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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 2-2 - 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 graphic

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 learn more about signing up as a reader!


Tuesday, September 16
:

12-2:15pm [Virtual Program] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 2, co-hosted with Amherst College’s Frost Library
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 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, co-hosted with Harvard University’s Houghton Library
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 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, co-hosted with the Jones Library
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 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 Vasvi Kejriwal and Saranya Subramanian.
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, co-hosted with the Emily Dickinson International Society
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 learn more about signing up as a reader!
7-8:30pm [Hybrid Performance] — Open Mic Night featuring the music of Los Lorcas
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). Los Lorcas will perform after the Open Mic. Open mic sign-ups are handled in advance via a Google Form, and selected readers will be notified. Sign up here by September 3!


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. Treats inspired by Dickinson’s own love of baking will be served. Sign up as a listener by registering for the Festival, or learn more about signing up as a reader!
1-2:30pm [Hybrid 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 [Hybrid 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 poets will read from their work and discuss poetic practice and inspiration. A Q&A facilitated by Nicole Callihan and a book-signing with the poets to follow. Books will be available for sale on site.


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-Hall, and Kandace 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 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.

 
Open Mic - Tell It Slant 2025

Open Mic Night
With Music from Las Lorcas
Friday, Sept. 19, 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 2025 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival!

Join us for the 13th annual Tell it Slant Poetry Festival, a week of events happening both online and in-person at the Museum! Register here to access the Festival schedule:

REGISTER FOR THE FESTIVAL

Open Mic - Tell It Slant 2025

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) Featured poets Oliver de la Paz and Diannely Antigua will follow the open mic. 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 here by September 3!

About Los Lorcas
One of the most versatile and adventurous bard bands touring today, Los Lorcas are making ground-breaking inroads where most poets and musicians fear to tread, conjuring rich lyrical and sonic tapestries that defy predictable niches while celebrating “the music of what happens.” In the spirit of Federico Garcia Lorca—gifted musician, legendary poet/playwright and ebullient performer—poets Partridge Boswell and Peter Money, along with guitarist Nat Williams, fuse poetry and music in a passionate and surprising mash-up. Los Lorcas blur boundaries between spoken word and song, weaving poetry with Andalusian ballads, blues, rock, folk, reggae, hip hop, Americana and jazz in pursuit of the cante jondo (deep song) Lorca ardently championed.


 

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.

2025 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule

 

 

 
graphic Headliner Night and Garden Party - Tell It Slant 2025

Headliner Night
with Terrance Hayes and Krysten Hill
Saturday, Sept. 20, 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 2025 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival!

Join us for the 13th annual Tell it Slant Poetry Festival, a week of events happening both online and in-person at the Museum! Register here to access the Festival schedule:

REGISTER FOR THE FESTIVAL

Headliner Night - Tell It Slant 2025 graphicJoin us in Emily Dickinson’s garden or virtually for a celebration of creativity and poetry! Our headlining poets, National Book Award and MacArthur Genius grantee Terrance Hayes and award-winning poet Krysten Hill, read from their work and discuss their poetic practice and inspiration with moderator Nicole Callihan.

About the Poets
Terrance Hayes’s most recent publications include American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin (Penguin 2018) and To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight (Wave, 2018). To Float In The Space Between was winner of the Poetry Foundation’s 2019 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism and a finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin won the Hurston/Wright 2019 Award for Poetry and was a finalist the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry, the 2018 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry, and the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. A collection of poems, So To Speak, and collection of essays, Watch Your Language, are forthcoming on Penguin in 2023. Hayes is a Silver Professor of English at New York University.

Krysten Hill is the author of How Her Spirit Got Out (Aforementioned Productions, 2016), which received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. She has featured poetry at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, Boston Book Festival, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Blacksmith House, and other places. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day Series. Poetry Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Winter Tangerine Review, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the 2020 Mass Cultural Council Poetry Fellowship, 2023 Vermont Studio Center Residency, 2024 SWWIM Residency, and Kenyon Review’s 2024 Peter Taylor Fellowship. She is currently the Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University.

Nicole Callihan has two recent poetry collections: chigger ridge (The Word Works 2024) and SLIP (Saturnalia 2025). Other books include This Strange Garment (Terrapin 2023), as well as the chapbooks Downtown, A Study in Spring, and ELSEWHERE (the latter two in collaboration with Zoë Ryder White). Nicole also co-edited the Braving the Body anthology published by Harbor Editions in March 2024.
 
