A Something Overtakes the Mind
Art and Poetry Installation

IN-PERSON ART AND POETRY INSTALLATION
On view beginning Friday, August 1, 2025
Free to the public during Museum opening hours
Did you ever read one of her Poems backward, because the plunge from the front overturned you? I sometimes (often have, many times) have – A something overtakes the Mind –

A Something Overtakes the Mind graphic

“Did you ever read one of her Poems backward,” Emily Dickinson wrote on a scrap of wrapping paper, “because the plunge from the front overturned you? I sometimes (often have, many times) have—A something overtakes the Mind.” Although we’ll never know which poet Dickinson was referencing here, it’s clear that she felt the need to alter her approach to the poems at hand as a means of entering the work. A Something Overtakes the Mind—a multimedia visual art and poetry installation created by Ligia Bouton and Matt Donovan for the Emily Dickinson Museum—takes a cue from these words from Emily Dickinson and, through explorations of domestic objects, biographical details, found poetry, and community testimonials, seeks to find new ways of engaging with the poet’s life and legacy. 

Opening on August 1st, this art installation, the first of its kind at the Dickinson Museum, will be installed in the ground floor of the Homestead in the house’s woodshed, laundry room, and kitchen. Although the project’s focus will be centered on two primary sets of objects from the Museum’s collection—the wallpaper fragments recovered from Emily Dickinson’s bedroom, and fragments of unassembled quilts—the installation will also incorporate a wide range of objects curated from the collection. 

The Museum’s former woodshed and laundry room will house the wallpaper fragments, as well as a series of shapes laser-cut in order to precisely follow the contours of the archived wallpaper scraps. These created forms will contain not only fragments of the Dickinson’s work, but also curated, century-spanning text that addresses the poet’s life and work in various ways: some of the text will be comprised of biographical descriptions of Emily Dickinson’s writing process, and some will contain interpretations of Dickinson’s use of the em dash in her poetry (a form of punctuation that is echoed in the wallpaper’s corresponding design). 

A display of the Museum’s quilting fragments will be installed in the home’s former kitchen, along with a series of shadowboxes and vitrines housing arranged composites of language and objects. Whereas the featured items will include a wide range of domestic objects from the Museum’s collection, the accompanying text will be created by arrangements of the legible words and letters written on the household paper scraps that were used as backing during the creation of a quilt in a technique known as paper piecing. 

Lastly, in the room known as the Poets’ Lounge, there will be interactive displays that allows visitors to create their own lines of poetry derived from the words found within the quilting fragments, as well as a video installation that will include interviews with a wide-range of community members reading and reciting Dickinson’s poems, and discussing her life and work. 


ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Ligia Bouton headshotLigia Bouton was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and currently divides her time between Massachusetts and New Mexico in the US.  Her creative work combines sculpture and photography with performance and digital video to recreate appropriated narratives and research drawn from the history of science, literature, and other sources.  Bouton’s recent projects have been shown at museums such as the Copenhagen Contemporary (Denmark), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Guildhall Art Gallery (London, UK), Minneapolis Institute of Art, SITE Santa Fe, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Bellevue Arts Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.  In 2016, Bouton’s work was featured in the exhibition, “Charlotte Great and Small,” celebrating the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire, England.  Bouton’s video work has been shown at Art Claims Impulse in Berlin, in the Biennial of Contemporary Art, Nimes, France, and at the Temporary Art Center, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, as well as in The Female Avant Garde Festival in Prague.  Reviews of this work have appeared in Art in America, Art Papers, The Art Newspaper, Art Ltd., and The New York Times.  She is the recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital grant for the opera “Inheritance” which premiered at University of California, San Diego in 2018 and a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship for her project “25 Stars: A Temporary Monument for Henrietta Swan Leavitt”.  Her work can be found in numerous public and private collections including Crystal Bridges Museum, the Albuquerque Museum, St. John’s College, and the Falconer Gallery at Grinnell College. Bouton is currently Professor of Art Studio at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

Matt Donovan headshotMatt Donovan is the author of four books and two chapbooks: We Are Not Where We Are (an erasure of Walden, co-authored with Jenny George, Bull City Press 2025), The Dug-Up Gun Museum (a collection of poems about guns and gun violence in America, BOA 2022), Missing Department (a collaborative collection of art and poetry created with artist Ligia Bouton, Visual Studies Workshop 2023), A Cloud of Unusual Size and Shape: Meditations on Ruin and Redemption (a book of lyric essays, Trinity University Press 2016), Rapture & the Big Bam (selected by Lia Purpura for the Snowbound Chapbook Competition, Tupelo Press 2016), and Vellum (selected by Mark Doty for the Bakeless Contest, Houghton Mifflin 2007). Donovan is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize in Literature, a Pushcart Prize, a Levis Reading Prize, and an NEA Fellowship in Literature. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including AGNI, American Poetry Review, The Believer, Kenyon Review, The New England Review, Poetry, Threepenny Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Donovan serves as Director of the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.

