NEWEST POETRY COLLECTION! my author’s copies arrived on New Years Eve.
In the Pool of the Sea’s Shoulder is a long-form poem inspired by a 19th c. statue created in Fukushima and by a man, my brother, whose employment with New Mexico’s Education Department made sure that no child was left behind during the 2nd Bush presidency, and whose volunteering with the Coalition for Equality was instrumental in getting passed the state’s pioneering human rights protection legislated in 2003.
Order for yourself or a sweetheart, for anyone who’s been awed by art, feared 
radiation, grieved the death of someone dear, worked for justice.
In the Pool of the Sea’s Shoulder is a multi-vocal poem with parts spoken by Marie Curie, the Radium Girls, and a mysterious fisherman. A grieving sister’s encounters with a 19th century metal sculpture originally made in Fukushima and its associated legends of the sea prompt memories of her deceased brother’s activist years ensuring addition of LGBT to the state’s hate crimes law. He and his life partner converse about their lives in the high desert of the Southwest amid the nuclear industry’s benchmarks of Los Alamos and Church Rock. The radiance of these voices has no half-life, no half-measures.
Request signed copy here.
NEWEST POETRY COLLECTION! my author’s copies arrived on New Years Eve. 
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
This poem is utterly beautiful. Such a complex and moving tribute to your brother, reaching and fanning beyond him, embracing all of us, really. At first, I resisted the statue, as I resist museums with too much signage. Let me just stand here and look, I think. Which is exactly what you allowed and invited me to do. With each reading, I saw more. —Ann McCutchan
A modern classic; an elemental deep-dive. Within the elegiac energy, there are echoes of Muriel Rukeyser’s activist commitment. Tender yet ludic, this is a work of searing intelligence. —James Byrne
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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 !
Masa & Gen, Peter, Gary, Mary & Kai
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.”
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Pay that forward, everybody!!! 🖋️✏️💝
Watch the EMBER DAYS book launch on my youtube channel!
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Welcome poetry lovers of New York! to the book launch in downtown Ithaca March 17, 2024 at 2 PM
and further poetic revelations in Lodi – on Seneca Lake –
the heart of the Finger Lakes’ vast expanse of vineyards
March 30, 2024 at 11 AM
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The honor of Chautauqua‘s nominating my poem about flight delay –
a lyric-epic venturing through time and space –
for a PUSHCART! 
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pub date
March 1, 2024
Advanced Reader Copy available
If you’d like a review copy, or if you’re teaching and might use the book in a course, please back channel me.
Thank you, Codhill Press!!!
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2022 CNY BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
Winner: The Devil’s Fools, by Mary Gilliland
Hello Nairobi! SEPTEMBER 16, 2023
International Literary Seminars Kenya /Fence awards me their 1st Prize in Poetry!
Hello dear college chaplain Dan Berrigan! JUNE 10, 2023
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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! ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫♫ ♫ ♫
And Snowflakes blog has a sweet feature about my new book!
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For your listening pleasure:recent interviews about The Devil’s FoolsThe Last Word
with Carly Newfeld on KSFR-FM in Santa Fe, NM
Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio Presents Mary Gilliland
with Michael Anthony Ingram in Washington, DC
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AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER
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My October 2022 gardening posts at 
Best American Poetry: 4 mini-essays
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Reading: Mary Gilliland and Janet MacFadyen
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
7 PM at The Fine Arts Work Center, an international home for artists and writers in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Please join us for a reading and book signing with award-winning returning poetry Fellows Mary Gilliland and Janet MacFadyen
Mary Gilliland held the Stanley Kunitz Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center and turned 40 a week before the end of those 7 months. Her poetry collection The Devil’s Fools won the 2021 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award—and will soon be in print and available for purchase. She is the author of two previous collections: Gathering Fire and The Ruined Walled Castle Garden. Her poems are widely published in print and online literary journals and most recently anthologized in Wild Gods: The Ecstatic in Contemporary Poetry and Prose, and Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms In Our Hands. Mary retired early from teaching at Cornell in order to devote herself to poetry.
Janet MacFadyen is the author of five poetry collections, most recently the photo-poetry collaboration Adrift in the House of Rocks (New Feral Press, 2019) and Waiting to Be Born (Dos Madres Press, 2017). Her newest full-length collection, State of Grass, is forthcoming February 2023 from Salmon Poetry. She is a recipient of a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, a 7-month Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, and a Cill Rialiag residency. Her work appears in CALYX, Crannóg, Osiris, Persimmon Tree, Scientific American, Soul-Lit, Sweet, The Blue Nib, and Terrain, and has been nominated for the Forward, Pushcart, and Best of the Net prizes. She is the managing editor of Slate Roof Press, a poetry chapbook publisher.
All readings and artist talks are held in the Stanley Kunitz Common Room.
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NEW PODCAST EPISODE Eat the Storms episode 14 season 5
Podcast from Dublin! I read poems from The Devil’s Fools, forthcoming from Codhill Press. My 8-minute segment begins at 38:45, and the whole hour has much good poetry!
