Behind the Scenes Tour:
Restoring Dickinson’s Kitchen, Pantry, and More!

Private tour with Museum Executive Director Jane Wald
Space is limited — registration required.

a flashlight points at an open hole in a wall

Tickets TBA!

During this once-in-a-lifetime program, witness the discoveries emerging within the walls of Emily Dickinson’s 1813 home as the Museum enters the final phase of Homestead restoration. Executive Director Jane Wald leads a private tour of the architectural and forensic investigations illuminating the original condition of the Homestead’s service wing during the poet’s writing years, including the kitchen where she baked her famous gingerbread, the pantry where she composed and read poems, the family dining room and second floor bed chambers, and rooms that housed the Amherst residents who worked for the Dickinson family. . Now in the exploratory phase–a brief window when modern finishes have been removed and restoration work has not yet begun–this wing of the house has never been seen this way and will not remain in its current condition for long! From wear patterns on the original floor boards, to the “ghosts” of the poet’s pantry cupboards, you’ll see up close how new understandings of everyday life at the Homestead are shaping the final restoration plan.

About Jane Wald

a headshot of Executive Director Jane Wald Jane Wald is the Jane and Robert Keiter Family Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum. She has worked in the public history and literary sites for more than thirty-five years and has been executive director of the Dickinson Museum for twenty years. Her interests in literary and cultural history, combined with her background in historical archaeology and material culture, have been a particular strength at the Emily Dickinson Museum in its first decades. In 2006, Wald helped to create a master plan for stabilization, preservation, and restoration of the two Dickinson family homes, grounds, and collections, and has systematically implemented each of its recommendations ever since. Critical projects have included restoration of Emily Dickinson’s bed chamber; reconstruction from original materials of the Dickinson’s cherished conservatory; restoration of the original 1813 Homestead; installation of fire detection and suppression systems; reduction of water intrusion in the historic houses; and new museum-grade mechanical systems.

Wald has presented numerous lectures, talks, and papers about Emily Dickinson, the Museum, and especially the material and cultural contexts of Dickinson’s environment. Of particular relevance to this “Behind the Restoration” program are publications including “A Short Biography of the Homestead and The Evergreens,” in The Oxford Handbook of Emily Dickinson, (2022); “’The Poet Hunters’; Transforming Emily Dickinson’s Home into Literary Destination” in the Emily Dickinson Journal (2017); “’Pretty Much Real Life’: the Material World of the Dickinson Family” for the Blackwell Companion to Emily Dickinson (2014); and “’Better than Heaven’: Emily Dickinson’s Religious Texts” for the Emily Dickinson Archive. She received her A.B. from Bryn Mawr College, graduate degree in American History from Princeton University, and historical archaeology graduate work at the College of William and Mary.

A House That Reveals a Poet

the exterior of Emily Dickinson's yellow house on a sunny day

Between the Dashes #3 – An Emily Dickinson Museum Blog • August 19, 2026

This guest post is authored by Mary A. van Balgooy and was originally and independently published in Engaging Places, a design and strategy firm that connects people and historic places.

The Emily Dickinson Museum is grateful for feedback from visitors like Mary and deeply appreciated her insights on our tour.

A House That Reveals a Poet
By Mary A. van Balgooy

Before visiting the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, I knew surprisingly little about Emily Dickinson. The Museum encompasses two historic houses: the restored Homestead, where Dickinson was born, died, and wrote most of her poetry, and the unrestored Evergreens, the neighboring home of her brother Austin, his wife Susan, and their family. Although the Museum includes both houses, it was the Homestead that demonstrated how a historic house can become the key to understanding a poet.

I knew Emily Dickinson was one of America’s greatest poets, that she published very little during her lifetime, and that she lived much of her adult life in relative seclusion. I was also familiar with a few of the recurring stories surrounding her life—her correspondence with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, her close relationship with her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson, and the questions surrounding her withdrawal from society. Beyond that, she remained something of a mystery. What I did not expect was that the house itself would become the key to understanding her.

Many literary house museums preserve the places where authors lived and worked. The Emily Dickinson Homestead does something more ambitious. Rather than treating the Homestead simply as the place where Emily Dickinson lived, the guide used the house as a framework for understanding the person behind the poet. Each room served as a setting for exploring a different aspect of her life. This was done not through dates and events alone, but through her own poetry, her education, her family relationships, her intellectual curiosity, and her creative choices. In doing so, the house became not simply the setting for Dickinson’s story but an essential part of telling it.