 

 

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.

2025 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule

 

 

Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon
September 15 – 21

VIRTUAL  and HYBRID Program (see date details below)

Part of the 2025 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival

Poetry Marathon 2025 graphic

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 13th annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival, a week of events happening both online and in-person at the Museum! 

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 15:
6pm [Virtual] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 1 

Tuesday, September 16:
12pm [Virtual] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 2, co-hosted with Amherst College’s Frost Library

Wednesday, September 17:
12pm [Virtual] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 3, co-hosted with Harvard University’s Houghton Library

Thursday, September 18:
12pm [Virtual] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 4, co-hosted with the Jones Library

Friday, September 19:
12pm [Virtual] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 5, co-hosted with the Emily Dickinson International Society

Saturday, September 20:
9:30am [Hybrid] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Part 6

Treats will be served!

Sunday, September 21:
12:30pm [Hybrid] — Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon: Grand Finale

With coconut cake to celebrate!



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.

2025 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule

Press Release:
A Something Overtakes the Mind

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

A Something Overtakes the Mind — a multimedia visual art and poetry installation created by artists Ligia Bouton and Matt Donovan for the Emily Dickinson Museum — takes a cue from the words of 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. 

The installation is free to the public during the Museum’s open hours and will be on view beginning August 1, 2025 through December 21, 2025.

Emily Dickinson wrote on a scrap of wrapping paper, “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.”

On August 1st, the Emily Dickinson Museum will open an art installation featuring the work of visual artist Ligia Bouton and poet Matt Donovan. The installation will be on view on the ground floor of the Homestead in spaces that historically served the Dickinson family as their laundry room, kitchen, and dining room. Following the exhibition the Museum will prepare this part of the historic house for the third and final phase of Homestead restoration. 

In addition to other objects from the Museum collection, the installation is anchored by two significant sets of Dickinson family objects: wallpaper fragments from the poet’s bedroom and pieces of unassembled quilts. Visitors will encounter laser-cut forms echoing the delicate contours of the wallpaper scraps, filled with curated texts spanning centuries, including biographical insights and interpretations of Dickinson’s signature “em” dash, poetically mirrored in the wallpaper’s design.

In the kitchen space, quilt fragments will be paired with shadowboxes and vitrines containing domestic objects from the Museum’s collection.  Paper scraps remaining on the quilt pieces showcase legible text, forming the basis for artistic language collages and found-word poetry.

A final feature will invite audience interaction through a hands-on poetry-making station using words from the papers enclosed in quilt fragments, alongside a video installation featuring community members reading Dickinson’s poetry and reflecting on her enduring legacy.

Artists Ligia Bouton and Matt Donovan state,As an artist and poet collaborative team, we’re always looking for ways to explore intersections of text, image, and objects, and the idea of working with the Emily Dickinson Museum seemed like an extraordinary opportunity to delve into a life and body of work that we already found fascinating, especially given that we drive past the poet’s home nearly every day. As we’ve developed the video component of our project–a short film titled “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself” that is comprised of community interviews–it’s been really wonderful to speak with so many folks in Amherst and to hear about their own connections to Dickinson’s life and work, and the extent to which her poetry remains a source of ongoing fascination, solace, and inspiration.”

Megan Ramsey, Collections Manager at the Emily Dickinson Museum says, “The Museum’s collection had remained largely undocumented and inaccessible up until 2023 when we completed a three-year cataloguing project and published our first online database. It’s thrilling to see that the publication of the collections database directly led to new interpretations of Dickinson’s material life in the form of this exhibition from Bouton and Donovan.”

The installation is free to the public during the Museum’s open hours and will be on view beginning August 1, 2025. Visitors should check in first at the Carriage House. The public is invited to an opening reception on Friday, August 8, 2025 from 5-7pm ET. 

Learn more about A Something Overtakes the Mind:
https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/a-something-overtakes-the-mind/

For press-approved images:
https://bit.ly/Photos-ASOTM-EDM

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.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Ligia 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 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 Something Overtakes the Mind graphic

A Something Overtakes the Mind

IN-PERSON ART AND POETRY INSTALLATION
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

The installation is free to the public during the Museum’s open hours and will be on view beginning August 1, 2025 through December 21, 2025.

