CELEBRATE MY NEWEST BOOK – THEN – SCROLL MY INTERVIEWS – REVIEWS – LAUNCHES – SWEET GEOGRAPHIES & ORIGINS
In the Pool of the Sea’s Shoulder pub date 12.31.24 A long-form poem inspired by the statue “Kingdom of the Sea” created 1877 in Fukushima and by a man
who in his position with New Mexico’s Education Department made sure that no child was left behind during the 2nd Bush presidency and as a Coalition for Equality volunteer tirelessly worked for the state’s pioneering human rights protection legislated in 2003.
“In the pool of the sea’s shoulder is a voyage of quirkiness, outrage and underlying anxiety, and many voices—apt for talking statues, news clips, and interjections from the deceased.”—Janet MacFadyen Arrange to order a signed copy here OR order from Dancing Girl Press for yourself, for a sweetheart, for anyone who’s been awed by art, feared radiation, grieved the death of someone dear, worked for justice.
🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼 INTERVIEWS 🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼
🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼 & CONVERSATIONS🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼
☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎📓📖📓📖📓📖📓📖📓📖On the podcast Planet Poet-Words in Space, I discuss and read from both The Devil’s Fools and Ember Days. And talk about life, the universe, living off-grid, teaching eco-systemic writing at Cornell, and my poetry’s journey to book publication. With host Sharon Israel,1-hour, recorded for WIOXradio in December 2023.
☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎
📖📖📖📖
📓📖📓📖📓📖📓📖📓📖
☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎📓📖📓📖📓📖📓📖📓📖
On the podcast The Last Word, KSFR in Santa Fe. With host Carly Newfeld.
Apr 17, 2025
In The Pool of The Sea’s Shoulder. A re-imagined story of her younger brother, “Freddy,” and his own breakthrough work. 23 minutes
Dec 21, 2023
The Devil’s Fools and Ember Days. And discussion of the many ways a poem evolves. 23 minutes
Jan 5, 2023
The Devil’s Fools. Poems deeply rooted in reverence for all of nature’s creatures and our environment. 23 minutes
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
In this interview with Cayuga Lake Books I answered questions like People my age (22) are concerned about the environment—after years of environmental 
activism, how does the state of the environment feel to you? Their anthology From the Finger Lakes: A Memoir Anthology features my essay ‘Eco-Logic.’ Mary Gilliland on Her Essay, “Eco-Logic” The essay recounts and contemplates a chemical spill in Ithaca NY and its consequences.
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
interview with Michael Blanchard, editor of Slant, a conversation sparked by The Devil’s Fools—posted as a feature during National Poetry. Thank you Michael for my virtual visit in Arkansas!
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ Luminous poet Sara London has posted an interview with me at WTP Poetry Central : Gilliland WTP interview basing her questions on a close and appreciative reading of The Ruined Walled Castle Garden.
🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼 THE REVIEWS 🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄
🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼 REVIEWS REVIEWS 🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼
Reviews of Ember Days 🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️
“Gilliland explores the tension between past values and present realities which the modern world has created…”— Southern Poetry Review
in LitHub’s Seven Unexpectedly Intimate Poetry Books to Read in March
by Rebecca Morgan Frank
“Gilliland waltzes smoothly between the cheeky and conversational and the lyrical … Across tightly-built lyrics, the poet establishes a levelheaded conversational ease that somehow makes room for celebration of the natural world, the inner world, and a sense of humor. Which is to say that Gilliland is full of surprises; the voice of these poems–whether set perched on a bar stool or while mowing down a cemetery–endures.” — Literary Hub
Is a Transcendently Beautiful Place Not to Be Ours? A Review of Ember Days (2024) by Mary Gilliland
WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE on the best american poetry!!
WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE on the best american poetry!!
WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE on the Best American Poetry!!WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE on Best American Poetry
“Her title describes the light during both the summer and winter solstice, and her poems reverberate with that same golden brightness. Gilliland is a poet of witness and spirituality, grappling with climate devastation while also interrogating world policies and politics.” — Best American Poetry
“Throughout the collection, the inevitable progress of a particularly American history is palpable and its end near, but so is its ideal.” — Stand Magazine
🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️ ☮︎✴︎🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼
Reviews of The Devil’s Fools 🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️✏️🖋️
by Marina Brown at Southern Literary Review
The Devil’s Fools/a poetry book by Mary Gilliland/review by Laurence Carr
🎵🎶
🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼 BOOK LAUNCHES 🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄
🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼 ember days LAUNCH 🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼
with further poetic revelations in 
the heart of the Finger Lakes’ vast expanse of vineyards. Request a media review copy, or if you’re teaching and might use the book in a course. For signed copies, please back channel me.