Instead of beginning with furniture or architecture, the guide frequently began with one of Dickinson’s poems. Often, one of Dickinson’s poems opened a conversation, and the room became the backdrop for understanding the experiences, questions, and relationships that informed her writing. The library became a place to discuss education and the books that expanded her thinking. Her bedroom became a place to examine the extraordinary burst of creativity that produced more than a thousand poems in just a few years. Family spaces became opportunities to explore the network of people who made her work possible—from her father, who supplied books; to her sister Lavinia, who assumed many household responsibilities; to sister-in-law Susan, her closest reader and intellectual companion. The result was a tour that never reduced Dickinson to either biography or legend. It was one of the most effective literary house tours I have experienced.

What impressed me most was the guide’s willingness to embrace uncertainty. Rather than presenting tidy answers, she repeatedly acknowledged where historians continue to debate Dickinson’s life. Why did she withdraw from much of Amherst society? What was the nature of her relationship with Susan Dickinson? How should we understand her religious beliefs? Instead of resolving these questions, the tour demonstrated that uncertainty itself was central to Dickinson’s way of thinking. She resisted simple conclusions in both her life and her poetry, and the interpretation respected that complexity.

The house itself became more than a collection of historic rooms. It became evidence of the environment that shaped Dickinson’s intellectual and creative life. Visitors could see the spaces where Dickinson read, wrote, observed, questioned, and developed the distinctive poetic voice that challenged nineteenth-century literary conventions. The physical setting helped explain not simply where she lived but how her intellectual world was formed.

That approach sets the Homestead apart. Many literary house museums understandably focus on the author’s daily life or preserve rooms much as they appeared during the occupant’s lifetime. The Dickinson Homestead certainly does that, but it goes further. The furnishings and objects rarely become ends in themselves. Instead, they serve the larger goal of helping visitors understand the development of a remarkable mind.

By the end of the tour, I realized I wanted to do something I had not expected: read more Emily Dickinson. Not because I felt obligated to appreciate a famous poet, but because the tour made me curious. It introduced Dickinson not as an icon frozen in history but as an endlessly questioning thinker whose poems continue to reward careful reading.

That may be the highest compliment one can give a literary house museum. It did not simply teach me about Emily Dickinson. It made me want to know her better.

Historic house museums often ask visitors to imagine what life was like within their walls. The Emily Dickinson Homestead accomplishes something more difficult. It uses the house, its objects, and Dickinson’s own words to illuminate the experiences, ideas, and relationships that shaped one of America’s greatest poets. Emily Dickinson remains unknowable in many respects—as all remarkable people do—but I left feeling that I understood not simply more about her life, but more about the mind that produced her poetry.

Look Again
Sunday, September 27, 10am ET

IN-PERSON PANEL — streaming live for online registrants

This program is FREE to attend. 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!

REGISTER FOR THE FESTIVAL

This panel of award-winning poets of color, queer poets, and disabled poets will explore the evolving intersections of ekphrastic and documentary poetics, challenging traditional boundaries between image, language, and evidence. In a time when truth is suppressed, redacted, and revised in real time, while art, research, and scholarship is defunded, this panel of poet-educators explores ekphrastic dialogue as community practice, a multi-voiced collaboration that resists erasure. Audiences will leave with generative strategies for their creative practice, classrooms and other community spaces, inspired by expanding possibilities for this collaborative practice and the ways it can be leveraged to nourish healthy communities.

About the presenters

Victoria Chang’s most recent book of poetry is With My Back to the World, which received the Forward Prize in Poetry. Tree of Knowledge is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Other books are OBIT, The Trees Witness Everything, and Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. Her latest children’s book is Eureka. She is the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and Director of Poetry@Tech.

Jenny Molberg’s third poetry collection, The Court of No Record (LSU Press, 2023), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her fourth book, The Medium, is forthcoming from LSU Press in 2027. She is Professor of Writing, Literature, and Publishing and Editor-in-Chief of Ploughshares at Emerson College.

Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the 2024–2026 Poet Laureate of Miami-Dade County and a recipient of the 2025 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. She served as a poetry judge for the National Book Awards and is the author of four poetry collections, including Tortillera, winner of the TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Prize. A community-engaged poet, she collaborates widely across South Florida and serves as Senior Editor of SWWIM Every Day.