A woman walks into the recently completed carriage house on a sunny day

Passive Building Construction

The Reconstructed Carriage House

Digital rendering of completed Evergreens Carriage

Digital rendering of carriage house (edmsSTUDIO)

The Emily Dickinson Museum is proud to unveil the newly reconstructed John and Elizabeth Armstrong Carriage House — an addition to the Dickinson grounds that not only reflects the aesthetic of the historic property, but also embraces a forward-thinking commitment to sustainability. Built to PHIUS Passive House standards, the carriage house exemplifies how historical preservation and environmental stewardship can go hand in hand.

Located on the historic Dickinson family property, the new carriage house replaces a long-lost outbuilding that once played a vital role in the day-to-day life of the Dickinson family. The original building likely housed two horse stalls, a family buggy or curricle, horse tack, and feed hay. Designed to honor the original footprint and style of 19th-century carriage houses, this modern interpretation now serves as the Museum’s new visitor welcome center, shop, and event space. The exterior appearance of the carriage house is as faithful as possible in its design to evidence accumulated from historic maps, lithographs, and photographs.

What Is “Passive House”?

Originating in Germany, Passive House is a rigorous building standard that dramatically reduces a building’s energy use while increasing indoor comfort and air quality. Passive buildings are carefully engineered to use up to 90% less heating and cooling energy than traditional structures, while delivering superior interior comfort and healthy indoor air quality. Built to last, these structures are highly durable and future-proof, offering long-term performance with minimal environmental impact.

A woman walks into the recently completed carriage house on a sunny dayThe Carriage House achieves this through five core principles:

  • Continuous insulation: A super-insulated envelope keeps indoor temperatures stable year-round.
  • Airtight construction: The building is meticulously sealed to prevent unwanted drafts and energy loss.
  • High-performance windows: Specially engineered triple-pane windows maximize natural light while minimizing heat transfer.
  • Balanced ventilation: A fresh air system with energy recovery ensures optimal indoor air quality without sacrificing efficiency.
  • Thermal bridge-free design: Materials and junctions are carefully chosen to eliminate cold spots and condensation risk.

As the Museum works to expand its educational programs, increase accessibility, and better serve the community, it is making a long-term investment in both environmental responsibility and visitor experience by embracing Passive House construction. Reduced energy use means lower carbon emissions, less strain on the local power grid, and a healthier planet for future generations. This commitment to passive house construction and environmental responsibility reflects Dickinson’s regard for the natural world and the inspiration she drew from it.

Tell-It-Slant-2022-Square-Web-Graphics

Tell It Slant Poetry Festival 2025 Schedule
September 15-21

The Tell It Slant Poetry Festival returns September 15-21!

Join us for a week of events happening both online and in-person at the Museum. 

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 line-up features a talented group of poets from around the world including a reading by National Book Award and MacArthur Genius grantee Terrance Hayes with award-winning poet Krysten Hill, generative writing workshops, poetry panels, an open mic, live music, and more. The cornerstone of the Festival, the Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon, is an epic reading of all 1,789 of Emily Dickinson’s poems across the Festival week. Learn more about the 2025 lineup below. 

FESTIVAL TICKETS:

Free Festival access is available. However, registrants are encouraged to consider choosing the “Pay Your Way” ticket price of $20 per event. Revenue from Festival tickets supports honoraria for participating poets and the production costs of high-quality hybrid Festival events. Purchase 10 or more Pay Your Way tickets, and we will gift you an official Emily Dickinson Museum tote bag!

Small Group Workshops: This year, the Festival is offering three concurrent workshops for in-person participants on Sunday morning. Due to the limited event capacity, these workshops are available for a fee of $25. Tickets for small group workshops on Sunday must be purchased separately. See the Festival ticket menu.

A limited number of VIP Festival tickets are available at two levels: VIP, and VIP Dinner Guest. At both levels, these tickets offer a heightened Festival experience that includes access to all festival programs and the small group workshop of your choosing, reserved seating, a Festival swag bag, and a private reception and tour of the Homestead art installation, ‘A Something Overtakes the Mind’. At the VIP Dinner Guest level, ticket holders (only six total seats available!) are invited to an intimate dinner on Saturday, September 20, in the Dickinson dining room at the Homestead with Festival headliners Terrance Hayes and Krysten Hill, and Jane Wald, the Jane and Robert Keiter Family Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum. 

For all tickets, donations in support of the Museum’s programming are welcome in the final step of registration. Your support is deeply appreciated. 

