Maria Gillan Goes Back to School 18

Maria Mazziotti Gillan returned to School 18 in Paterson, where she had been a student as a young girl, and met with students from the school's poetry club in 2016.

As covered by a reporter in "Gillan Poet's return to her Paterson school inspires heartfelt writing," she shared her memories of growing up a short, skinny, shy, poor immigrant kid on 17th Street in the 1950s.

Maria read her own emotional poems and students read their own poems aloud, some of them tearing up at times. “It means what you had to write is important,” Gillan told them.

“Who would want to listen to a poor immigrant?” she told the students. She was very shy and “didn't speak up until I was 40,” she said.

She told the students that her teachers at School 18 left their marks - some for the better, some not. One teacher showed she cared with a simple touch. “I always felt like I grew 10 feet when she touched my shoulder. And that's what a teacher can do for you.”

“Don't let anyone tell you you're limited by where you grew up,” she said.

PS 18

 

Public School #18: Paterson, New Jersey
by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Miss Wilson’s eyes, opaque
as blue glass, fix on me:
"We must speak English.
We’re in America now."
I want to say, "I am American,"
but the evidence is stacked against me.

My mother scrubs my scalp raw, wraps
my shining hair in white rags
to make it curl. Miss Wilson
drags me to the window, checks my hair
for lice. My face wants to hide.

At home, my words smooth in my mouth,
I chatter and am proud. In school,
I am silent, grope for the right English
words, fear the Italian word
will sprout from my mouth like a rose,

fear the progression of teachers
in their sprigged dresses,
their Anglo-Saxon faces.

Without words, they tell me
to be ashamed.
I am.
I deny that booted country
even from myself,
want to be still
and untouchable
as these women
who teach me to hate myself.

Years later, in a white
Kansas City house,
the Psychology professor tells me
I remind him of the Mafia leader
on the cover of Time magazine.

My anger spits
venomous from my mouth:

I am proud of my mother,
dressed all in black,
proud of my father
with his broken tongue,
proud of the laughter
and noise of our house.

Remember me, Ladies,
the silent one?
I have found my voice
and my rage will blow
your house down.


from  What We Pass On: Collected Poems: 1980-2009

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Maria's Official website MariaGillan.com

The Italian Diaspora Studies Program in Italy: A personal Account

This year, Maria Mazziotti Gillan taught in the Italian Diaspora Studies program in Calabria, Italy. It was such a success that it will be offered in an expanded version next year May 18-31, 2020. In a perfect travel season to visit southern Italy when spring is in full bloom, these sessions will be dedicated to writing, photography and watercolor painting, along with an Italian conversation class. information at ItalianDiasporaStudies.com

In La Voce di New York, Maria Lisella writes "Roots, Romance and Wisdom," a personal account of the 2019 program.

Text excerpts and photo by Maria Lisella

The Group - photo by Maria Lisella

...I told myself, how inviting would it be to take up residence for a week or two in one of the most beautifully preserved borghi in Italy, namely Morano Calabro and the enchanting agriturismo Torre de Albidona that overlooks the Ionian Sea?
From these locales, I might channel my memory, ancestral myths, tales of my grandmother, grandfather, or my parents who may have emigrated– if not from the region of Calabria, then another region of Italy or from another country. The distance from home might give me the space to wander with grief tucked away for a while.

Designed, organized and initiated by Professor Margherita Ganeri, a professor of Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Calabria in Rende, Cosenza, the program was described as “dedicated to Writing in Cultural Heritage and Memory.”Mornings were dedicated to writing or to presentations, followed by a wide array of local foods for lunch, and an excursion every afternoon...
The Italian Diaspora is little spoken of. In fact, hardly anyone thinks of Italians and the diaspora, but more commonly, of the Jewish or African-American Diasporas. Yet this group of 25 participants, Italians and/or hyphenated Italians and non-Italians came together to discover, learn, explore, divine their radici, roots, and transform those discoveries into novels, poems, memoirs, drawings, watercolors and stories. Surrounded by breathtaking Calabrese scenery, and hearing, even if not speaking in local dialects or modern Italian, are just some of the elements that made this experience so gratifying and enlightening—as some of the participants attested...

The seminal experience begins with the writing sessions during the first week. It was led by American Book award-winning poet, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, who has written 23 books of poetry and is the author of Writing Poetry to Save Your Life. Gillan is an extraordinary force in the Italian-American literary community and is known as a legendary teacher with an uncanny ability to trigger people’s instincts to tell their own stories. Participants shared their stories: what they knew, what they surmised. They arrived to demystify the myths, to get a feel for the place, to understand themselves. One tale after another revealed the complexity of the Italian Diaspora.