“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. 

On August 1st, the Emily Dickinson Museum will open an art installation featuring the work of visual artist Ligia Bouton and poet Matt Donovan. The installation will be on view on the ground floor of the Homestead in spaces that historically served the Dickinson family as their laundry room, kitchen, and dining room. In 2026, the Museum will prepare this part of the historic house for the third and final phase of Homestead restoration. 

In addition to other objects from the Museum collection, the installation is anchored by two significant sets of Dickinson family objects: wallpaper fragments from the poet’s bedroom and pieces of unassembled quilts. Visitors will encounter laser-cut forms echoing the delicate contours of the wallpaper scraps, filled with curated texts spanning centuries, including biographical insights and interpretations of Dickinson’s signature “em” dash, poetically mirrored in the wallpaper’s design.

In the kitchen space, quilt fragments will be paired with shadowboxes and vitrines containing domestic objects from the Museum’s collection.  Paper scraps remaining on the quilt pieces showcase legible text, forming the basis for artistic language collages and found-word poetry.

A final feature will invite audience interaction through a hands-on poetry-making station using words from the papers enclosed in quilt fragments, alongside a video installation featuring community members reading Dickinson’s poetry and reflecting on her enduring legacy.


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.


ABOUT FAIR AND SOFTLY

“Fair and Softly” is a small band that particularly explores music for English Dance, a social dance that was popular in Emily Dickinson’s lifetime. Indeed there are some dances in her personal music book. We imagine that playing this old music while celebrating a new installation for the Homestead is a fitting background to the exploration of 19th century poetry. We hope that our period instruments invoke the sounds and sensibilities of the age.

Aaron Hayden is an engineer at Amherst College and has been involved in early music since elementary school; he currently plays and sings in several early music ensembles in the Pioneer Valley.

Madeline Zanetti is a graduate of New England Conservatory with a degree in Music Performance who has been active for many years in early music performance in Colorado and New England.

Sue Matsui is a school music teacher and church musician who has been in love with early music since childhood, and plays a variety of medieval instruments.

Education school group in the Evergreens

K-12 Group Visits

a student writing while sitting on the floor in Dickinson's bedroom

Spark your students’ imaginations by visiting the Emily Dickinson Museum.

Plan a field trip to the place she called home in Amherst, MA by signing up for The Power of Poetry tour or This was a Poet tour — learn more below!

If you’d like to work with the Emily Dickinson Museum, but don’t see an opportunity that would fit the age or needs of your students, please reach out to us at edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org. We’d love to connect with you!


Click to learn more:

Discover the ways that Dickinson embraced her unique personal vision, defying societal and literary convention to pen nearly 1800 revolutionary poems. In this participatory program, led by experienced educators, students will:

  • Tour the Homestead to learn about the poet’s early life, inspirations, and how she forged her own definition of poetry
  • Explore Dickinson’s writing process through a hands-on investigation of facsimile poem manuscripts
  • Write an original poem, reflecting on their own lives with a Dickinson-inspired prompt

Booking Information:

  • 90-minute program; anticipate up to 2 hrs on site.
  • Maximum group size: 36 (including adults). Groups larger than 12 will be divided and tour simultaneously.
  • Please book two weeks in advance. Following your request, the Museum will reach out to you to confirm the details of your visit and issue an invoice for a 50% deposit to secure your reservation.

Pricing:

  • $10 per student, one free adult per every 12 students.
  • $15 additional teachers, $17 additional adult chaperones.
  • Groups of fewer than 10 will be charged a fee to meet a $120 minimum. 
  • Amherst-Pelham public schools are free of charge.

RESERVE THE POWER OF POETRY

Thanks to a generous donation, we are offering a limited number of Massachusetts public schools reimbursements of up to $650 for transportation and admission fees excluding deposit. Scholarships will be awarded on a first-come-first-served basis — claim your scholarship by reserving your K-12 group visit today!

Apply for a Power of Poetry reimbursement scholarship

Power of Poetry Supports Massachusetts Grades 6-12 Anchor Standards for Reading; Writing; Speaking and Listening; and Language

READING
Key Ideas and Details
1. Read closely to determine what a text states explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from a text. 

Craft and Structure
4.  Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.

5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of a text relate to each other and the whole. 

6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.13

WRITING
Text Types and Sequences
3.  Write narratives to develop experiences or events using effective literary techniques, well-chosen details, and well-structured sequences.

