Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon
September 21-27

VIRTUAL and HYBRID Program (see date details below)

Part of the 2026 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival

Come read with us and join in for the week-long Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon! An Emily Dickinson Museum tradition, the Marathon is a group reading of all 1,789 poems by Emily Dickinson over the course of 7 sessions. For this year’s hybrid Festival, some sessions will take place in-person and others online. For the Marathon, we will be reading from Ralph Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition.

Join us for the 14th annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival, a week of events happening both online and in-person at the Museum!

The 2026 Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon is supported by a donation from Martha Nell Smith and Marilee Lindemann and held in memory of Eleanor Heginbotham, who dwelled in Possibility!

REGISTER FOR THE FESTIVAL

There are two ways to participate in each Marathon session: as a reader or as a listener.

Listeners sit back and enjoy the group reading, which beautifully blends the voices of volunteer readers coming to Dickinson from different places, times in their lives, and levels of familiarity with the Poet. Listeners can watch the Marathon online via Zoom all week long. Listeners can watch the Marathon online OR in-person during the hybrid sessions on Saturday and Sunday. To sign up as a listener, register through the main Festival page.
Readers volunteer to read 10-20 poems as part of the circle reading. Reader spots are limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Readers of all levels of experience are invited to participate! To sign up as a reader, complete the separate Reader Registration below.

READER SIGN UP

Schedule:
Monday, September 21:
6pm [Virtual] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 1, co-hosted with the Amherst Historical Society

Tuesday, September 22:
12pm [Virtual] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 2, co-hosted with the Jones Library

Wednesday, September 23:
12pm [Virtual] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 3, co-hosted with Harvard University’s Houghton Library

Thursday, September 24:
12pm [Virtual] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 4, co-hosted with Amherst College’s Frost Library

Friday, September 25:
12pm [Virtual] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 5, co-hosted with the Emily Dickinson International Society

Saturday, September 26:
9:30am [Hybrid] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 6

With coffee and tea.

Sunday, September 27:
12:30pm [Hybrid] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Grand Finale

With coconut cake to celebrate!

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.

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.
victoriachangpoet.com

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.

samyakshertok.com

2026 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule

graphic Open Mic - Tell It Slant 2026 (1)

Open Mic Night Featuring Joaquín Zihuatanejo
Friday, September 25, 7pm ET

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

To read at the Open Mic, enter our lottery here:

ENTER THE READER LOTTERY

Part of the 2026 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival! To attend the Open Mic, register for the Festival here:

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. The last day to sign up will be September 13. All readers must be available to read in-person.

About the featured poet

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.
jzthepoet.com

2026 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule

Tell It Slant Poetry Festival 2026 Schedule
September 21-27

REGISTER FOR THE FESTIVAL

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

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 headliner reading from acclaimed poets Victoria Chang and Samyak Shertok, generative writing workshops, poetry panels, an open mic, 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.

The 2026 Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon is supported by a donation from Martha Nell Smith and Marilee Lindemann and held in memory of Eleanor Heginbotham, who dwelled in Possibility!

Learn more about the 2026 lineup below.

FESTIVAL TICKETS:

General Festival Registration: Registrants are encouraged to choose a "Pay Your Way" ticket that matches their expected level of participation. The price per person of $25 covers the base cost of a single Festival event. Revenue from Festival tickets supports honoraria for participating poets and the production costs of high-quality hybrid Festival events. Free Festival tickets are also available at registration.

Small Group Workshops: This year, the Festival is offering three workshops for in-person participants on Friday and Saturday. Due to the limited event capacity, these workshops are available for a fee of $35/person. Tickets for small group workshops must be purchased separately from Festival registration. See the Festival ticket menu.

VIP Festival Tickets: A limited number of VIP tickets are available. VIP ticketholders receive a heightened Festival experience that includes access to all Festival events and the small group workshops of your choosing, reserved seating at Headliner Night, a Festival swag bag, two free vouchers for a tour of the Museum, and a private dinner reception with Emily Dickinson Museum Executive Director Jane Wald and our headlining poets Victoria Chang and Samyak Shertok.

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 FOR THE FESTIVAL

SCHEDULE:

Monday, September 21:

6-8:30pm [Virtual Program] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 1, co-hosted with the Amherst Historical Society. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or learn more about signing up as a reader!

Tuesday, September 22:

12-2:15pm [Virtual Program] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 2. co-hosted with the Jones Library. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or learn more about signing up as a reader!

3-4:30pm [Virtual Workshop] — Three Perspectives, Three Possibilities: Japanese Poetics and Emily Dickinson with Miho Kinnas, Crystal Simone Smith, and Holly Thompson.

6:30-8pm [Virtual Panel] — Porosity of Poetry with Livia Meneghin, Oliver Baez Bendorf, and Patrycja Humienik.

Wednesday, September 23:

12-2:15pm [Virtual Program] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 3, co-hosted with Harvard University's Houghton Library. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or learn more about signing up as a reader!

2:30-4pm [Virtual Workshop] — 'Slow tramp the Centuries': Time Traveling with Emily Dickinson with Michaela Coplen.

7-8:30pm [Virtual Program] — Thank You for the Surgery: The Poet-Editor Relationship with Elizabeth Metzger, Callie Siskel, and Dorothea Lasky.

Thursday, September 24:

12-2:15pm [Virtual Program] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 4, co-hosted with Amherst College's Frost Library. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or learn more about signing up as a reader!

3-4:30pm [Virtual Workshop] — This is the Good Fight: Power and Protest Poetry Workshop with Dorsía Smith Silva and Jennifer Maritza McCauley.

6-7:15pm [Virtual Reading] — Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Reading with Michelle Peñaloza, Jane Wong, and Anastacia-Reneé,

Friday, September 25:

12-2:15pm [Virtual] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 5, co-hosted with the Emily Dickinson International Society. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or learn more about signing up as a reader!

3-4:30pm [In-Person *Small Group Workshop*] — Shawl We: Swirling Poetry Patterns with Deborah Bernhardt. Paid registration required.

3-4:30pm [In-Person *Small Group Workshop*] — Finding Emily in a Found Poem with Joaquin Zihuatanejo. Paid registration required.

7-8:30pm [Hybrid Performance] — Open Mic Night - Reader sign-ups are now open! Visit the event page to enter the lottery before Sept 13.

Saturday, September 26:

9:30am-12pm[Hybrid] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 6. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or learn more about signing up as a reader!

1-2:30pm [Hybrid Panel] — I Could Not Stop: Poetry and Persistence with Amy Dryansky, Enzo Silon Surin, and January O'Neil.

3-4:30pm [In-Person *Small Group Workshop*] — Small and Bold: Poetry of Small Objects and Narrow Spaces with Arden Levine, Rico Frederick, Cynthia Manick, and Joanna Solfrian. Paid registration required.

7-9pm [Hybrid Reading] — Headliner Night with Victoria Chang and Samyak Shertok.

Sunday, September 27:

10-11:30am [Hybrid Panel] — Look Again: Documentary Interventions with Visual Archives with Jennifer Steinorth, Victoria Chang, Jenny Molberg, and Caridad Moro-Gronlier.

12:30-2:30pm [Hybrid] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Grand Finale. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or 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 Terrance Hayes, 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.