(NEWARK, NJ) -- The Dodge Poetry Festival is the largest poetry event in North America. Paterson-based poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan will be reading on Thursday and Friday of the four-day festival taking place October 18-21 in Newark. Maria is the force behind the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College, and the author of more than 20 books of and about poetry. Her poems are about her life, including her strong memories of childhood in Paterson’s Italian immigrant community. She likes to talk about the “cave,” that place of memories and feelings inside us all that the best poetry takes us back to. Producer Susan Wallner spoke to Maria Mazziotti Gillan at her home in Hawthorne, a suburb of Paterson.
