The Emily Dickinson Museum is now accepting proposals for the eighth annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival (formerly the Amherst Poetry Festival), A VIRTUAL EVENT held September 17-20, 2020! 

DEADLINE NOW EXTENDED!!!

Produced by the Emily Dickinson Museum, with support from the Amherst Business Improvement District, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Jones Library, the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival celebrates the poetic legacy of Emily Dickinson and the contemporary creativity of the Pioneer Valley and beyond.

The Festival’s new name “Tell It Slant,” was selected in homage to Dickinson’s poem, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” This title underscores the revolutionary power of poetry to shift our perspective and reveal new truths. The Tell It Slant Poetry Festival remains committed to featuring and serving established and emerging poets who represent the diversity of the flourishing contemporary American poetry scene, and to fostering community by placing poetry in the public sphere. To see our 2019 Festival schedule click here.

The Festival Steering Committee is planning a virtual event to ensure the health and safety of participants. While we are disappointed not to gather together in Amherst, we find (as always) that Dickinson offers inspiration. Dickinson was an engaging correspondent, whose epistolary poems connected her to a wider community of friends and writers. During this time, we call on you to help us carry on Dickinson’s legacy of creating community and sparking the imagination as we shelter in place. We invite you to “dwell in possibility” and submit your most inventive proposals for  audience-centered workshops, panel discussions, and programs.

We are privileging proposals for live, synchronous content, but will also consider asynchronous submissions. Synchronous content includes virtual programs or experiences, including performances, live panels and workshops. Asynchronous content might include a web exhibit or pre-recorded content premiering at the Poetry Festival.

The Steering Committee especially welcomes the following:

• Submissions from groups of 2 – 5 facilitators
• Submissions that engage young attendees and those new to poetry
• Submissions that creatively encourage audience participation or that foster a sense of community or space

Honoraria are provided per event. 

Proposals should be designed for one of the following program slots: (Individuals may submit separate forms if proposing more than one program)

GENERAL AUDIENCES on THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

• Evening music, theater, dance, screening or other performance for general audiences. Submissions should be for 60- to 90-minute programs.
• A $500 honorarium is offered for this program.

HIGH SCHOOL WORKSHOPS on FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

• Private poetry workshops for students of high school age (grades 9-12). 45-minute sessions, to be offered up to four times between 7:50 am to 3 pm. Partner schools will be shared with selected poets and will include schools in Hampshire and Hampden counties.
• A $350 honorarium is offered for the day’s workshops.

GENERAL AUDIENCE PROGRAMS on FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, and SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2020 

• Daytime poetry workshops, panels, or participatory programs open to the public. Event sessions are typically an hour and a half long. 
• $250 honoraria offered per event.

Submission Guidelines:

• Only submissions made in the online form will be considered. There is no fee to submit proposals.
• Following your submission, please email your resume/cv to edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org. 
  • Include “POETRY FESTIVAL SUBMISSION” in the title of the e-mail. We can accept .pdf, .doc, .docx files.
    If applicable, you may also submit an image in .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, and .png format.
• Selected facilitators will be notified mid-June and will be asked to sign a letter of agreement confirming their participation in the Festival.
• Submissions Due: Sunday, June 7, 2020, 11:59 pm EST.

Submissions will be judged on the following:

• Originality – Is your idea bold and intriguing? Will it offer something new to our Festival?
• Quality – Does the submission reflect thoughtful preparation? How are you uniquely qualified to facilitate this program?
• Audience – Have you clearly outlined participatory elements? How does your proposal contribute to community-building for the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival? 
• Special consideration will be given to Pioneer Valley and Massachusetts-based facilitators.

SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSAL

Questions? Email us at edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

Tidying the gardens at the Homestead

This program has been cancelled due to the pandemic. You may be interested in this remote program with master gardener and author Marta McDowell.

Celebrate the beauty of summer during Garden Days at the Emily Dickinson Museum! As summer temperatures descend upon Amherst, Emily’s garden begs to be tended. Join our 2018 Gardener-in-Residence Marta McDowell and a group of volunteers to aid in the cultivation and growth of the historic Dickinson family landscape. You do not need to be an expert gardener for this “all levels” program. Learn from volunteers who have tended the gardens in the past and become part of a new generation of caretakers for this precious piece of land. During Garden Days, visitors to the Museum can tend the historic landscape, discuss nature poetry under the great white oak tree, learn about the ongoing archaeological work, and enjoy gatherings in the garden all weekend long.

