Maria in the historic Hamilton Club building
that houses the Poetry Center
In an interview, Maria Mazziotti Gillan reflected on reactions when she first proposed that a poetry center belonged at Passaic County Community College. Located in the heart of Paterson, New Jersey, the city has a rich history of poetry, including Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams and Maria Gillan herself.
"When I first started there were a lot of complaints claiming that a community college didn’t need to cover cultural affairs, have art galleries, a Poetry Center, or host community events like a Kids’ Poetry contest or a theater program.I had to fight every step of the way for a budget to support these programs, but I was determined to bring poetry and poets to Paterson and to also offer community programs in art, music, and theater. I’ve been doing that ever since the 1980s.Part of our mission has been to bring the arts to everyone. In the realm of poetry, I wanted to counter the trend in universities toward the production of esoteric poems. I went through that phase in school, and it prevented me from telling my story. I encourage people to write down-to-earth poems with clear language and clear emotion. This raw honesty helps build a broad, popular audience for poetry and helps people not feel that they are excluded from poetry or the arts more generally because they’re too poor or not educated enough."
Maria's accomplishments in Paterson include:
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.
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