REGISTER

THE SCHEDULE:

Marathon Part 1 - Tell It Slant 2025 Marathon Part 2 - Tell It Slant 2025 The Beauty of Objectivity - Tell It Slant 2025

Putting the Wit in Witness - Tell It Slant 2025 Marathon Part 3 - Tell It Slant 2025 Letters to the World - Tell It Slant 2025

From Blank to Blank - Tell It Slant 2025 graphic The Interior and the Other_ - Tell It Slant 2025 Marathon Part 4 - Tell It Slant 2025

Food & Free Verse_ - Tell It Slant 2025 Phosphorescence - Tell It Slant 2025 Marathon Part 5 - Tell It Slant 2025

Open Mic - Tell It Slant 2025 Marathon Part 6 - Tell It Slant 2025 Open Me Carefully- Tell It Slant 2025 graphic

Thank You For The Surgery”_- Tell It Slant 2025 Headliner Night - Tell It Slant 2025 graphic Home in a Time of Crisis_ - Tell It Slant 2025

Paste It Slant_ - Tell It Slant 2025 Poems in the Garden - Tell It Slant 2025Children’s Book Covers - Tell It Slant 2025

Marathon Part 7 - Tell It Slant 2025 graphic

REGISTER

Monday, September 15:
6-8:30pm [Virtual Program] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 1
A group reading of all 1,789 poems by Emily Dickinson over the course of 7 sessions. This session takes place entirely virtually and is open to both readers and listeners. We will be reading from Ralph Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or check back here soon to learn more about signing up as a reader!


Tuesday, September 16
:

12-2:15pm [Virtual Program] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 2
A group reading of all 1,789 poems by Emily Dickinson over the course of 7 sessions. This session takes place entirely virtually and is open to both readers and listeners. We will be reading from Ralph Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or check back here soon to learn more about signing up as a reader!
3:30-5pm [Virtual Workshop] — The Beauty of Objectivity
This workshop provides beginning poets with a framework for analyzing poetry with an objective approach centered on craft elements. Participants will analyze Dickinson’s poems and contemporary examples, and they will generate and analyze their own poetry in response to Dickinson-centered prompts. 
Featuring Mary Robles and Lucas Clark.
6:30-8pm [Virtual Workshop] — Putting the Wit in Witness: Bringing Levity to Heavy Topics
In this generative workshop, we turn to Dickinson and other contemporary poets who use a light hand to address tough subjects. Through readings and interactive writing exercises, participants will explore the power of this approach to inspire their own writing.
Featuring Amie Whittemore and Jung Hae Chae.


Wednesday, September 17
:

12-2:15pm [Virtual Program] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 3
A group reading of all 1,789 poems by Emily Dickinson over the course of 7 sessions. This session takes place entirely virtually and is open to both readers and listeners. We will be reading from Ralph Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or check back here soon to learn more about signing up as a reader!
2:30-4pm [Virtual Workshop] — Letters to the World: Epistolary Creativity Workshop
In this gentle and good-humored generative writing program, participants will play with letter-writing as a form of poetic and personal expression while drawing inspiration from Dickinson’s own letters. Guided freewriting sessions will be followed by opportunities for sharing and reflection. No experience necessary.
Featuring Sylvie Cathrall.
4:30-6pm [Virtual Panel] — From Blank to Blank: How and Why to Use Blackout Poetry
What do acts of erasure afford a writer? In this interactive workshop, we’ll be looking closely at resonant models of erasure (including Nicole Sealey, Sarah Sloat, Tracy K. Smith, and Jennifer Sperry Steinorth), and exploring the effects of different blackout poetry strategies.
Featuring Matt Donovan and Jenny George, authors of We are Not Where We Are, an erasing of Thoreau’s Walden.
7:30-9pm [Virtual Workshop] — The Interior and the Other: on poetic and psychic transformation
What can poetry teach us about psychoanalysis, and the process of sharing one’s inner self with another? What can therapeutic or healing work teach us about writing poems? In this panel, two poets who have written about and undergone forms of therapy will explore the art and practice of writing about interiority and healing. 
Featuring Ayelet Amittay and Dana Levin.


Thursday, September 18
:

12-2:15pm [Virtual Program] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 4
A group reading of all 1,789 poems by Emily Dickinson over the course of 7 sessions. This session takes place entirely virtually and is open to both readers and listeners. We will be reading from Ralph Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or check back here soon to learn more about signing up as a reader!
3-4:30pm [Virtual Workshop] — Food & Free Verse: A Celebration of Food Through Poetry
Meditate on different ways to perceive the way food nourishes the soul, just like a poem does: through memory and survival, through gratitude, through synaesthesia, through love languages and through socio-economic commentary. This is a unique poetry generative writing workshop for writers of all levels.
Featuring Ayelet Amittay and Dana Levin.
6-7:15pm [Virtual Reading] — Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Reading
Festival edition of the Museum’s monthly poetry reading series. Hear from poets around the world as they read their work and discuss what poetry and Dickinson mean to them.
Featuring Livia Meneghin, Meg Day, and Rajiv Mohabir.

