Maria at the Great Fall of Paterson
Photo: Mark Hillringhouse
Maria Mazziotti Gillan was interviewed by Arianne Bakelmun for Visions, the newspaper of Passaic County Community College, just before her retirement as Executive Director of the Poetry Center.
This is a second excerpt from "A Fireside Chat on Legacy: From Immigrant Roots to the Retirement of Maria Mazziotti Gillan."
This is a second excerpt from "A Fireside Chat on Legacy: From Immigrant Roots to the Retirement of Maria Mazziotti Gillan."
From her first secretary, who didn’t know the alphabet, to another who refused to sit and would do the entirety of the job standing, Maria reminisces on the humble beginnings of her Poetry Center.
At first, she was afforded just five work-study students in lieu of employees. She speaks lovingly about how it expanded to a crew of employees, including Alin Papazian’s handling the grants, Jane Hall’s work as Art Gallery Coordinator, and Susan Amsterdam’s Theater and Poetry Project.
The Theater and Poetry Project was an entity unto itself, putting on forty theater performances a year. Maria finds meaning in having done this for the children of Paterson.
MMG: I grew up here. [As an adult, returning,] I thought this is no different. It’s worse than when I was here growing up, where there were no extra-curricular activities. There were no field trips, no trips to the theater.
Money limited the options for families in Paterson. So, Maria started the theater program with grants that made its magic accessible.
MMG: [When I was thirteen] I had a cousin who went to school in New York and worked at NBC. And she got tickets for South Pacific and took me for my birthday. And when we got in the theater, they turned the lights down and they turned the lights on the stage. All of a sudden, I thought, there's another life! There's a life that can be made of poetry, words, language, music! There's another life! And so, it really threw open a door. I always told her, you really saved my life when you did that. Because that might not have been important to you, but to me, at 13, it was very important.
,The Theater and Poetry Project lives on though Maria laments at the grants that have been cut, limiting the scope of their productions. In fact, she has some choice words and names names but cautions me with a laugh, “Don’t put that in!”
Maria and consultant Lisa Coll-Nicolaou have built the program back up, and they have now expanded into Jersey City and South Orange with goals of growing it in other counties.
Maria's legacy includes national and international projects including book awards, poetry contests, a magazine, and a YouTube channel. Maria was also at the helm of Paterson Literary Review.
MMG: I wanted it to be elegant. Paterson Literary Review sounds serious. I started the reading series first. I didn't have any money. So I would have my friends read for nothing. Doing me a favor. And then I got a grant from the state council in 1980 for $2,500
From there, she was able to hold contests with prizes and payment. As time went on, the readings included William Stafford, Lucille Clifton, Alan Ginsberg, and Amiri Baraka.
Maria is used to navigating this ebb and flow with her characteristic perseverance and humor. When she first started out she was sensible about her dreams.
MMG: I knew I could not be a poet unless I found a way to support myself. I wasn't so impractical that I thought I could just walk on a stage in New York City and be accepted. No! I knew I had to find a way to support myself, and I did work for Social Security Administration—boring job—for a year and a half. I was losing my mind. It was the only time in my life that I couldn't write. So I said, “You have to do something. You have to do something about this.” I saw an ad for a teaching job at Caldwell College. I called up, and I went for an interview, and I was so shy, I was so afraid. I mean, I went there, I was shaking, and they hired me! And I had never taught before.
Maria found that old styles of lecturing did not work for her. She arranged her class to sit in a circle to discuss ideas, books, and what struck them as important. The students loved her.
The symbolic circle of desks became a core tenet she repeated, later at SUNY-Binghamton University.
Here, the students wrote, “the most wonderful risk-taking poems. We would be crying. We would have to hand out tissues in class.”
Her inclusivity and making space for all voices remain essential to the Poetry Center to this day.
However, soon after marriage, she felt pressure to have children. She loves her children. Yet, to that pressure, today she would have said, “No, no, no!”
After just getting the grip on teaching, Maria had a hard time leaving her beloved job. Even when her children were babies, she wrote college review books as they napped and was published by Simon & Schuster.
MMG: I never stop. I mean, it's not like I'm ever going to just lie down and say, I'm not doing anything. Because I had a different idea of what I was going to do. It was scary to get back into teaching after being away so long.
Maria credits her mother-in-law with telling her, “You have nothing to be afraid of. You were a wonderful teacher. You'll be a wonderful teacher. Now, go, do what you have to do.”
Maria’s re-entry into teaching began with a high school class, the only time she’s ever hated teaching. So, she picked up jobs as an adjunct professor. At one point, she taught at eight different schools for very little money.
MMG: I would have done it for free to be honest. I really loved to teach. I've been very lucky. I love teaching, and I got to do it. I love writing and creating programs, and I got to do it. I love being a mother and a grandmother, and that's a lovely thing. I've been really, really fortunate. I love going to other countries to read my poetry. I love going to other states to read my poetry. I've been all over the United States and Europe reading my poems.
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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