Maria Mazziotti Gillan - When the Stars Were Still Visible

LISTEN to my January 18th, 2022 WIOX show featuring Maria Mazziotti Gillan, poet, teacher, artist and visionary founder of the renowned Poetry Center at the Passaic Community College, on her new book, When the Stars Were Still Visible.

Planet Poet’s erudite and endlessly interesting Poet-At-Large Pamela Manché Pearce also joins us with her musings on poetry, art and life.

On When the Stars Were Still Visible

“… It is as if this book rose out of an alchemist’s compound comprised of Calabrian limestone and the cement of the back stoop on 17th Street in Paterson, New Jersey, where Mazziotti Gillan grew up. By the end of this poignant and resonant book, the poet accepts her double heritage with all is pain and obstacles and with all its beauty and grace.” – Stephen F Austin State University Press, Nacogdoches, Texas

Maria Mazziotti Gillan, American Book Award recipient for All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions) and author of twenty-four books, founded the Poetry Center in Paterson, NJ, is editor of the Paterson Literary Review and is Professor Emerita of English and creative writing at Binghamton University- SUNY. Her newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2021). Other recent publications include What Blooms in Winter (NYQ 2016) and the poetry and photography collaboration with Mark Hillringhouse, Paterson Light and Shadow (Serving House Books, 2017).