 

Friday, September 19:
12-2:15pm [Virtual] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 5
A group reading of all 1,789 poems by Emily Dickinson over the course of 7 sessions. This session takes place entirely virtually and is open to both readers and listeners. We will be reading from Ralph Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or check back here soon to learn more about signing up as a reader!
7-8:30pm [Hybrid Reading] — Open Mic Night
Bring your poems to Emily Dickinson’s garden! Readers will have 4 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). Las Lorcas will perform after the Open Mic. Open mic sign-ups will be handled in advance via a Google Form, and selected readers will be notified.


Saturday, September 20
:

9:30am-12pm[Hybrid] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 6
A group reading of all 1,789 poems by Emily Dickinson over the course of 7 sessions. For this session, readers must be present on-site, but listeners are welcome both in-person and online. We will be reading from Ralph Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. Gingerbread cookies inspired by Dickinson’s own recipe will be served. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or check back here soon to learn more about signing up as a reader!
1-2:30pm [In-Person Workshop] — Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Legacy of Correspondence
Emily Dickinson is known to have written more than a thousand intimate and poetic letters in her lifetime. In this workshop, poets will discuss the necessity and ascendancy of correspondence in their own lives and work. Panelists will consider poetry’s deep intersection of private world and public sphere, and then ask participants to do the same as they pen their own letter-poems. 
Featuring Caitlin McDonnell, Nicole Callihan, Tina Cane, and Zoë Ryder White.
3:30-5pm [In-Person Panel] — Thank You For The Surgery: The Poet-Editor Relationship
In a poetry world in which many editors are poets themselves, and a main avenue for becoming a poet is the workshop classroom, how might the editor-poet relationship create a correspondence that is at once formative, supportive, and expansive, and a relationship that is personally and professionally meaningful and ideally non-hierarchical?
Featuring Elizabeth Metzger, Callie Siskel, and Dorothea Lasky.
7-9pm [Hybrid Reading] — Headliner Night with Terrance Hayes and Krysten Hill
Join us in Emily Dickinson’s garden or virtually for a celebration of creativity and poetry! Our headlining poet, Terrance Hayes, will read from his work and discuss poetic practice and inspiration.


Sunday, September 21
:

10-11:30am [Virtual Panel] — Home in a Time of Crisis: New Poets from Poetry Wales
Where do we find home, belonging and comfort in a time of crisis? What might Emily Dickinson tell us about how to find comfort and strength when it sometimes feels like nothing we do can change things for the better? 
Featuring Zoe Brigley, Tangie Mitchell, Zakia Carpenter, and Kandance Siobhan Walker.
10-11:30am [Paid In-Person Workshop] — Paste It Slant: A Collage Poetry Workshop
Join for a generative workshop that pairs the visual art form of collage with poetry! Participants will be guided through a process of discovery with different collaging materials and text to create their own hand-crafted collage. All levels of experience with poetry and visual art are welcome.
Featuring Leticia Rocha.
10-11:30am [Paid In-Person Workshop] — Poems in the Garden: A Poetry Workshop with The WildStory Podcast
 In this generative workshop led by The WildStory Podcast host Ann E. Wallace and featured guest Elizabeth Sylvia, poetry and nature enthusiasts of all ages and experience levels are invited to slow down and open their senses to the natural world—the memories it holds, the meanings it carries, and the feelings it inspires. Participants will engage in writing exercises, learn new strategies, and compose a poem draft during the session.
Featuring Ann Wallace and Elizabeth Sylvia.
10-11:30am [Paid In-Person Workshop] — Children’s Book Covers: Diving Boards Into Our Imagination
Beginner and experienced poets of all ages are invited to come and use children’s book covers as diving boards into memory and imagination. Children’s books will be on hand to browse, and participants will also be encouraged to search online for their own current or past favorite children’s books. Using one or more of the five senses (sight, sound, touch, smell & taste), participants will generate drafts of new poems as the vivid literary landscape of rhymes, illustration, and stories of childhood spark memories and new ideas.
Featuring María Luisa Arroyo.
12:30-2:30pm [Hybrid] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Grand Finale
A group reading of all 1,789 poems by Emily Dickinson over the course of 7 sessions. For this session, readers must be present on-site, but listeners are welcome both in-person and online. We will read from Ralph Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. Stay to the end to enjoy a celebratory slice of coconut cake inspired by Dickinson’s own recipe. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or check back here soon to learn more about signing up as a reader!

REGISTER


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 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. The cornerstone of the Festival, the Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon, is an epic reading of all 1,789 of Emily Dickinson’s poems.

To follow along with the Emily Dickinson Poetry 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 Carl Phillips, Marilyn Nelson, Abigail Chabitnoy, 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:
Admission to all Poetry Festival events is free–made possible by contributions from Museum supporters.
Please consider making a donation of any size during the registration process or anytime on the Museum’s website.