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.

2026 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule

Headliner Night
with Victoria Chang and Samyak Shertok
Saturday, September 26, 7pm ET

HYBRID PROGRAM — in-person at the Emily Dickinson Museum AND streaming live for online registrants.

This program is FREE to attend. 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!

REGISTER FOR THE FESTIVAL

Join us on Emily Dickinson’s lawn or virtually for a celebration of creativity and poetry! Our headlining poets, Victoria Chang and Samyak Shertok will read from their work and discuss their poetic practice and inspiration. Q&A to follow.

About the Poets

Victoria Chang’s most recent book of poetry is With My Back to the World, which received the Forward Prize in Poetry. Tree of Knowledge is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Other books are OBIT, The Trees Witness Everything, and Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. Her latest children’s book is Eureka. She is the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and Director of Poetry@Tech.

Samyak Shertok’s debut collection, No Rhododendron (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025), was selected by Kimiko Hahn for the 2024 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and shortlisted for the 2026 PEN Open Book Award and the 2026 Nossrat Yassini Poetry Prize. His poems appear in The Cincinnati Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, POETRY, Shenandoah, Waxwing, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and the Jake Adam York Prize, he has received fellowships from Aspen Words, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. His work has been awarded the Robert and Adele Schiff Award for Poetry, the Gulf CoastPrize in Poetry, and the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Originally from Nepal, he is an Assistant Professor of English at Mississippi State University.

2026 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule

Poetry in Panels
Saturday, September 26, 3pm ET

This program has been canceled and registrants have been refunded.

We hope you will participate in Small and Bold: Poetry of Small Objects and Narrow Spaces also taking place on Saturday at 3PM!

You may contact edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org with questions.

Tell it and DRAW it in slant with this poetry comics workshop. Suitable for all ages and creative inclinations, come explore poetry through short comics. Comics combine words and images, and like slant poetry, gives us new and complex ways to narrate with the world around us. Participants will learn how to develop visual images to accompany short poems and arrange them in 4 or 6 panel comics.

About the presenters

Max Barnewitz is a professor and cartoonist based in Washington DC. Max earned an MFA in Comics from California College of the Arts and an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Utah. Max’s creative work prioritizes making, sharing, and reading comics whose underground and defiant qualities transform culture. Max currently teaches applied comics at the University of Maryland and spends their free time exploring with their dog, Tally.

Christine Adams earned a PhD in Creative Writing from Ohio University and an MFA in Poetry from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her nonfiction work has been the recipient of awards including the Best American Essays, the Pushcart Prize, and the Terry Tempest Williams Prize. Her poetry has also been recognized by the Academy of American Poets. She lives in Virginia with her dog, Scout.

2026 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule

Small and Bold
Saturday, September 26, 3pm ET

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!

REGISTER FOR THE WORKSHOP

graphic Small and Bold - Tell It Slant 2026

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.

2026 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule

I Could Not Stop: Poetry and Persistence
Saturday, September 26, 1pm ET

HYBRID WORKSHOP — streaming live for online registrants

This program is FREE to attend. 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!

REGISTER FOR THE FESTIVAL

graphic I Could Not Stop - Tell It Slant 2026

January, Enzo and Amy are award-winning poets and Massachusetts Book Award honorees, but their paths to success weren’t easy. All three writers are parents, wage earners, and in some cases, caregivers, with multiple community and professional connections and responsibilities. Like Dickinson, each of these poets has at times wished they could bolt the door to their room and simply be left alone with their words. This interactive panel, reading, and discussion will open the door to those conflicting demands and provide strategies — and, hopefully, inspiration—for those in a similar predicament, those who “could not stop.”

About the presenters

Amy Dryansky’s third book, Ambergris was recently published by Pine Row Press. Her first, How I Got Lost So Close to Home, won the New England/New York Award from Alice James, the second, Grass Whistle (Salmon Poetry) received the Massachusetts Book Award. She’s received honors from the Poetry Society of America, Massachusetts Cultural Council and Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Amy lives, works and parents in western MA.

Enzo Silon Surin is an award-winning poet, author, educator, and publisher. He is the author of American Scapegoat and When My Body Was a Clinched Fist, winner of the Massachusetts Book Award. He is the founder of Central Square Press and the host of the podcast It’s a Poetic Life, where he explores creativity, attention, and the poetic life.

