About me

THE GARDEN

A Guest Author stint at Best American Poetry during harvest season resulted in 4 flower reports: Steady My Laden Head; Later Flowers for the Bees; Never Cease; With the Sun. Planting bulbs and turning a rocky acre of vacant land into a garden, I reflect on the course of a life and on what cultivating flowers and poems might have in common.

I’m also a Writing the Land poet. I’ve 3 poems in NatureCulture’s new anthology ‘Writing the Land: Rensellaer County, New York' sold to benefit Hudson Taconic Lands’ work “nurturing connections with nature for the people”: 'The Softness,' 'Our Convertible,' 'Rest Assured.’

“… In daylight and darkness throughout nature’s mammal dreams, burdock heard first the apes who walked, sure they would wear the crown.”

You can read this poem ‘Nemesis’ among 4 that I contributed to the gallery of THE NATURE OF OUR TIMES: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders.

DOHA

I lived in Doha before Qatar sponsored the Asian Games. There were still vestiges of Bedouin life. Sheikha Moza sponsored an international cultural conference every few weeks. The best of both worlds!

At WCMQ I taught Biology & Society 104: Ecocsystems & Ego Systems for the last time, Cornell’s first interdisciplinary writing seminar, a course that I dreamed up in 1984.

Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival while teaching at Weill Cornell Medicine Qatar

at Faisal Museum, Doha – photo illustration for Bedouin Today online journal

CORNELL

Teaching on the Ithaca campus began with the Committee on Special Education Projects, and I emerged from the Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines as Senior Lecturer Emeritus in the College of Arts & Sciences. A frequent conference speaker, I assisted with faculty development at the International Knight Consortium, developed and directed the Writing Walk-In Service, and was faculty advisor for Ursus: Cornell's Environmental Journal.

I approach teaching as a self-reflective practice of re-imagining, co-creating, learning from each other. You too can carry out my FINAL ASSIGNMENT from those wondrous decades of teaching at Cornell! (Thank you for the reprint, Whale Road Review!)

PROVINCETOWN

At the Fine Arts Work Center, an international home for artists and writers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, I reclaimed my childhood poetry heart as I turned 40 during a 7-month Fellowship that re-set my priorities: wake up, each day, to poetry.

Learn more at Feeding Grounds

KITKITDIZZE

Peter Fortunato and I took an extended post-college apprenticeship with Gary Snyder in the Sierra Nevada foothills, studying carpentry, ecology, and the great Zen texts while living off-grid on San Juan Ridge and earning money in Bay Area construction during the winter. Gary performed our wedding ceremony.

So many recent requests about Gary Snyder’s 2016 lecture at Cornell & my intro thereto that I’m posting video link here so I need not keep searching !

as Gary has said, “I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.”

poets Mary Gilliland and Peter Fortunato with Gary Snyder & family 1975

DANIEL BERRIGAN

I created this site inspired by words and deeds of peace activist and poet Daniel Berrigan, S.J. Highlights include AMERICA IS HARD TO FIND: the entire musical rock Mass inspired by his famous poem and 18 minutes of Dan reading his Catonsville poems. Plus photographs and reminiscences from the Cornell University campus circa 1970 when Father Berrigan served as chaplain, was criminalized for his civil disobedience, and became a fugitive from the FBI, dubbed in the NET documentary “The Holy Outlaw.” As the Reminiscences tab begins, “We really thought we might be able to steer America a little bit toward justice, a little bit away from imperial wars.”

https://americaishardertofind.wordpress.com/