📓📖📓📖📓📖📓📖📓📖
🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼 the devil’s fools LAUNCH 🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼
Mary Gilliland reads from her poetry collection The Devil’s
Fools, winner of the 2021 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award – live by zoom from Odyssey Bookstore in Ithaca NY.
reading at Buffalo StreetRequest a media review copy or exam copy if you’re teaching and might use the book in a course. For signed copies, please back channel me.
🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼 the ruined walled castle garden LAUNCH 🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼 📓📖📓📖📓📖📓📖📓📖
Mary Gilliland reads from her award-winning poetry collection The Ruined Walled Castle Garden at Odyssey Bookstore during the pandemic on February 23, 2021.
And ♫ ♫ ♫ virtual Book Launch of THE RUINED WALLED CASTLE GARDEN, winner of the 2019 Bright Hill Press Poetry Award: Thursday 8 October 2020
Click this link to watch my reading begins at 23:00 on this video. 
🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼 OTHER RECORDED READINGS 🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼 📓📖📓📖📓📖📓📖📓📖
Eat the Storms episode 14 season 5
Podcast from Dublin! I read poems from The Devil’s Fools. My 8-minute segment begins at 38:45, and the whole hour has much good poetry!
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫♫ ♫
📽️📽️📽️ Here’s an hour sponsored by Poetry Flash at the Art House in Berkeley—old friend C.S. Giscombe and I wow-ing the audience with readings from our new books. Along with a 2nd reading at Bazaar Writers Salon in San Francisco a few days later, this poetic highlight began our February of 2024. 📽️📽️📽️ 
📽️📽️📽️ 📽️📽️📽️
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫♫ ♫
April 2020 Vallum‘s new-issue launch, broadcast virtually from Montreal:
♫ ♫ ♫
My reading from The Ruined Walled Castle Garden on Cultivating Voices Live Poetry New Books Showcase
So cool to receive appreciation both from across the Atlantic and from across the United 
States during that program!
My slot starts at 05:50.
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
🎵🎶 and
☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎☮︎✴︎ For my 🪭🪭🪭🪭🪭🪭….— with 💝 —
Simhamuka
Prajnaparamita & Tara with vajra
🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶
– SWEET GEOGRAPHIES & ORIGINS –
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.
Mary at Gary Snyder’s new barn, Kitkitdizze
Mary & Peter’s wedding invitation photo – at camp in the meadow below Gary Snyder house
Masa & Gen, Peter, Gary, Mary & Kai – KKD
🎵🎶 a little NewsThatStays here: 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 !
photo by Wang Ping 4.20.25
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.”
🖋️✏️💝🖋️✏️💝🖋️✏️💝
Pay that forward, everybody!!! 🖋️✏️💝
TO THE WORK ALONE ARE YOU ENTITLED
Programs funded by Poets & Writers, Inc help make our audiences possible.
poetry reading Ulysses Philomathic Library
writing workshop & poetry reading Trumansburg Conservator
Thanks as ever to the support from Poets & Writers, Inc. who have been making readings and workshops possible across New York State—and beyond—for more than 50 years.
PROVINCETOWN
Reading: Mary Gilliland
Tuesday, September 13, 2022 The Fine Arts Work Center, an international home for artists and writers in Provincetown, Massachusetts
where a few decades earlier 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
Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival while teaching at Weill Cornell Medicine Qatar
at Faisal Museum, Doha – photo illustration for Bedouin Today online journal
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.
THE CLASSROOM
You too can carry out the FINAL ASSIGNMENT 
from those
wondrous decades of teaching at Cornell!
thank you for the reprint, Whale Road Review!
🎵🎶🎵🎶
AMERICA IS HARDER TO FIND (<<<the website)
and (the background on that site’s creation>>>)
AWP Candlelight Vigil in Lafayette Park, Washington DC 2016
Avebury poem written during residency at the Djerassi Foundation, paired with photo of megalith by Richard Henley
Blackbilled Cuckoo
From devoted child to devoted poet, Mary Gilliland shares holy cards, memorabilia, family photos, drafts of her writing, ending with a classic photo of poets with Ginsberg, Waldman, Creeley at the 1986 HD centennial conference in Orono, Maine.
See more on my Youtube channel!
♫ ♫ ♫ Stop by & say hello on my Contact form!
🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼 🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼🪄🫶🏼