 
Emily Dickinson at her writing desk with her back to the camera

Emily Dickinson Fund

Your gift to the Emily Dickinson Fund helps the Museum spark imaginations by amplifying Emily Dickinson’s revolutionary poetic voice, by opening her family homes to visitors, by interpretive and educational use of her family’s material legacy, by holding up her enduring poetry. 

Emily Dickinson at her writing desk with her back to the cameraYour steadfast support is the engine that powers the Museum. Together we can realize our shared vision of the Emily Dickinson Museum as the premier center of innovative approaches to Emily Dickinson’s genius — a creative place that fosters curiosity, stimulates personal expression, and celebrates the enduring power of the poet’s life and legacy.” – Jane Wald, Executive Director

Your generous support helps provide free poetry programs and immersive educational experiences that inspire and connect learners of all ages from all over the world. Your support helps to restore and preserve the Dickinson family’s historic homes in Amherst, Massachusetts. 

The Emily Dickinson Fund provides for the Museum’s day-to-day operations, undergirds its highest priorities, and is foundational to its overall excellence and success. The Fund supplies 36% of our operating budget. Your gift has an immediate impact and provides critical, unrestricted support. Every donor and every gift sustains and elevates the Museum’s mission for generations of admirers to come.

A gift to the Emily Dickinson Fund makes all this, and more, possible:

  1. Guided house tours for more than 14,000 visitors.
  2. Public programs inspiring 18,000 registrants – from 50 states and 70 countries.
  3. Educational programs serving 1,250 participants.
  4. Digitization of 10,000 artifacts in our collection.
  5. Immersion in Emily’s place, poetry, power – countless (and transformative).

DONATE

Thank you. 

“No institution in America, I think, does better than the Emily Dickinson Museum in making profound and enjoyable uses of its resources…” – Howard, South Carolina

“I loved having the opportunity to write poetry inspired by Emily Dickinson in her own home. I will take the process of writing poetry that I learned here and apply it to my writing poetry class and creative writing class. This was a great experience! – D., student from Greens Farms Academy

For more information, please contact Mary Foulk, Director of Annual Giving and Donor Relations at 413-542-2904 or mfoulk@emilydickinsonmuseum.org.

Spring Garden Days 2025
Friday, May 30 & Saturday, May 31

IN-PERSON PROGRAM

“New feet within my garden go –
New fingers stir the sod–”
Fr79

Come celebrate the beauty of spring during Garden Days at the Emily Dickinson Museum! As summer temperatures arrive in Amherst, Emily’s garden begs to be tended. Join Museum staff and fellow volunteers to aid in the cultivation and growth of the historic Dickinson family landscape. During Garden Days, participants will help to weed, divide older perennials, plant new perennials and annuals, edge flower beds, and more! 

DETAILS:
All are welcome; no gardening experience is required. Garden Days runs rain or shine!

Volunteers are encouraged to bring the following if they have them:

  • Gloves
  • Clean hand trowel and clippers
  • Bucket
  • Kneeling pad
  • Water bottle
  • Comfortable footwear
  • Sun protection
  • Small plant pot(s)
  • Lunch (if you are staying for the whole day)

Garden Days spots are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Space is limited. This program is run over the course of two days, and participants may choose up to two of the following sessions:

Session 1: Friday, May 30, 9:30am – 12:30pm ET (Full)

Session 2: Friday, May 30,  1:30pm – 4:30pm ET

Session 3: Saturday, May 31, 9:30am – 12:30pm ET (Full)

Session 4: Saturday, May 31, 1:30pm – 4:30pm ET

Volunteers are encouraged to stay for the duration of their session. Those under the age of 18 should be accompanied by an adult.

This in-person program is free to attend. Registration is required. 

REGISTER

Press Release:
Carriage House Opening

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Patrick Fecher
publicrelations@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

Digital rendering of completed Evergreens Carriage

Digital rendering of completed Evergreens Carriage House (edmsSTUDIO)

EMILY DICKINSON MUSEUM OPENS NEWLY RECONSTRUCTED CARRIAGE HOUSE THAT ONCE STOOD ON THE HISTORIC PROPERTY

On Saturday, May 10, the Emily Dickinson Museum will celebrate the opening of the John and Elizabeth Armstrong Carriage House and the reopening of The Evergreens during its annual Poetry Walk event.

(AMHERST, Mass., April 3, 2025) – The Emily Dickinson Museum has completed the reconstruction of the carriage house that once stood to the east of The Evergreens, the home of Emily Dickinson’s brother Austin and his wife Susan. The carriage house will initially serve as a site for visitor welcome, orientation and museum shop, while also enabling the third and final phase of the Dickinson Homestead restoration.