Gillan would preface the sessions with examples and short lectures followed by a series of prompts designed to tap intuition rather than intellect and poetry skills. Fueled by participants’ deep memory sources and storytelling, no participant left without at least a poem, short story or lead for a future project...

read the full article at La Voce di New York

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's most recent books are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow  and the poetry collection, What Blooms in Winter. Her collection of poems paired with some of her paintings is The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets. Her new artist website is at MariaMazziottiGillan.com. Maria's poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

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The Lace Tablecloth and the Patterns of Memory

This week on State of the Arts, "The Lace Tablecloth and the Patterns of Memory,"  features poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s work rooted in her childhood memories of Paterson.

This week on State of the Arts,from PCK Media on Vimeo.

State of the Arts goes on location with the most creative people in New Jersey… tune in every week on NJTV, WNET, and WHYY, and ALL ARTS.

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's most recent books are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow  and the poetry collection, What Blooms in Winter. Her collection of poems paired with some of her paintings is The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets. Her new artist website is at MariaMazziottiGillan.com. Maria's poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

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Poetry from Studio 47 with Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Poetry from Studio 47 is a weekly radio broadcast that airs on NPR affiliate, South Dakota Public Broadcasting. The show highlights poets and poetry from the Midwest, the Great Plains, and beyond. Each episode is roughly five minutes long and features poets and a poem. All poems are used with permission and the show is recorded live-to-tape at Studio 47, which is proudly housed at Augustana University.

Episode 10 features Maria Mazziotti Gillan (listen to program) and her poem "What I Can't Face About Someone I Love."

The program is hosted by Patrick Hicks is the author of over ten books, including The Collector of Names, Adoptable, Library of the Mind and the critically and popularly acclaimed novel, The Commandant of Lubizec.

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's most recent books are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow  and the poetry collection, What Blooms in Winter . Her collection of poems along with some of her paintings is The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets . Maria's official website is MariaGillan.com.

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Tribute for Maria Mazziotti Gillan in Rome, Italy

On May 5, 2017, there will be a tribute to the poetry and life of Maria Mazziotti Gillan held in Rome, Italy as part of The Words of Writers (Le parole delle scrittrici) program.

Maria Gillan is part of the Voices from Beyond Borders (Voci D'oltre Confini) series which also features the authors Doris Lessing and Marina Cvetaeva.

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan is the author of twenty-one books. Her latest publications are the poetry collection, What Blooms in Winter, and the poetry and art collection, The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets. Maria's official website is at MariaGillan.com.

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The Legacy of Confessionalism

In the essay, "A Defense of Train Wrecks: Lyric Narrative Poetry and the Legacy of Confessionalism," Dante Di Stefano examines how the "confessional" poem has evolved.

"Extraordinary poets such as Joe Weil, Denise Duhamel, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Ruth Stone, and Sharon Olds all write confessional poetry. None of these poets would claim to be a confessional poet, just as none of the confessional poets, with the exception of Anne Sexton, accepted the label. All of these poets possess great technical proficiency and a profound understanding of the literary tradition in which they write. More importantly, the confessions in the poems written by these poets do not separate the poet from common experience."

In examining Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s poem, “Daddy, We Called You,” he notes her "avowal and renewal" as the poet confesses:

One night, riding home from a date,
my middle class, American boyfriend
kissed me at the light; I looked up
and met your eyes as you stood at the corner
near Royal Machine. It was nearly midnight.
January. Cold and Windy. You were waiting
for the bus, the streetlight illuminating
your face. I pretended I did not see you,
let my boyfriend pull away, leaving you
on the empty corner waiting for the bus
to take you home. You never mentioned it,
never said that you knew
how often I lied about what you did for a living
or that I was ashamed to have my boyfriend see you,
find out about your second shift work, your broken English.

Di Stefano comments that "The denial of the father in this poem is a denial of self. By confessing the sin of shame for her father, the poet avows her love for him."

"There is a directness to Gillan’s poem that admits no posturing. By affirming her love of her father, by admitting the difference that he represented and of which she was ashamed, the poet reconnects the tissue that her denial severed. The autobiographical “I” in this poem is a universal “I,” channeling the experience of anyone who has denied their roots and disregarded their heritage, if only for a moment. Of the universality present in Gillan’s work, Joe Weil has commented: “All griefs are as unprecedented, as original as the whorls in our fingerprints, and yet certain poets are able to take the specific ceremonies of grief and loss and reenact them in such a way that they are meaningful to all who read their work.” As with all the best confessional poems, Gillan’s work bridges the particular with the universal."

