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

📽️📽️📽️  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. 📽️📽️📽️       📽️📽️📽️  📽️📽️📽️

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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!

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.

 

All & everything! here, you can read about a poet’s youth and development in this candid 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!         ♫ ♫ ♫  ♫ ♫ ♫              ♫ ♫ ♫  ♫ ♫ ♫

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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 Fools

The 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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Ecopoetry: A Reading & Conversation

                          with Mary Gilliland and Brandon Krieg

                                                                                  moderated by Roger Gilbert

An in-person event. For those who might not be able to attend: send me your comments and questions & I’ll bring with me to the bookstore.

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In case you missed that launch:  Enjoy!!

The Devil’s Fools to launch at Ithaca NY indie booksellers!

Register now for Mary’s zoom reading at 7 PM ET on November 9th at Odyssey Bookstore!

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.

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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:

Good Friday Riding Westward by John Donne read by Peter Fortunato filmed by Ishion Hutchinson with Korah and Mary listening too  

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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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AMERICA IS HARDER TO FIND

from the Cornell Class of of 1973 August 2020 newsletter, a story about me historically contextualized by classmate Paul Cashman:

Mary Gilliland Remembers Fr. Daniel Berrigan

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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.