The Emily Dickinson Museum’s annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival is an event with international reach that celebrates Emily Dickinson’s poetic legacy and the contemporary creativity she and her work continues to inspire from the place she called home.
This year’s Festival will be hybrid with events happening online, as well as in-person at the Museum. The 2022 Festival platform is called Sched. Upon registering for the Festival you will receive an email link to access the event schedule, speaker information, and program sign-ups in the platform. All Festival attendees (online and in-person) must sign-up for programs in Sched.
The Tell It Slant Poetry Festival returns September 19-25 2022!
Learn more about the 2022 lineup below.
THE SCHEDULE:
About the Festival:
The Emily Dickinson Museum’s Annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival is an event with international reach that celebrates Emily Dickinson’s poetic legacy and the contemporary creativity she and her work continues to inspire from the place she called home.
The Festival, which runs each September, is named for Dickinson’s poem, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” underscoring the revolutionary power of poetry to shift our perspective and reveal new truths. Festival organizers are committed to featuring established and emerging poets who represent the diversity of the contemporary poetry landscape and to fostering community by placing poetry in the public sphere.
This year’s line-up features workshops, panels, and readings, by a diverse and talented group of poets from around the world including Pulitzer Prize winner Tyehimba Jess. The cornerstone of the Festival, the Emily Dickinson Marathon, is an epic reading of all 1,789 of Emily Dickinson’s poems.
To follow along with the Emily Dickinson Marathon, get your copy of the Franklin edition from the Emily Dickinson Museum Shop.
The annual event attracts a diverse audience of Dickinson fans and poetry-lovers, including students, educators, aspiring writers, and those who are new to poetry and literary events. Past Festival headliners have included Tracy K. Smith, Tiana Clark, Tess Taylor, Ada Limón, Jericho Brown, Franny Choi, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Paisley Rekdal, Adrian Matejka, Kaveh Akbar, and Ocean Vuong.
Support The Tell It Slant Poetry Festival and Honor Someone Special:
Admission to all Festival 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 this beloved annual event. All gifts are tax deductible and will be recognized as part of the Festival.
The Tell It Slant Poetry Festival is generously supported by The Beveridge Family Foundation, PeoplesBank, and Mass Cultural Council.
(Amherst, MA) – 
After years of studying piano as a young woman, Emily Dickinson curated her music book, a common practice at the time. Now part of the Dickinson Collection in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, this bound volume of 107 pieces of published sheet music includes the poet’s favorite instrumental piano music and vocal music. Offering a fresh historical perspective, George Boziwick’s new book brings this artifact to life, documenting Dickinson’s musical study in the early 1850s, which tellingly coincided with the writing of her first poems. Using Dickinson’s letters and poems, Boziwick explores the various composers, music sellers, and publishers behind this music and Dickinson’s attendance at performances, presenting new insights into the multiple layers of meaning that music held for her. Enjoy an illustrated talk followed by live music in the Dickinson family parlor on the 1851 Hallet and Davis piano.
Eleanor Hooker is an Irish poet and writer. Her third poetry collection Of Ochre and Ash (Dedalus Press) is the recipient of the 2022 Michael Hartnett Award. Her other poetry collections with Dedalus Press are: A Tug of Blue (2016) and The Shadow Owner’s Companion (2012), shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award for Best First Irish Collection 2012. Her chapbook Legion (Bonnefant Press, Netherlands) was published in 2021, and Where Memory Lies, a 2021 recipient of the Markievicz Award, is due for publication by Bonnefant Press in 2023. Eleanor’s poetry has been published internationally in Ireland, UK, USA, Holland, Romania, Hungary, India, Australia and Italy (forthcoming). Her work has appeared in literary journals including Poetry Ireland Review, POETRY, Poetry Review, PN Review, Agenda, The North, The Stinging Fly, Winter Papers, New Hibernia Review, New England Review (forthcoming), Archipelago (forthcoming). Eleanor is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Limerick. She holds an MPhil in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin, an MA in Cultural History from the University of Northumbria, and a BA from the Open University. Eleanor is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London. She’s a helm and Press Officer for Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat. She began her career as an Intensive Care Nurse and trained as a midwife at the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin.
Cori A. Winrock, author of Little Envelopes of Earth Conditions (Alice James Books 2020), is a poet/multimedia essayist. Her book-length lyric essay, Alterations, is forthcoming from Transit Books as part of their 
Margo Taft Stever‘s latest of three full-length poetry collections are Cracked Piano (CavanKerry Press, 2019), which was shortlisted and received honorable mention for the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize, and The End of Horses, Broadstone Books, 2022. Her latest of four chapbooks is Ghost Moose (Kattywompus Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in literary magazines including Verse Daily, Plant Human Quarterly, Cincinnati Review, Rattapallax, upstreet, Salamander, West Branch, Poet Lore, Blackbird, Poem-A-Day, poets.org, Academy of American Poets, and Prairie Schooner. She is currently an adjunct assistant professor in the Bioethics Department of the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. Stever also teaches a poetry workshop at Children’s Village, a residential school for at-risk children and adolescents. She is founder of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and founding and current co editor of Slapering Hol Press.
.chisaraokwu. is an Igbo actor, poet, and healthcare futurist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in GRIST, Obsidian, Zone3, Berkeley Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Glass, Tinderbox and others. Thrice nominated for Sundress’ Best of Net (2019, 2020, 2021) and awarded writing fellowships and residencies with BANFF, Cave Canem, Tin House and Brooklyn Poets, she calls just about any beach home.
Shin Yu Pai is a poet, essayist and visual artist. She is the author of several books of poetry, including “Virga”(Empty Bowl, 2021), “ENSŌ” (Entre Ríos Books, 2020), “Sightings: Selected Works (2000-2005)” (1913 Press, 2007), “Aux Arcs” (La Alameda, 2013), “Adamantine” (White Pine, 2010), and “Equivalence” (La Alameda, 2003). She served as the fourth poet laureate of the city of Redmond from 2015 to 2017. She is a three-time fellow of MacDowell and has also been in residence at Taipei Artist Village, Soul Mountain, The Ragdale Foundation, Centrum, and The National Park Service. Her poetry films have screened at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival and the Northwest Film Forum’s Cadence video poetry festival. She lives and works in the Pacific Northwest.
Eugenia Leigh is a Korean American poet and the author of Bianca (Four Way Books, forthcoming 2023) and Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014). Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications including The Nation, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poetry, Waxwing, and the 2017 Best of the Net Anthology. The recipient of Poetry’s 2021 Bess Hokin Prize as well as fellowships and awards from Poets & Writers Magazine, Kundiman, and elsewhere, Eugenia received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.
Annemarie Ní Churreáin is a poet from the Gaeltacht region of northwest Ireland. Her publications include Bloodroot (Doire Press, 2017), Town (The Salvage Press, 2018) and The Poison Glen (The Gallery Press, 2021). She is a recipient of the Arts Council’s Next Generation Artist Award and a co-recipient of The Markievicz Award. Ní Churreáin has written on various care institutions in Ireland including mother and baby homes, state industrial schools, orphanages and hospitals. A former literary fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude and The Jack Kerouac House of Orlando, Ní Churreáin currently lectures at the Yeats Academy of Arts, Design and Architecture, Atlantic Technological University, and IT Sligo.