Read the full essay at shenandoahliterary.org

 

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Maria's Official Site is at MariaGillan.com.  Her latest publication is the poetry and art collection, The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets.

New Jersey Is a Poetry State

New Jersey is a Poetry State and NJ poets Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Renée Ashley, Cat Doty, Kathleen Graber, Peter Murphy, James Richardson, Vincent Toro, BJ Ward, Joe Weil Gretna Wilkinson and three-time poet laureate Robert Pinsky shared the stage “Jersey Voices” – part of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival programming at NJPAC, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.

They follow in the footsteps of Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams (both from Paterson) and Walt Whitman in calling this Poetry State their home.

This video is from a feature story done for the program State of the Arts. It includes interviews with Maria Mazziotti Gillan and scenes from the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College.

Maria established the Poetry Center and has led its efforts in historic Paterson for over 35 years. Like the Dodge Poetry Festival, it’s a beloved hub of the poetry world rooted in New Jersey where internationally-known poets such as Billy Collins share the spotlight with new and rising poets from New Jersey and the nation.

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Maria's Official Site is at MariaGillan.com.  Her latest publication is the poetry and art collection, The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets.

State of the Arts: Poetry in New Jersey

The TV program, State of the Arts, talked to New Jersey natives Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Joe Weil, and three-time poet laureate Robert Pinsky about following in the footsteps of Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams, and Walt Whitman.

Watch the preview here!


This week on State of the Arts from PCK Media on Vimeo.


Tune in to NJTV every Sunday at 8 PM, and every Thursday at 11:30 PM. Catch episodes on WHYY every Sunday at 11 AM. This episode airs May 31 on NJTV, June 14 on WHYY.

The episode also features the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's deep connection to Newark with Artistic Director Robert Battle, looks at a new exhibition at WheatonArts in Millville with 11 glass artists and photographer Linda Troeller focuses the lens on herself, adding to a lifelong collection of self-portraits.

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Maria's Official Site is at MariaGillan.com.  Her latest publication is the poetry and art collection, The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets.

Voyage to Her Roots

Photo by Tim Townsend  via njmonthly.com

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is featured in New Jersey Monthly (May 2015) in an article, "Voyage to Her Roots" by Breanne McCarthy, that focuses on how her working-class childhood in Paterson inspired her life in poetry.

...She began writing poems as a young teen, but not until decades later—while taking graduate courses at Drew University in Madison—did she recognize the role her childhood memories could play in her work. A fleeting comment by one of her professors changed everything.

“He said, ‘Listen, it’s in this poem about your father that you find the story you have to tell,’” she recalls. “That was a mind-boggling thing for me, because I was trying to be Keats and Shelley—I thought I should be an English romantic poet, not a lower-class Italian from Paterson, New Jersey. It was very freeing.”

At that moment, Gillan began a voyage of introspection, examining her early life, her family and her immigrant roots.

Paterson became her muse, helping her focus her emotions and examine the intimate moments that would epitomize her work..

read the full article online

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Maria's Official Site is at MariaGillan.com.  Her latest publication is the poetry and art collection, The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets.

Gillan Praised for AWP Award

Binghamton University English Prof. Maria Mazziotti Gillan received the 2014 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.

Gillan, who has promoted literature for nearly 35 years, is also the founder and director of the Binghamton Center for Writers and the director of the creative writing program.

She has published 18 books and co-edited four anthologies with her daughter, Jennifer. Gillan is also the founder/executive director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and the editor of the Paterson Literary Review.

In her acceptance speech, Gillan thanked those teachers “who read poetry aloud in English in those dusty classrooms at PS18 in Paterson, NJ, those teachers who first introduced me to the music of the language and made me love literature.”

SOURCE: www.pressconnects.com

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Maria's Official Site is at MariaGillan.com and her books are available at Amazon.com Her latest publication is the poetry collection,  Ancestors' Song

You Can Go Home Again

It's not just Dr. Einstein who was boggled by those twin enigmas: time and space.

All of us are. Each of our lives is a journey through time. And many of us, in a lifetime, end up physically far from where we began.

Even those of us who don't move — like poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan, who has spent most of her life in Passaic County — are well aware of the larger, ever-changing world outside North Jersey.

From her here-and-now — Hawthorne, where she's lived on and off for 55 years – she contemplates her life in a new collection of poems, "The Place I Call Home" (New York Quarterly Books).