Join us on December 10 for the Folger Shakespeare Library’s birthday tribute to Emily Dickinson! Each year, this program brings speakers, scholars, and fans of Emily Dickinson’s work together to celebrate the illustrious poet and her writing. This year poet, Dorianne Laux will read original poems in conversation with Dickinson poems. To purchase tickets to the Birthday Tribute, please visit the Folger’s website.

With language that is at times sensually earthy then heavenly lyrical, Dorianne Laux’s poems share their wisdom and beauty like a slowly opening rose. She is the author of five collections of poetry, including Only as the Day is Long, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. She teaches poetry at North Carolina State University and is a founding faculty member of Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA Program. Laux is a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and a recipient of the Paterson Prize.

Death Comes to Me Again, a Girl

Death comes to me again, a girl in a cotton slip.
Barefoot, giggling. It’s not so terrible, she tells me,
not like you think: all darkness and silence.`

There are wind chimes and the scent of lemons.
Some days it rains. But more often the air
is dry and sweet. We sit beneath the staircase
built from hair and bone and listen
to the voices of the living.

I like it, she says, shaking the dust from her hair.
Especially when they fight, and when they sing.

From Only as the Day is Long: new and selected poems. Reprinted with permission of BOA Editions, Ltd. www.boaeditions.org

During the pandemic, the Emily Dickinson Museum is celebrating monthly Amherst Arts Night Plus with remote poetry programs every first Thursday at 6:30pm (EST).

This program is free to attend. Registration is required. Click here to register!

Students of The Literacy Project in the Dickinson family parlor.

Featured readers: The Literacy Project

The Literacy Project presents original poems, essays, and stories written and read by students of The Literacy Project. The Literacy Project provides adult basic education programs and opportunities that support participants to engage meaningfully and equitably in the economic, social, cultural and civic life of their communities. With a staff of 20 and 75 volunteers, the Project now offers classes in basic literacy, high school equivalency and college and career readiness at 5 locations in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts: Greenfield, Orange, Northampton, Amherst and Ware.

The Emily Dickinson Museum’s Poetry Discussion Group meets monthly, September through May, for lively conversation about Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters.

Join us from 12pm to 1:30pm on Zoom for a discussion on November 19 or November 20. Space is limited. To request a space, please complete this google form. For questions, please write edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org.

This program is free of charge, but we encourage those who are able to do so to make a donation after the program.

“The Way to Know the Bobolink”: Field Notes on Dickinson’s Birds
Over 200 bird references flit in and out of Dickinson’s poems. We know Dickinson’s birds as metaphors of hope, symbols of seasonal change, and less frequently, as subjects. We’ll explore a small collection of poems that feature those species Dickinson knew best—the New England backyard birds and probable visitors to the Dickinson meadow—whose presences herald a distinctly American poetry.  This discussion will situate Dickinson’s literary birds alongside bird ecology, behavior, and the burgeoning  field of ornithology. But while we may “split the lark” (Fr905), we’ll be sure to keep the “music” of Dickinson’s words at the forefront of our discussion.

About the facilitator
As Education Programs Manager, Elizabeth Bradley has curated the Emily Dickinson Museum’s Poetry Discussion Group since 2017. She is looking forward to stepping into the role of leader for the first time to discuss two of her favorite topics: Dickinson and birds. Elizabeth has an MA in History from UMass Amherst (with an emphasis on public, cultural, and environmental histories), and is fascinated by nature in the 19^th century imagination. She has a long history of leading more science-oriented bird discussions, having developed many K-12 programs and teacher workshops about urban birds during her tenure as an environmental educator in NYC. Her favorite local bird is the hermit thrush.

During the pandemic, the Emily Dickinson Museum is celebrating monthly Amherst Arts Night Plus with remote poetry programs every first Thursday at 6:30pm (EST).

This program is free to attend. Registration is required. Click here to register!

November Feature:

“Emily Dickinson In Translation”: During November’s Arts Night, enjoy a presentation of multi-lingual readings and short discussions on the practice of translating Dickinson’s words, presented by the Translation Center of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A unique enterprise that combines business services with academics, the Center offers translation, interpreting, workshops, language consulting, and much more to a variety of clients including small businesses, multinational corporations, museums, law firms, hospitals, NGOs, filmmakers, advertising firms, educational institutions, and individuals. Special thanks to the Center’s Director, Regina Galasso. 

About the Translators:

Adalberto Müller is an Associate Professor for Literary Theory at the University Federal Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro. He was a Visiting Scholar at The University at Buffalo in 2018 and at Yale University in 2013, and he has been a member of the Emily Dickinson International Society since 2015. Besides publishing two collections of essays, he translated  e. e. cummings, Paul Celan and Francis Ponge. His recent works are a collection of texts on plants – Transplantations (from my mother’s garden), 2019 –  a book of short stories – O Traço do calígrafo, 2020 – and Walter Benjamin: Teses sobre a História. Edição Crítica (with Márcio Seligmann-Silva). His translation of the complete poems of Emily Dickinson into Portuguese are being published in Brazil, by Editora da Unb/Editora Unicamp (2 vol.)

