Jersey, inspired much of her writing and led her to establish innovative literary ventures in that city, including the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College.

All events are free and open to the public. The John D. Calandra Italian American Institute is at 25 W. 43rd Street, 17th floor (between 5th & 6th Avenues) in New York. RSVP by calling 212-642-2094. Please note that seating is limited and we cannot reserve seats.

For further information, see http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/calandra/ The Calandra Institute is a university institute under the aegis of Queens College.