January Gill O’Neil is the author of Glitter Road (CavanKerry Press, 2024), winner of the Poetry by the Sea Best Book Award and the Julia Ward Howe Prize. She is also the author of Rewilding, Misery Islands, and Underlife. A Massachusetts Book Award honoree, she teaches at Salem State University and serves on the board of AWP.

2026 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule

Open Mic Night
Friday, September 25, 7pm ET

HYBRID PROGRAM — in-person at the Emily Dickinson Museum and streaming live for online registrants

This program is FREE to attend. 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!

REGISTER FOR THE FESTIVAL

Bring your poems to Emily Dickinson’s garden! Readers will have 5 minutes each to make us feel “physically as if the top of [our] head[s] were taken off!” (Emily Dickinson to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 16 August 1870). Open mic sign-ups are handled in advance via a Google Form, and selected readers will be notified. All readers must be available to read in-person and must register for the Festival to be considered.

Sign up for the open mic TBA!

2026 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule

Finding Emily in a Found Poem
Friday, September 25, 3pm ET

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!

REGISTER FOR THE WORKSHOP

graphic Finding Emily in a Found Poem - Tell It Slant 2026

In this interactive, generative workshop, poets will explore the language and themes of Emily Dickinson – at a slant. To honor Dickinson’s breathtakingly odd and brilliant work, poets will create group poems in the voice of a collective ‘we’. Poets will create found poems by combining their own words with words found in poems by Emily Dickinson. Sound intimidating? It will not be, as two-time World Poetry Slam champion, Joaquín Zihuatanejo, will be there to guide us along the way.

About the presenter

Joaquín Zihuatanejo was the Inaugural Dallas Poet Laureate and won a Laureate Fellow Prize of $50,000 from the Academy of American Poets in honor of the outstanding work he did as poet laureate. A two-time World Poetry Slam Champion, Joaquín received his MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. His work has been featured on NBC, HBO, and NPR. Joaquín’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, American Poets, and online at Poets.org.

2026 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule

Shawl We
Friday, September 25, 3pm ET

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!

REGISTER FOR THE WORKSHOP

In this poetry workshop, we shall visit a colorful mystery: a ten-foot shawl which belonged to a wren-size poet. Did Emily Dickinson wear this? Sitting at her window desk, looking out toward The Evergreens? Suddenly thrown about her as she wandered into the garden, visiting a robin? In bed, contemplating a wild night? After exploring some Dickinson poems which use patterns analogous to the shawl’s, participants will be invited to write lines which are inspired by the shawl’s patterns, inspired by imaginings of Dickinson wearing the shawl, or by both aspects. “Artists wrestled here!/Lo, a tint Cashmere!/Lo, a Rose!”—F11A

About the presenter

Deborah Bernhardt’s Echolalia was published by Four Way Books as winner of the Intro Prize. Driftology won the New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM Chapbook Prize. She received two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown and fellowships/grants from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing (Halls Fellowship), Wisconsin Arts Board, the Oscar Williams and Gene Derwood Fund, Penn State Altoona (Writer-in-Residence), the Tennessee Arts Commission, Writers@Work, Summer Literary Seminars, Russia and the Hessen Literary Society, Germany.

2026 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule

Private tour with Museum Executive Director Jane Wald Space is limited — registration required.

Between the Dashes #3 – An Emily Dickinson Museum Blog • August 19, 2026

A House That Reveals a Poet By Mary A. van Balgooy

IN-PERSON PANEL — streaming live for online registrants

HYBRID PROGRAM — in-person at the Emily Dickinson Museum AND streaming live for online registrants.

*This program has been canceled and registrants have been refunded.*

We hope you will participate in Small and Bold: Poetry of Small Objects and Narrow Spaces also taking place on Saturday at 3PM!

You may contact edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org with questions.

IN-PERSON PAID WORKSHOP

HYBRID WORKSHOP — streaming live for online registrants

HYBRID PROGRAM — in-person at the Emily Dickinson Museum and streaming live for online registrants

IN-PERSON PAID WORKSHOP

IN-PERSON PAID WORKSHOP

Private tour with Museum Executive Director Jane Wald
Space is limited — registration required.

A House That Reveals a Poet
By Mary A. van Balgooy

This program has been canceled and registrants have been refunded.