(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)October 29, 2002

(Mahwah) – Four poets who collaborated on the newly-published collection of their work, Searching for Daylight, will present an evening of poetry Monday, November 18 at 7:30 p.m. in the York Room of the Mansion at Ramapo College of New Jersey. The poems, by Laura Boss, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Will Kollock and Hal Sirowitz, are intimate, often humorous explorations of the search for understanding in family and personal relationships. Copies of the book and refreshments will be provided.

Kollack, an associate professor of journalism at Ramapo College, selected the work included in Searching for Daylight. Some of the poems were previously published, some are new to this volume. The collaboration is interesting, with people speaking to one another through their work and the works playing off one another,” says Gillan. We all write out of our experience of everyday life. Hal is very funny but underneath there is seriousness and irony. Laura writes from a female sensibility, also with humor and irony. Will’s work is imagistic; I write about the daily-ness of life.”

Laura Boss is a 1994 first place winner of Poetry Society of America’s Gordon Barber Memorial Award. Founder and editor of LIPS, her awards for her own poetry include: fellowships in poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in 1999, 1992 and 1986 and an American Literary Translator’s Award for her book On the Edge of the Hudson. Her books of poetry include Stripping, Reports from the Front and most recently Arms: New and Selected Poems. Her poems have appeared in the New York Times. In 1998, her manuscript was one of 10 national finalists in PSA’s Alice Faye Di Castagnola Award.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is the founder and executive director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson and director of the Creative Writing Program at Binghamton University, State University of New York. She has published seven books of poetry, including Where I Come From and Things My Mother Told Me. She is co-editor with her daughter, Jennifer Gillan, of three anthologies published by Penguin/Putnam: Unsettling America, Identity Lessons and Growing Up Ethnic in America. She is the editor of the award-winning Paterson Literary Review. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, Poetry Ireland, Connecticut Review, LIPS, Rattle, and numerous other journals and anthologies.

Will Kollock is the author of Are You a Mother? by Willow House Press and the soon-to-be-published Up One Side & Down the Other. In 1996 he was selected by New York University’s Faculty Resource Network as one of 16 poets to work with Lucille Clifton, Galway Kinnell and Sharon Olds. His Poetry Theatre productions have received numerous grants to tour the Northeast and have been presented Off-Off-Broadway at the Brooke Theater.

Hal Sirowitz is the author of two books of poetry published by Crown Publishers: Mother Said and My Therapist Said. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. Mother Said has been translated into nine languages, adapted into a play in Norway and put to music. In 2000 he was appointed poet laureate of Queens, NY.

Gillan credits the efforts of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and similar organizations as one reason for the resurgence of interest in poetry. She especially notes their support of workshops for teachers over the last 10 years and the subsequent interest in the schools and from students. There will always be an undercurrent of interest,” says Kollock, who also credits bookstores as increasingly willing to encourage poetry events. People might go to a bookstore where they might not go to another setting. There is an old tradition that bookstores did this, then coffeehouses in the 60s.”

Searching for Daylight was partially funded through a Career Development Grant from Ramapo College’s Office of Academic Affairs and published by Gatehouse Publishers.

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About Ramapo College

Ramapo College of New Jersey is the state’s premier public liberal arts college and is committed to academic excellence through interdisciplinary and experiential learning, and international and intercultural understanding. The comprehensive college is situated among the beautiful Ramapo Mountains, is within commuting distance to New York City, was named one of the 50 Most Beautiful College Campuses in America by CondeNast Traveler, and boasts the best on-campus housing in New Jersey per Niche.com. Established in 1969, Ramapo College offers bachelor’s degrees in the arts, business, data science, humanities, social sciences and the sciences, as well as in professional studies, which include business, education, nursing and social work. In addition, the College offers courses leading to teacher certification at the elementary and secondary levels, and offers graduate programs leading to master’s degrees in Accounting, Applied Mathematics, Business Administration, Contemporary Instructional Design, Computer Science, Creative Music Technology, Data Science, Educational Leadership, Nursing, Social Work and Special Education, as well as a Doctor of Nursing Practice.

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