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poets and editors
A lovely Saturday this was! 4 hours after the podcast from Dublin, I was an invited guest poet for Tram Editions’ launch of Cynthia Hogue’s new chapbook CONTAIN. Marvellous poet, Cynthia wrote this brilliant collection during and for the first year of pandemic and the all and the more that it contains, “threading the space with love.” The readings were the best! live theater, no video recording. This screen shot shows poets and editors basking in the Zoom applause: clockwise, me, Cynthia, Aliah Lavonne Tigh, Elizabyth Hiscox, Glenn Shaheen, Priscilla Wathington. Two of the poems I read are those mentioned in July 2021 entry below, ‘A— uses more ordnance…’ and ‘Midlothian,’ published in Matter: a (somewhat) monthly journal of political poetry and commentary.
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The Ruined Walled Castle Garden
poetry by my husband, then me, then the small world surprise of an old friend from college! Listen to “The Woman in the Hat Paused, Mole-Eyed” and “About to Burn Her Dress” from my chapbook (poems also included in my book The Devil’s Fools, forthcoming from Codhill Press), as well as “Pearl Street,” inspired by residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, a poem just accepted by I-70 Review.
In June
the mail from Leeds
brings the new issue
with my several poems
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It was such fun to interview with Cayuga Lake Books answering questions like People my age (22) are concerned about the environment—after years of environmental 
activism, how does the state of environment feel to you? Their new 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.
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On a special day in April 2022, when I opened my mail…
We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2021 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award.
Mary Gilliland, of Ithaca, New York, for her collection The Devil’s Fools.
Mary Gilliland is the author of two poetry collections: Gathering Fire and The Ruined Walled Castle Garden. She is also a founding board member of Light On The Hill retreat center. Her essay ‘Eco-Logic’ appears in From the Finger Lakes: A Memoir Anthology. Her poems have been anthologized in Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms In Our Hands, in the multimedia Strange Histories: A Bizarre Collaboration, in The & Now Awards: The Best Innovative Writing, and in Wild Gods: The Ecstatic in Contemporary Poetry and Prose. She is the recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, a featured reading at the Al Jazeera International Film Festival, and a Council for the Arts Faculty Grant from Cornell University, where she was instrumental in developing the Knight Institute for Writing, and taught such courses as “Ecosystems & Ego Systems” for the Biology & Society Program and “Mind & Memory: Creativity in the Arts & Sciences” for the Society for the Humanities.
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The astounding brand new anthology from Minnesota State University Wild Gods: The Ecstatic in Contemporary Poetry and Prose includes my poems “Air” (first published in Poetry) 
and “Holy Island” (Passages North). 
For details about ordering that online, send me a quick message.
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The aptly named Woven Tale Press features fine art and literature. Vol IX no. 9 includes my poems ‘Tender,”The Wild Celery,’ and ‘Red Tide.’
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July 2021 brought the publication of 2 poems I treasure.
‘A— uses more ordnance in a single campaign than B—used in epochs of imperial rule’
May you not be subjected to civilizing missions
May you want to continue more than you want to stop
May God move your muscles as you lie there
May you be passed over by the local police…
Read the entire poem at Matter: a (somewhat) monthly journal of political poetry and commentary. And then its companion ‘Midlothian.’
The first began while I was teaching in Qatar 2006 as my country bombed other countries of the Middle East; the second poem began on a residency in Scotland 2001 during Britain’s foot-and-mouth pandemic.
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In July I also had the great privilege of reading 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. Enjoy!
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Let me know what you think! Sara based her questions on a close and appreciative reading of my The Ruined Walled Castle Garden.
My new book is the poetry bestseller at Odyssey Bookstore!! Order your copy here — pick up instore, or curbside, or have it shipped. It was a pleasure to read at the store, and thanks as ever to the support from 
Poets & Writers, Inc. who are celebrating 50 years of making readings and workshops possible across New York State—and beyond.
A 3-minute movie here! Click below to see my favorite birthday present ever. Captured by a friend while Peter and I were gardening on an April day 2020. When my dear husband asked what I wanted for my birthday, hearing this poem aloud was my request:
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2021 began with the fierce beauty of my poem ‘Proserpine’ on the pages of TAB Journal’s annual print issue. Ordinarily, this gorgeous publication is distributed free of charge at AWP. But with Associated Writing Programs conference going virtual this year,TAB kindly offered complimentary copies to librarians and writing teachers, and put the entire issue online. “I fell in with a man from a small country….” See—and hear—the entire ‘Proserpine’ at the ‘Selected Gilliland‘ tab.
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new essay online now (kudos to the Atlantic Maritimes!)
Fiddlehead has posted my essay about one of my favorite poets: 
https://thefiddlehead.ca/content/mary-gillilands-reading-recommendation
Their fall 2020 issue will feature 2 of my new poems: ‘Base of Parnassus’ and ‘The Entire Table Lifted Spoons.’