Marcel Riera i Bou is an award-winning poet, editor, and translator. In 2017, he published his Catalan translations of 200 Emily Dickinson poems with Edicions Proa. The book is now in its second edition. He has also translated Joseph Brodsky, Philip Larkin, James Fenton, Rumer Godden, Edward Thomas, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and W. H. Auden. He is Co-Director and a member of the editorial board of El Cercle de Viena, a press dedicated to publishing modern literary classics in Catalan.

The Emily Dickinson Museum’s Poetry Discussion Group meets monthly, September through May, for lively conversation about Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters.

Join us from 12pm to 1:30pm on Zoom. This program is full. If you are interested in future poetry discussion sections, please email edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org.

This program is free of charge, but we encourage those who are able to do so to make a donation upon their accepted registration. 

Topic: “No lives – Are Round”: Emily Dickinson’s Poetics

Karen Sánchez-Eppler, co-editor with Cristanne Miller of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Emily Dickinson, will lead the group in discussion that draws from new critical approaches to Dickinson. She will  briefly introduce the goals for the Handbook as well as the mix of approaches and perspectives it encompasses. The collection contains many essays that deepen our knowledge of the historical, biographical, and literary contexts in which Dickinson wrote and many that address her poetics—the how and what of her writing. A central goal of the project has been to connect these two scholarly modes. Rather than thinking of Dickinson as writing a poetry of correspondence, specific occasion, and intimate relationship, tightly bound to its immediate historical and biographical context and its unique material form (the chocolate wrapper or envelope flap) OR as a poetry of philosophical and spiritual consequence and universal reach, the collection affirms that both are true. Rather than asking readers to pick between these modes, we prod readers to consider how they illuminate each other.  

For this poetry discussion, we will explore a few poems that have more than one version, and hence more than one context, as a convenient way to consider how biographical context and material form do and don’t matter for Dickinson’s poetics. 

About the Facilitator: 
Karen Sánchez-Eppler is Professor of American Studies and English at Amherst College. She frequently teaches college seminars on Dickinson at the Museum and is a member of the Emily Dickinson Museum Board of Governors. She is the author of Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism, and the Politics of the Body and Dependent States: The Child’s Part in Nineteenth-Century American Culture. She is co-editor with Cristanne Miller, of the forthcoming The Oxford Handbook of Emily Dickinson. See her faculty profile for a fuller account of her scholarship and interests.  

During the pandemic, the Emily Dickinson Museum is celebrating monthly Amherst Arts Night Plus with remote poetry readings every first Thursday at 6:30pm (EST).

This program is free to attend. Registration is required. Click here to sign-up!

Our October featured poets are:

Rage Hezekiah

Rage Hezekiah is a New England based poet and educator, who earned her MFA from Emerson College. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The MacDowell Colony, and The Ragdale Foundation, and is the recipient of the Saint Botolph Foundation’s Emerging Artists Award. Her poems have been anthologized, co-translated, and published internationally. Rage’s debut full-length collection of poems, Stray Harbor, is available through Finishing Line Press. Her 2019 chapbook, Unslakable, is a 2018 Vella Chapbook Award winner available from Paper Nautilus.

For more information visit: https://www.ragehezekiah.com/

Brionne Janae

Brionne Janae is a poet and educator living in Brooklyn. They are a recipient of the 2016 St. Botoloph Emerging Artist award, a Hedgebrook Alum and proud Cave Canem Fellow. Their poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Sun Magazine jubilat, Sixth Finch, Plume, The Nashville Review, and Waxwing among others. Brionne’s first full length collection of poetry After Jubilee was published by Boaat Press.

For more information visit: https://www.brionnejanae.com/

Taylor Johnson

Taylor Johnson is proud of being from Washington, DC. They’ve received fellowships and scholarships from CALLALOO, Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, Tin House, the Vermont Studio Center, Yaddo, the Conversation Literary Festival,  the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, among other organizations. In 2017, Taylor received the Larry Neal Writers’ Award from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. 

Their poems appear in The Baffler, Indiana Review, Scalawag, and the Paris Review, among other journals and literary magazines. Their first book, Inheritance, will be published November 2020 with Alice James Books. Taylor lives in southern Louisiana where they listen.

For more information visit: http://www.taylorjohnsonpoems.com/