"I'm talking about what I've learned about what it means to live a life, and to be human, and to love people and lose them," says Gillan, 72, founder of The Poetry Center, a department of Passaic County Community College.

continue reading  http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/books/168573956_For_Paterson-bred_poet__you_can_go_home_again.html

The Poet Laureate of Awful Truths

In an online article a few years ago, Donna Gialanella of the The Star-Ledger dubbed Maria Mazziotti Gillan "the poet laureate of awful truths."

The article was written at a time when her husband, Dennis, was struggling with Parkinson's disease. He had always been a part of her poetry. But new poems of that period were not love poems, but ones that chronicled him wetting his pants in his wheelchair, and recalled an argument more than 20 years before that was the first and only time he ever struck her. Another poem ("Selective Memory" from All That Lies Between Us) has her husband announcing that if something happened to her, he would remarry. Her response: "your words sting worse / than if you had stabbed me."

My daughter tells me I practice selective

memory, that I erase the parts of the past

I don't like or don't want to know.

I denied it but then I thought maybe

she was right after all, that maybe I need

to soften the sharp edges of memory, as though

I were working colored chalk over a painting.

So it must have been selective memory

that I was practicing when I let myself

forget that I've always loved my husband

more than he loved me, that fact I forced

myself to forget as he grew ill and we grew

together over the years, moments glittering

like gold in rock the way those remembered

glimpses of a beloved face or the feel

of a hand or words spoken softly stay

with us...

Though Maria sometimes worries that her poems may seem mean, she says that "I think there were so many things we weren't supposed to talk about when I was growing up that I feel compelled to say the unsayable in my poems."

And yet, anyone who know Maria, knows that she is anything but mean. She is more likely to be described as a warm, Italian grandmother who is well known for helping students, and new and established writers. She readily admits that one of her flaws is her inability to say No.

And she advise those students and new writers to follow her and go "into that cave, find the deepest part of you, and write about it."

After living with Parkinson's disease for twenty-five years, her husband passed last year. Maria continues to write about him. In a recent poem, “Watching the Pelicans Die,” that was started several weeks after his death, there are two narratives. Following a writing prompt that she gives her own students, she goes back and forth between two seemingly unconnected things, finally finding something in common between them to use as a thread to weave the poems together.

She says that it was "a very difficult poem to write, because I could not confront my husband’s final weeks directly, and it became commingled in my mind with the BP oil disaster. The black slick of oil on the sand and water made me incredibly sad at a time when I was watching my husband die, and watching his hands go black at the tips. The poem is a howl of sorrow for the world and also for my husband."

But, the poet laureate of awful truth also finds in that cave the truth that is not awful but always honest, as in the conclusion of "Selective Memory."

I watch you, your face
twitching and moving, your neck twisting,
your arms jerking, and I remember
how much I love you, and would
even if you married someone else,
even if I had to return from my grave
to haunt you, even then, I can't help
the tenderness I still feel
when I look at you.

Poetry is alive and well in Paterson!

 “Poetry helps you release your emotions,” said 34-year-old Paterson resident, Andre Stewart. The first poem he had written was to impress a girl when he was about 12. Now, 22 years later, although the fondness for the girl has faded, his love for poetry continues to grow.

In the open-reading portion of the Poetry Reading event that took place at the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College on Saturday, Stewart read a poem in tribute to Bob Marley entitled, “Who Was Bob?”

From Marley to Martin Luther King Jr., the topics of the open-reading section were diverse as poets from not only Paterson, but also neighboring cities, recited their poems.

“For me, Paterson is connected to poetry,” said Maria Mazziotti Gillan, the executive director of the Poetry Center, whose writing has been influenced by her early life in the city. “I think poetry teaches us how to be human; it’s a way of connecting people, a way of telling stories to one another.”

Read more at http://thealternativepress.com

Dinner With Maria

New Jersey Monthly magazine recently published an article on "Where Real Italians Eat" asking prominent New Jersey Italian celebrities to tell them where they like to eat.


Maria Mazziotti Gillan, author of 12 books of poetry, including Italian Women In Black Dresses, picked the ViVi Ristorante in her hometown of Hawthorne.

"I love the ambience and décor, which seem to me to be very Italian, with the antique chandeliers and the bright wall colors. Also I find their food fresh and lightly seasoned, very much like the food you can get in Italy. My favorite dish is the lobster ravioli, which I find to be very delicately seasoned and mouthwatering. It’s hard to choose because I also love their salmon oreganata, which is baked and seasoned with bread crumbs. No one in Italy rushes through eating. Savoring a meal is something I can do at ViVi’s and pretend I’m in Italy.”