IN-PERSON PAID WORKSHOP
This is a paid Festival program with limited capacity. Registration is required.
Part of the 2026 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival!
Join us for the 14th annual Tell it Slant Poetry Festival, a week of events happening both online and in-person at the Museum!
Dickinson examined, studied, and utilized tiny items and tight envelope contours in the service of poem-making. This two-part workshop will discuss how the constraint of shape and size forces creativity: We will first meditate on a small, everyday object and honor it in the creation of a poem; we will then consider how restricted page space makes a poem even more expansive. Led by four apartment-dwelling Brooklynite poet-educators (including one urban planner and one visual designer), participants will make and share poems that reveal the “passing Universe” in minute ephemera and confines.About the presenters
Arden Levine is the author of Spoke (The Word Works’ Hilary Tham Capital Collection, 2026) and Ladies’ Abecedary (Harbor Editions, 2021). A 2024 National Poetry Series finalist and a National Book Critics Circle member, her writing appears in AGNI, Barrow Street, Harvard Review, RHINO, and elsewhere, and has been featured by the Poetry Foundation and Poetry Society of America. Arden lives in New York City and works in urban housing policy and community development.
Rico Frederick is an Adjunct Professor at Rutgers University-Newark, a Trinidadian transplant, and the author of the poetry collection Broken Calypsonian (Penmanship Books, 2014). He holds an MFA in Writing from Pratt Institute and is a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship finalist, Fulbright semi-finalist, Cave Canem Fellow, Poets House Emerging Poets Fellow, Pushcart nominee, and the first poet to represent all four original New York City poetry venues at the National Poetry Slam.
Cynthia Manick is the author of No Sweet Without Brine (Amistad-HarperCollins, 2023), a New York Public Library Best Book of 2023 and a Ms. Magazine “Best Poetry of the Last Year (2023)”. She is editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry; and author of Blue Hallelujahs. Her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus and elsewhere. She lives in New York City.
Joanna Solfrian’s first book, Visible Heavens, was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye for the 2009 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. She is also the author of The Mud Room (MadHat Press, 2020) and Temporary Beast (Beltway Editions, 2024). Her poems have appeared in The Harvard Review, Boulevard, Rattle, Margie, The Southern Review, Salamander, Pleiades, Image, and elsewhere. A MacDowell Fellow and a six-time Pushcart nominee, Joanna lives and works in New York City.
Support The Tell It Slant Poetry Festival
The Tell It Slant Poetry Festival is sustained by the Emily Dickinson Fund, which provides critical, unrestricted support for the Museum’s day-to-day operations. Your generous donation helps us offer immersive poetry programs to a global audience and preserve the historic Dickinson legacy in Amherst. As the Fund supplies 36% of our annual budget, your tax-deductible contribution is essential to our mission. Join us in inspiring learners of all ages by making an immediate impact today.