News

 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 !

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

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 PMaward-winning poet Mary Gilliland book launch and further poetic revelations in Lodi – on Seneca Lake –award-winning poet Mary Gilliland book launch the heart of the Finger Lakes’ vast expanse of vineyards

March 30, 2024 at 11 AM

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📽️📽️📽️  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. 📽️📽️📽️ Award-winning poet Mary Gilliland reads for Poetry Flash Award-winning poet C.S. Giscombe reads for Bazaar Writers Salon in San Francisco       📽️📽️📽️  📽️📽️📽️

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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! Chautauqua' literary magazine Pushcart Nominations

Thank you, Editors, of this and every literary magazine, for sustaining the soul!

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                                                                                          Thank you, Codhill Press!!!

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It’s been a happening season……….

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Hello Syracuse!       OCTOBER 5, 2023
2022 CNY BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
Winner: The Devil’s Fools, by Mary Gilliland

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Hello Nairobi!                     SEPTEMBER 16, 2023

International Literary Seminars Kenya /Fence awards me their 1st Prize in Poetry!

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Hello dear college chaplain Dan Berrigan!      JUNE 10, 2023

My old friend and collaborator Alan Sorvall and I opened the first annual REDSTOCK at Cornell Alumni Reunion – with excerpts from AMERICA IS HARD TO FIND
Redstock Cornell alumni reunion poet Mary GillilandRedstock Cornell alumni reunion musician Alan Sorvall

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All & everything! here, you can read about a poet’s youth and development in this candid archaic torso of poet Mary Gilliland from the Art Department of UNC-Ginterview 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

Mary Gilliland interview Devil's Fools KSFR-FM

Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio Presents Mary Gilliland
with Michael Anthony Ingram in Washington, DC

poet Mary Gilliland reads from The Devil's Fools

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Ecopoetry: A Reading & Conversation with Mary Gilliland and Brandon Krieg
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!!

New book by award-winning Cornell authorhttps://www.odysseybookstore.com/event/mary-gilliland-devils-fools
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!
Come one come all to Mary’s in-person reading at Buffalo Street Books!

My October 2022 gardening posts at sunset over Ithaca, NYBest American Poetry: 4 mini-essayspoet Mary Gilliland contemplates her gardens

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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.

gillilandmacfadyen

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!Mary Gilliland podcast

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Tram Editions launchCONTAIN by Cynthia Hogue

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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Ruined Walled Castle Garden

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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Stand magazine 2022

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 From the Finger Lakes: A Memoir Anthologyactivism, 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 GillilandMary 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.’
Light on the Hill labyrinth for world peace
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.

Foundation of Light labyrinth in Ithaca, NY

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 Mary Gilliland poetry reading at Odyssey Bookstore with support from Poets & Writers, Inc.Poets & Writers, Inc. who are celebrating 50 years of making readings and workshops possible across New York State—and beyond.

Foundation of Light labyrinth in Ithaca, NYA 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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Proserpine poem in TAB Journal

Light on the Hill labyrinth for world peace

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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Foundation of Light labyrinth in Ithaca, NY

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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Ithaca, NY

book launch of THE RUINED WALLED CASTLE GARDEN

Mary's Gilliland's book launchClick 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: in Six Mile Creek watershed

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…

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