The exterior appearance of the carriage house is as faithful as possible in its design to evidence accumulated from historic maps, lithographs, and photographs. The interior layout mimics that of the historic carriage house while optimizing modern functions and flow. At the outset of the design phase, museum staff worked with architects at edmSTUDIO to track down details of the original structure in historic maps, deeds, insurance documents, photographs, and archaeological reports. During the course of construction, museum staff discovered that the carriage house was most likely constructed at the same time as the Italianate portion of The Evergreens dwelling, built in 1856, rather than earlier as originally thought. In a photograph taken in about 1870, the carriage house appears as a prominent yet simple vernacular structure with window and door openings barely visible. Insurance maps from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries revealed that it was a wood frame structure with two levels and a metal roof. Wandering journalist Christopher Morley documented the structure in his 1936 travel memoir Streamlines. Details such as these gave the design team guidance about the exterior appearance and finishes.

Along with reconstructing the historical appearance of the carriage house, the Museum prioritized sustainability with the goal of achieving passive house certification from the Passive House Institute US. Architects Monica Del Rio Perez and Tim Widman of edmSTUDIOS collaborated on a design using construction techniques and materials that will result in significant energy savings and eliminate reliance on fossil fuels for heating and cooling. The Museum engaged Teagno Construction, Inc., who recently worked on the second phase of Homestead restoration, as general contractor for the project.

The carriage house reconstruction project was supported by a major pledge from former Board members and long-time friends John and Elizabeth Armstrong. “We’ve always been proud of our association with the Museum, recognizing its importance to our regional community and now–through the wonders of technology–to the world.” stated Elizabeth, adding, “We’ve been drawn over the years to supporting singular projects that open multiple possibilities for the Museum. The carriage house is just such a project.”

Jane and Robert Keiter Family Executive Director Jane Wald says, “Opening the carriage house is a significant milestone in long-range goals for the Emily Dickinson Museum established more than twenty years ago. Much has happened between then and now thanks to the many supporters who have shared the Museum’s vision–and especially thanks to John and Elizabeth Armstrong who have been steadfast friends of the Museum since its establishment.  By moving some functions into the  carriage house, the Museum can more quickly complete the last phase of restoring Emily Dickinson’s Homestead so that her daily life and literary legacy can be more fully presented and appreciated in the place it was created. Moreover, we couldn’t be more pleased that this commitment to passive house construction and environmental responsibility reflects Dickinson’s regard for the natural world and the inspiration she drew from it.” 

Erin Martin, Senior Director of Development says, “We are deeply grateful to the Armstrongs for their extraordinary generosity and leadership – which moved this project from the pages of our long-range plan and made it a reality. The carriage house is a testament to the Armstrong’s’ long partnership with the Emily Dickinson Museum and is their gift to the wide community of people both here and around the world who love the poet, and this place. 

Closed since August due to carriage house construction, The Evergreens will reopen to the public on May 1st. The Emily Dickinson Museum used the period of closure as an opportunity to stabilize and conserve the first floor hallway wallpaper. This work was completed by Works on Paper, LLC. As of May 1st, tickets to the Emily Dickinson Museum will include tours of both the Homestead and The Evergreens.

On May 10, in honor of the 139th anniversary of the poet’s death, the Emily Dickinson Museum will host their annual Poetry Walk through downtown Amherst, the town Dickinson called “paradise.” This year’s Walk celebrates the opening of the newly reconstructed carriage house and the reopening of The Evergreens with stops that explore its significance to Amherst’s cultural landscape and to the poet herself. This is a free public program. 

ABOUT THE PROJECT
The design calls for reconstructing the exterior historic appearance of the carriage house as faithfully as possible while optimizing interior functions and flow. At the outset of the design phase, museum staff worked with architects at edmSTUDIO to track down details of the original structure in historic maps, deeds, insurance documents, photographs, and archaeological reports. The original structure may have been built as early as the 1840s as an outbuilding associated with the modest cottage owned by the poet’s father, which was incorporated into The Evergreens dwelling, built for Austin and Susan Dickinson in 1856. In a photograph taken in about 1870, the carriage house appears as a prominent yet simple vernacular structure with window and door openings barely visible. Insurance maps from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries revealed that it was a wood frame structure with two levels and a metal roof. Details such as these gave the design team guidance about the exterior appearance and finishes.

Archival photograph of The Evergreens and Carriage House (in middle ground of photo)

Archival photograph of The Evergreens and Carriage House (in middle ground of photo)

As new construction, the carriage house gives the Emily Dickinson Museum an opportunity to combine its sustainability and historical priorities. Since 2006, the museum has recognized that full interpretation of the historic Dickinson site and the poet’s life cannot be completely understood from a functional and aesthetic perspective without reconstruction of the outbuildings. While the current project is being carried out as a “historic reconstruction,” it also gives the museum the opportunity to advance its sustainability goals. Working with Monica Del Rio Perez and Tim Widman of edmSTUDIO, the design calls for construction techniques and materials selections that will produce significant energy savings and carbon reduction for heating and cooling. The museum has engaged Teagno Construction, Inc., as general contractor for the project.

