To Emily Dickinson, phosphorescence, was a divine spark and the illuminating light behind learning — it was volatile, but transformative in nature. Produced by the Emily Dickinson Museum, the Phosphorescence Poetry Reading Series celebrates contemporary creativity that echoes Dickinson’s own revolutionary poetic voice. The Series features established and emerging poets whose work and backgrounds represent the diversity of the flourishing contemporary poetry scene.
The 2023 Series is a virtual program. Join us on a Thursday Zoom for the last Thursdays of each month to hear from poets around the world as they read their work and discuss what poetry and Dickinson mean to them.
Phosphorescence 2023 Schedule:
Thursday, May 18, 6pm ET
Thursday, June 22, 6pm ET
Thursday, July 20, 6pm ET
Thursday, August 17, 6pm ET
Thursday, September 28, 6pm ET
Thursday, October 19, 6pm ET
Support Phosphorescence and Honor Someone Special:
Admission to all Phosphorescence events is free, but online donations, especially those made in honor or memory of family, friends, or colleagues are heartily encouraged and vital to the future of our programs. All gifts are tax deductible.
Aldo Amparán is the author of Brother Sleep (Alice James Books, 2022), winner of the 2020 Alice James Award. They have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts & CantoMundo. Their work has most recently appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Georgia Review, New England Review, Poetry Magazine, & elsewhere.
Catherine-Esther Cowie is a poet and visual artist from St. Lucia who has lived in Canada and now resides in the US. She is a graduate of the Pacific University low-residency MFA program. Her writing has appeared in a number of journals including The Common, Prairie Schooner, RHINO Poetry, West Branch Journal and the PN Review. Her work has been nominated for AWP Intro Journal, a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets 2018 and 2019 and Best of the Net 2021.
A Daisy for Dickinson: 
Rebecca Pelky is a member of the Brothertown Indian Nation of Wisconsin and a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow. Through a Red Place, her second poetry collection and winner of the Perugia Press Prize, was released in 2021. Her first book, Horizon of the Dog Woman, was published by Saint Julian Press in 2020. A translation of Matilde Ladron de Guevara’s poetry collection Desnuda, co-translated with Jake Young, was published in 2022. 
Carolina Hotchandani is a Latinx/South Asian poet born in Brazil and raised in various parts of the United States. She holds degrees from Brown, Texas State, and Northwestern universities. Her honors include fellowships from Tin House Writers’ Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Her poetry has appeared in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, Beloit Poetry Journal,Blackbird, Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner, and other journals. She is a Goodrich Assistant Professor of English in Omaha, Nebraska, where she lives with her husband and daughter.
Yamini Pathak is the author of the chapbooks, Atlas of Lost Places (Milk and Cake Press, 2020) and Breath Fire Water Song (Ghost City Press, 2021). Her words are forthcoming or have appeared in Poetry Northwest, About Place Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Vida Review, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She is a Poet in Schools for the Geraldine Dodge Foundation, serves as poetry editor for Inch micro-chapbooks (Bull City Press), and is a production assistant for Tupelo Quarterly journal. Yamini received her MFA in poetry from Antioch University, Los Angeles and has received support from VONA/Voices and Community of Writers. It brings her much joy to belong to the Duniya Collective, an inter-disciplinary group of BIPOC artists. Born in India, she lives with her family in New Jersey.
Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, the publisher of Restless Books, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, his work, adapted into film, theater, TV, and radio, has been translated into two dozen languages.
Join us for the first in a three-part series exploring the collection of the Emily Dickinson Museum. The Museum’s collection is the largest assemblage in the world of objects representing the Dickinson family’s material legacy. Progress continues on the three-year collections documentation project funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services. In this series, Museum staff converse with specialists and conservators about the unique qualities, challenges and opportunities of this singular collection.
Gillian
Krysten Hill is the author of ‘How Her Spirit Got Out’, which received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. Her work has been featured in POETRY, The Academy of American Poets, apt, BODY, Boiler Magazine, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Muzzle, PANK,Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. The recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award and a 2020 Mass Cultural Council Poetry Fellowship, she currently teaches at UMass Boston.
DeMisty Bellinger‘s debut novel is New to Liberty. She has also written two volumes of poetry, Peculiar Heritage and Rubbing Elbows, as well as appearing in anthologies and publishing pedagogy and nonfiction. DeMisty is a poetry editor at Malarkey Books, an alumni reader at Prairie Schooner, and a professor at Fitchburg State University.