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book launch of THE RUINED WALLED CASTLE GARDEN
Click to see and hear my book launch of October 8th. There was a great audience that evening! thank you for watching on zoom or social media. My reading from The Ruined Walled Castle Garden begins at 23:00 on this posted video.
Thursday 8 October 2020: Word Thursdays Online featuring Mary Gilliland reading from her Bright Hill Press award-winning chapbook THE RUINED WALLED CASTLE GARDEN—
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April 2020 Vallum‘s new-issue launch, broadcast virtually from Montreal:
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from the Cornell Class of of 1973 August 2020 newsletter, a story about me historically contextualized by classmate Paul Cashman:
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excerpts from my newsletter The NEWS THAT STAYS News: 
v. 22———We strive for clarity in poetry, in our communications, in our wait during the intervals when no star delights us with its streak across night sky….
v. 20———Today’s holiday was once called Decoration Day; the graves of soldiers were adorned with wreaths and flowers, to remember their brutally shortened lives….
v.17———I booked a night in magical Inverary on Loch Awe, then one in a monk’s cell on Iona….
v. 11———Ever since the voiceover format of “Drenched”—the 2 voices with different concerns speaking simultaneously—gave me a felt insight into my own multiplicity, speaking for others has been a constant in my work….
v. 3———9 months ago, I related to apocalypse as metaphor for our tumultuous but trackable times. But today, who are among the innocents killed?where did the fires spread last night? which hurricane makes landfall
v. 2 ———It’s time to respond to your congratulations and to some of your questions prompted by…
v. 1 ———Let’s get energized for the work of genuine national and transnational transformation! Times being what they are, let’s see if we can turn around the karma of the founding of…
Want the latest? Go to Contact where you can subscribe to my occasional newsletter delivered direct to your inbox.
For my 🪭🪭🪭🪭🪭🪭 — with 💝
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Wow! Check out these reviews of Ember Days!
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!!
“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
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On Planet Poet-Words in Space, I discuss and read from both The Devil’s Fools and from Ember Days. And talk about life, the universe, living off-grid, teaching eco-systemic writing at Cornell, and the long road I traveled to book publication. Sharon Israel hosts this 1-hour podcast and she’s a vibrant conversationalist & probing questioneer. We recorded for WIOX in December 2023.
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Pre-order my new collection Ember Days!! Shipping on March 1, 2024. If you’d like a review copy, or if you’re teaching and might use the book in a course, please back channel me.
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The winter solstice radio interview out of Santa Fe, with bits from both The Devil’s Fools and Ember Days, has gone to podcast.
Carly Newfeld, host of ‘The Last Word,’ had my poetry bookend her broadcasting year: guest on her first show of 2023 and last before 2024 begins.
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Glowing reviews The Devil’s Fools has received:
by Marina Brown at Southern Literary Review
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Enjoy a 4-part gardening poet’s autumn blog 
posts on Best American Poetry. I’ve had such fun in prose, October 2022! (NB: this link shows the posts in reverse chronological order; start with the 4th & work your way up if you want to follow the prose renga)
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You too can carry out the FINAL ASSIGNMENT 
from those wondrous decades of teaching at Cornell!
thank you for the reprint, Whale Road Review!
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Simhamuka
Prajnaparamita & Tara with vajra
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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
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Programs funded by Poets & Writers, Inc help make our audiences possible.
poetry reading Ulysses Philomathic Library
writing workshop & poetry reading Trumansburg Conservator
Read the fruits of a lovely experience I had in late 2021 as Guest Poetry Editor for Persimmon Tree: a marvelous sheaf of East Coast poets. Cynthia Hogue’s remarks about me, and mine about the winning poems, illustrate just how much poetry our teachers and our friends make of our lives. (photo by Paula Schultz for this feature in the magazine )
I treasure TAB’s aesthetic design as well as the poetry!
TAB: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics
A good many of my poems have appeared in Notre Dame Review.
Notre Dame Review #41
Virginia Utermohlen sponsored such a fun reading—with takeaway!
Zyn Yoga Center poetry reading by Cornell poet Mary Gilliland
Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival while teaching at Weill Cornell Medicine Qatar
at Faisal Museum, Doha – photo illustration for Bedouin Today online journal
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!
One of my favorite writing residencies is in Scotland.
Scottish Thistle
Hawthornden Castle
We speak, alone and together!
AWP Candlelight Vigil in Lafayette Park, Washington DC 2016
visit to Robert Frost
One day I was taking a break from an inspiring residency at The Studios at Mass MoCA and stopped the car for a walk by a New England church and discovered the grave of Robert Frost.
I met Richard Henley at a voice workshop with Jill Purce. We share a love of ancient megalithic sites.
Avebury poem written during residency at the Djerassi Foundation, paired with photo of megalith by Richard Henley
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!