Jane and Robert Keiter Family Executive Director Jane Wald says, “Reconstruction of the Evergreens carriage house is a true milestone for the Emily Dickinson Museum. It’s the linchpin of our future plans to complete the Homestead restoration – an effort that’s already transformed our sense of who Emily Dickinson was and how she lived. Not only does the carriage house begin to fill out the Dickinson landscape, but its flexible interior also offers greater comfort, better service, and much-needed space for public and educational programming that’s already on the drawing board.”

For press-approved images: https://bit.ly/Press-Carriage-House

To learn more about Poetry Walk: EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org/poetry-walk-2025

ABOUT THE EMILY DICKINSON MUSEUM

The Emily Dickinson Museum is dedicated to sparking the imagination by amplifying Emily Dickinson’s revolutionary poetic voice from the place she called home.

The Museum comprises two historic houses—the Dickinson Homestead and The Evergreens in the center of Amherst, Mass.—that were home to the poet (1830-1886) and members of her immediate family during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Museum was created in 2003 when the two houses merged under the ownership of the Trustees of Amherst College. The Museum is overseen by a separate Board of Governors and is responsible for raising its own operating, program, and capital funds.

 

the Homestead lights are on at night time

Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Series 2025

a banner for PHOSPHORESCENCE Contemporary Poetry Series

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 2025 Series is a FREE virtual program. Join us on Zoom each month to hear from poets around the world as they read their work and discuss what poetry and Dickinson mean to them.

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.
 
For more information on our upcoming Phosphorescence Readings, sign up for our e-newsletter.
 

Phosphorescence 2025 Schedule:

graphic for Phos April 2025Thursday, April 17, 6pm ET

Featuring poets: Carlene Kucharczyk, Avia Tadmor, and Silvia Bonilla

 

 

 

 

graphic Phos May 2025Thursday, May 15, 6pm ET

Featuring poets: Joy Ladin, Niina Pollari, and Joan Larkin

 

 

 

 

 

graphic Phos June 2025Wednesday, June 18, 6pm ET

Featuring poets: Barbara Mossberg, Bridget Lowe, and Rachelle Toarmino

 

 

 

 

 

graphic Phos July 2025Thursday, July 17, 6pm ET

Featuring poets: Lesley Wheeler and Nadia Alexis

 

 

 

 

 

graphic Phos August 2025Thursday, August 21, 6pm ET

Featuring poets: Cathy Linh Che, Monica Ong, and Lee Ann Roripaugh

 

 

 

 

 

graphic Phos September 2025Thursday, September 18, 6pm ET

Featuring poets: Livia Meneghin, Meg Day, and Rajiv Mohabir

 

 

 

 

 
 

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.

 

Logo for PHOSPHORESCENCE reading series featuring the Homestead glowing at night

Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Series
Thursday, September 18, 6pm ET

Phosphorescence September 2025 featured poets:
Livia Meneghin, Meg Day, and Rajiv Mohabir

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

This virtual program is free to attend. Registration is required. 

REGISTER

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 Contemporary Poetry 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. Join us on a Thursday evening each month to hear from poets around the world as they read their work and discuss what poetry and Dickinson mean to them.


About this month’s poets:

headshot of poet Livia Meneghin

Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of Honey in My Hair and feathering. She’s been awarded recognition from the Academy of American Poets, Breakwater Review’s Peseroff Prize, The Room’s Poetry Contest, and the Writers’ Room of Boston, and elsewhere. Homes where you can find her writing include in CV2, Gasher, Mom Egg Review, Osmosis, Thrush. Since earning her MFA, she teaches college literature and writing, and is the Reads Editor at Sundress Publications. She is a cancer survivor.

liviameneghin.wordpress.com

 

 


headshot of poet Meg DayDeaf, genderqueer poet Meg Day is the author of Last Psalm at Sea Level (Barrow Street, 2014), winner of the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award, and a finalist for the 2016 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the co-editor of Laura Hershey: On the Life & Work of an American Master (Pleiades, 2019). The 2015-2016 recipient of the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship and a 2013 recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, Day’s work can be found in, or forthcoming from, Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Poetry Magazine, & elsewhere. Day is the 2024 Guggenheim Poet-in-Residence and an Assistant Professor of English & Creative Writing in the MFA Program at NC State.

megday.com

 

 

 


headshot of poet Rajiv MohabirPoet, memoirist, and translator, Rajiv Mohabir is the author of four books of poetry including Cutlish (Four Way Books 2021) which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and recipient of the Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur. His poetry and nonfiction have been finalists for the 2022 PEN/America Open Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry and in Nonfiction, the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, and both second place and finalist for the Guyana Prize for Literature in 2022 (poetry and memoir respectively). His translations have won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the American Academy of Poets in 2020. Whale Aria (Four Way Books 2023) is his fourth collection of poetry and currently he is an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Colorado Boulder.

rajivmohabir.com

 

 


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.

