Emily Dickinson Marathon
Part 3: Houghton Library
September 16, 4-6pm

The Emily Dickinson Marathon Houghton Library 3 in white text overlaid on a tinted red image of the Emily Room at Houghton Join us for part 3 of the week-long Emily Dickinson Marathon! An Emily Dickinson Museum tradition, the Marathon is a group reading of all 1,789 poems by Emily Dickinson over the course of about 14 hours. For this year’s remote Festival, we are partnering with six other organizations to host the marathon in two-hour sessions each day of this week. For the Marathon, we will be reading from Ralph Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition.

Our part 3 partner is the Houghton Library at Harvard University. The Houghton Library is known for its holdings of papers of 19th-century American writers, and many would say that the jewel in that crown is the Emily Dickinson Collection, which preserves more than 1,000 autograph poems and some 300 letters. Learn more about the Houghton here: https://library.harvard.edu/libraries/houghton

In this session we will read poems numbered 408-660 in the Franklin.

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2020 Tell It Slant Schedule

words "THe Emily Dickinson Marathon Jones Library 2 in white overlayed on blue tinted image of the library

Emily Dickinson Marathon
Part 2: The Jones Library
September 15, 2-4pm

Join us for part 2 of the week-long Emily Dickinson Marathon! An Emily Dickinson Museum tradition, the Marathon is a group reading of all 1,789 poems by Emily Dickinson over the course of about 14 hours. For this year’s remote Festival, we are partnering with six other organizations to host the Marathon in two-hour sessions each day of this week. For the marathon, we will be reading from Ralph Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition.

Our part 2 partner is the Jones library. This public library is a community hub to a diverse population of Amherst, Massachusetts residents, where books are celebrated and all members of the community can enhance their educational, cultural, and lifelong learning pursuits. To learn more about the Jones Library visit www.joneslibrary.org.

In this session we will read poems numbered 149-407 in the Franklin.

2020 Tell It Slant Schedule

Amherst Arts Night Poetry Reading, August 6, 2020 – REMOTE PROGRAM

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. To sign-up and receive the link, click here.

In August, our feature poets are:

Rebecca Hart Olander: Rebecca Hart Olander’s poetry has appeared recently in Crab Creek Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others. Collaborative work made with Elizabeth Paul has been published in multiple venues online and in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press). Rebecca is a Women’s National Book Association poetry contest winner and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her chapbook, Dressing the Wounds, was published by dancing girl press in 2019, and her debut full-length collection, Uncertain Acrobats, is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press in 2021. Rebecca teaches writing at Westfield State University and is editor/director of Perugia Press. Find her at rebeccahartolander.com and @rholanderpoet.

Photo credit Jen Fitzgerald

Leah Umansky: Leah Umansky is the author of two full length collections, The Barbarous Century (2018), and Domestic Uncertainties (2013), among others. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and is the curator and host of The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as The New York Times, POETRY, Guernica, Bennington Review, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, Poetry International, Thrush Poetry Journal, Rhino, and Pleiades. She is resisting the tyrant with her every move. She is #teamstark #teamelliot & #teambernard and can be found at www.leahumansky.com. Twitter: @lady_Bronte. Instagram: @leah.umansky

(photo credit Jen Fitzgerald)

Omotara James:Omotara James is the author of the chapbook, “Daughter Tongue,” selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. Born in Britain, she is the daughter of Nigerian and Trinidadian immigrants. A former social worker in the field of Harm Reduction. She has been awarded fellowships from Lambda Literary and Cave Canem Foundation. She is a recipient of the 2019 92Y / Discovery Poetry Prize and the winner of the 2019 Bread Loaf Katharine Bakeless Nason Award in Poetry. In addition, her work has been recognized with the Nancy P. Schnader Academy of American Poets Prize, two Pushcart Prize nominations and one Best of the Net nomination. Her work was selected for the 2020 Best Small Fictions Anthology and she was a 2019 finalist for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize. Her poetry has appeared in POETRY magazine, The Paris Review, The Academy of American Poets, Platypus Press,The Believer, Literary Hub, Poetry Society of America, Nat.Brut, No Tokens and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and lives in NYC. Her debut collection of poems, “Song of my Softening” is forthcoming from Alice James Books and available for pre-order here:https://www.alicejamesbooks.org/news/omotarajames

a framed silhouette of emily dickinson as a child and a lock of her bright red hair

Behind the Scenes with Emily Dickinson at the Frost Library’s Special Collections
September 14, 12-1:15pm

Virtual Program.

Join us for a very special behind the scenes look at the holdings of Amherst College Frost Library’s Special Collections. Head of Archives and Special Collections, Mike Kelly, gives you an up close and personal look at this treasure trove of Dickinsonia, including original poetry manuscripts and letters, the famous daguerreotype of the poet as a teenager, and an original lock of the poet’s hair. Hear the stories these objects can tell and learn about recent work and acquisitions to the collection. A Q&A follows the presentation.

About the facilitator: Mike Kelly is the Head of the Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College, where he oversees the school’s collection of more than 80,000 rare books along with a host of archival and manuscript collections. He has worked in special collections for over twenty years; he spent eleven years as the Curator of Books at the Fales Library & Special Collections at New York University before coming to Amherst in 2009. He has held many positions within the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the American Library Association, including a term as RBMS Chair in 2011-12, and he is an active member of the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM). He received his Master’s in Library Science from the University of Texas at Austin where he spent two years as an intern at the Harry Ransom Center; he also holds an MA in English from the University of Virginia. In 2016, he was awarded the Reese Fellowship for American Bibliography and the History of the Book in the Americas by the Bibliographical Society of America for his work on the bibliography of Samson Occom, a member of the Mohegan tribe of Connecticut. He co-curated (with Carolyn Vega) the exhibition “I’m Nobody! Who Are You? The Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson” at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York which ran from January through May 2017. In the summer of 2018, Mike co-taught the course “A History of Native American Books & Indigenous Sovereignty” in Amherst for Rare Book School. He was elected to membership in the Grolier Club in 2005 and the American Antiquarian Society in 2016.