Logo for PHOSPHORESCENCE reading series featuring the Homestead glowing at night

Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Series
Thursday, August 21, 6pm ET

Phosphorescence August 2025 featured poets:
Cathy Linh Che, Monica Ong, and Lee Ann Roripaugh

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

This virtual program is free to attend. Registration is required. 

REGISTER

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 Contemporary Poetry 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. Join us on a Thursday evening each month to hear from poets around the world as they read their work and discuss what poetry and Dickinson mean to them.


About this month’s poets:

headshot of poet Cathy Linh Che

Cathy Linh Che is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. She is the author of Becoming Ghost (Washington Square Press, 2025), Split (Alice James Books) and co-author, with Kyle Lucia Wu, of the children’s book An Asian American A to Z: a Children’s Guide to Our History (Haymarket Books). She is working on a creative nonfiction manuscript on her parents’ experiences as refugees who played extras on Apocalypse Now. Her video installation Appocalips is an Open Call commission with The Shed NY, and her documentary short We Were the Scenery is premiering at Sundance in 2025.

cathylinhche.com

 

 


Monica Ong is a visual poet and the author of Silent Anatomies (Kore Press, 2015). A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Ong brings a designer’s eye to experimental writing with her hybrid image-poems and installations that surface hidden narratives of women and diaspora. Her poetry can be found in Scientific American, ctrl+v, and Poetry Magazine, and in the anthology A Mouth Holds Many Things: A De-Canon Hybrid-Literary Collection (Fonograf Editions, 2024). Ong’s most recent series of astronomy-inspired visual poetry was exhibited at the Poetry Foundation and is the basis of her new book Planetaria (Proxima Vera, 2025). You can find her fine press visual poetry editions and literary art objects in over fifty distinguished institutional collections worldwide including Amherst College. In 2024, Ong was named a United States Artists Fellow in Writing.

monicaong.com

 

 


headshot of poet Lee Ann RoripaughLee Ann Roripaugh (she/they) is a biracial Nisei and the author of five volumes of poetry, most recently tsunami vs. the fukushima 50 (Milkweed Editions, 2019), which was named a “Best Book of 2019” by the New York Public Library, selected as a poetry Finalist in the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards, cited as a Society of Midland Authors 2020 Honoree in Poetry, and was named one of the “50 Must-Read Poetry Collections in 2019” by Book Riot. Her collection of fiction, Reveal Codes, was selected as winner of the Moon City Press Short Fiction Award and published by Moon City Press in late 2023, and their chapbook, #stringofbeads, a winner in the Diode Editions Chapbook Competition, was released from Diode Press in 2023. She was named winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004, and a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series. The South Dakota State Poet Laureate from 2015-2019, Roripaugh is a Professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where they serve as Editor-in-Chief of South Dakota Review.

leeannroripaugh.net

 

 


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.

Logo for PHOSPHORESCENCE reading series featuring the Homestead glowing at night

Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Series
Thursday, July 17, 6pm ET

Phosphorescence July 2025 featured poets:
Lesley Wheeler and Nadia Alexis

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

This virtual program is free to attend and will be streamed live from the Homestead. Registration is required. 

REGISTER

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 Contemporary Poetry 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. Join us on a Thursday evening each month to hear from poets around the world as they read their work and discuss what poetry and Dickinson mean to them.


About this month’s poets:

headshot of Lesley Wheeler

Lesley Wheeler, Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, is the author of Mycocosmic (March 2025), runner-up for the Dorset Prize and her sixth poetry collection. Her other books include the hybrid memoir Poetry’s Possible Worlds; the novel Unbecoming; and two books of poetry scholarship, the first of which, The Poetics of Enclosure, roots its arguments in Dickinson’s work. Wheeler’s writing has received support from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Workshop, and the Sewanee Writers Workshop; her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review Online, Ecotone, Guernica, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere.

lesleywheeler.org

 

 

 


headshot of poet Nadia AlexisNadia Alexis is a poet, writer, and photographer born and raised in Harlem, New York City to Haitian immigrants, and she currently resides in Mississippi. Her debut full-length collection of poetry and photography, Beyond the Watershed, is forthcoming with CavanKerry Press in March 2025, and it was also a finalist for the 2022 Ghost Peach Press Prize. Her writing and photography have been published widely, and she has received several awards and honors including a 2025 Literary Arts Fellowship and a 2024 Artist Mini-Grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission, a 2024 Mississippi STAR Teacher Award, a 2024 Vance Fellowship from the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration, the 2023 Poet of the Year Honoree of the Haitian Creatives Digital Awards, a semifinalist position in the 2020 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, a nomination for the 2020 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters photography award, and an honorable mention prize in the 2019 Hurston/Wright College Writers Award for poetry. Nadia’s photography has been exhibited in several shows in the U.S., Cuba, and virtually. A fellow of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, The Watering Hole, and the Poets & Writers Get the Word Out Publicity Incubator, she holds a PhD and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Mississippi.

bynadiaalexis.com

 


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.