2020 Tell It Slant Facebook Video – Behind the Scenes with Emily Dickinson at the Frost Library’s Special Collections

2020 Tell It Slant Schedule

The Emily Dickinson Marathon Emily Dickinson Museum 1 written in black text overlaid on a tinted yellow image of the Homestead

Emily Dickinson Marathon
Part 1
September 14, 9:30-11:30am

Join us for part 1 of the week-long Emily Dickinson Marathon! An Emily Dickinson Museum tradition, the Marathon is a group reading of all 1,789 poems by Emily Dickinson over the course of about 14 hours. For this year’s remote Festival, we are partnering with six other organizations to host the Marathon in two-hour sessions each day of this week. For the marathon, we will be reading from Ralph Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition.

The first session of the Marathon will be hosted by the Emily Dickinson Museum, organizers and producers of the the Tell it Slant Poetry Festival.

In this session we will begin with Franklin’s undated poems, numbered 1686-1789, and then circle back to poems numbered 1-148.

2020 Tell It Slant Schedule

Martha Ackmann Virtual Book Talk and Q&A, August 16, 2020, 5-6 p.m. (EST)

“Radiant prose, palpable descriptions, and deep empathy for the poet’s sensibility make this biography extraordinary.”

– Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Join us for a virtual reading and Q&A with Martha Ackmann, author of the recently released These Fevered Days (W.W. Norton, 2020)! On this auspicious day, exactly 150 years since the meeting of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson in the Homestead parlor, Ackmann will read the chapter detailing this particular pivotal moment. During the robust Q&A to follow, pose your question to the poet’s most recent biographer.

This program is free to attend and registration is required. Click here to register.

About the book:

In These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson, Ackmann unravels the mysteries of Dickinson’s life through ten days that distill her evolution as a poet. Following Dickinson through her religious crisis while a student at Mount Holyoke, her exhilarating frenzy of composition, her startling decision to ask a famous editor for advice, her anguished letters to an unidentified “Master,” her lifelong friendship with writer Helen Hunt Jackson, and her despair in confronting possible blindness, These Fevered Days utilizes thousands of archival letters and poems as well as never-before-seen photos to construct a remarkable map of Emily Dickinson’s inner life. The book provides new insights into Dickinson’s wildly original poetry and draws a vivid portrait of American literature’s most enigmatic figure.

To purchase your copy from your local, independent book seller, visit www.indiebound.org/indie-bookstore-finder

About the author:

Dr. Martha Ackmann is a journalist and author who writes about women who have changed America. Her essays and columns have appeared in The New York Times, Paris Review, and The Atlantic. She also is a frequent commentator for New England Public Radio, and has been featured on CNN, National Public Radio, and the BBC. Martha’s award-winning books include The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight, Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone, First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro League, and These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson. A long-time member of the Gender Studies Department at Mount Holyoke College, Martha taught a popular seminar on Emily Dickinson in the poet’s house, now the Emily Dickinson Museum, in Amherst, Massachusetts. For more information visit https://marthaackmann.com/

Matching Challenge Successful!

More than 160 donors came together to match–and surpass!–the challenge offered by the Emily Dickinson Museum’s Board of Governors. In May, they pledged to match all gifts dollar-for-dollar up to $40,000 contributed to the Museum by June 30. Today, these gifts total more than $65,000. The Emily Dickinson Museum is deeply grateful for these acts of generosity and your confidence in the Museum and its mission during these trying times.

Your support for the Museum’s ability to endure, to create new resources and continue its programming is vitally important. We deeply appreciate every gift!

Postcard of Emily Dickinson inspired watercolor painting

A SERVICE OF SONG

Postcard verso:

Here’s an original watercolor I made
inspired by Emily Dickinson. Lately my
favorite poem of hers is this:
~ a SERVICE OF SONG ~
Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.

Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;
I just wear my wings,
And instead of tolling the bell for church,
Our little sexton sings.

God preaches, – a noted clergyman, –
And the sermon is never long;
So instead of getting to heaven at last
I’m going all along!
————————-
It reminds of a childhood favorite author of
mine, Ethel Cook Eliot, also from Western
Massachusetts who wrote about spirituality
in nature (in fairy-tales for kids.)

Postcard featuring collage, map of Memphis

A Letter From Memphis

Postcard verso:

Dear Emily, I am the World .. writing
back to you. We are one .. I’m glad you
got to see .. the beauty in simplicity.
Nature gifted you with faith .. you are the
Majesty. Committment is a Message.
Gods hands have held you dearly …
as you hugged yourself .. you are her.
You are the Love. Judgement does
not define your heart. Countrymen see
you in the sky: you are the news that
nature told. Simply healing your spirit,

<3 Jessica Gershon

kiitos!

Postcard verso with inscription in blue ink

Postcard verso, page left:

Dear Emily —
Due to a postal strike here in
Finland, I’ve not been able to
send this, so it’s probably going
to be late … but thank you —
kiitos! for your beautiful words
and inspiration, which continue
to bring joy and comfort to
me and many others around
the world.
With admiration,
Luida Jainsén (first name? last name?)

Postcard verso, page right:

12/5/19