Range of Writing
10. Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences.

SPEAKING AND LISTENING
Comprehension and Collaboration
1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

LANGUAGE
Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
5. Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.

The Museum’s general audience tours are led by knowledgeable guides who introduce Dickinson’s journey as a poet, with an emphasis on sharing her poems and letters.

Booking Information:

  • Available Thursday mornings.
  • 50-minute tour of the Homestead only.
  • Appropriate for middle and high school students.
  • Please book two weeks in advance. Following your request, the Museum will reach out to you to confirm the details of your visit and issue an invoice for a 50% deposit to secure your reservation.

Pricing:

  • $10 per student, one free adult per every 12 students.
  • $15 additional teachers, $17 additional adult chaperones.
  • Groups of fewer than 10 will be charged a fee to meet a $120 minimum.
  • Amherst-Pelham public schools are free of charge.

RESERVE THIS WAS A POET


Partnership Programs for K-12

If you’d like to work with the Emily Dickinson Museum, but don’t see an opportunity that would fit the age or needs of your students, please reach out to us at edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org. We’d love to connect with you! We can discuss:

  • How to tailor content or teaching methods to support your group
  • Experiential learning activities you’d like to develop or offer in collaboration with the Museum

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.

 

Image of Dickinson's room featuring her writing desk and white dress

Studio Sessions

Image of Dickinson's room featuring her writing desk and white dress

“Sweet hours have perished here;
This is a mighty room;
Within its precincts hopes have played, –
Now shadows in the tomb.”
-Fr1785

Spend a “sweet hour” in Emily Dickinson’s creative space where she penned her startling poetry and honed her revolutionary voice. Whether you are a writer, an artist, a composer, a poet, or a lover of poetry, you’ll find inspiration in Emily Dickinson’s own room. Let this quiet experience jumpstart your next creative journey.

Participants may reserve up to two hours in the room. A small table and chair will be provided.  Participants will experience the atmosphere of Dickinson’s corner chamber, and enjoy the view from the her windows.

Program Guidelines:

  • Photo ID must be presented upon arrival for your studio session and a photocopy will be made, which will be destroyed after your session.
  • The door to the room will remain open, and staff will be present nearby at all times. Participants must remain in the designated area of the room and may not touch the historic furnishings.
  • Bags, food, and beverages other than bottled water must be left outside the room.
  • No pens, inks, or paints permitted. Pencil and paper or laptop only. Other materials must be approved by special request in advance.
  • Photography for non-commercial, personal use is permitted.
  • Sessions will not be rescheduled or refunded after booking except in the case of an emergency. Refunding and rescheduling are at the discretion of the Emily Dickinson Museum.

When reserving your session, please navigate to the calendar view to see available days and times.

RESERVE YOUR SESSION

Pricing: (Looking for a more affordable option? Check out our Mild Nights program.)
1 person for 1 hour: $300
1 person for 2 hours: $500
2 people for 1 hour: $400
2 people for 2 hours: $600

Please direct questions to Connect@emilydickinsonmuseum.org.

For studio sessions that occur during the Museum’s public tour season (March – December): Your purchase grants one free Museum admission per studio participant, to be booked during your visit to Amherst. To reserve your timed entry in advance, e-mail connect@emilydickinsonmuseum.org.

a view of different items in the Emily Dickinson Museum's collections

The Emily Dickinson Museum Collection

a view of different items in the Emily Dickinson Museum's collections

The Emily Dickinson Museum's collection is the largest and most diverse assemblage of objects associated with Emily Dickinson and her family to be found anywhere. It consists of more than 8,000 artifacts, including fine art such as an impressive collection of Hudson River school paintings; cooking, dining, lighting, and heating artifacts; personal items such as children’s toys, handwork, and musical instruments; souvenir objects and art from travels abroad; and a large assortment of clothing and textiles. The collection captures the details of nineteenth-century life in a semi-rural educational and agricultural community and vividly illustrates the daily life and writing habits of one of the world’s greatest poets.

The Museum’s collection had remained largely undocumented and inaccessible until a major grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services in 2019 funded the documentation and baseline cataloging of the entire collection for the very first time. Completed in 2023, this project has improved collection care and, through this database, public access has strengthened the museum’s interpretation, and opened promising new research opportunities.

 

SEARCH THE COLLECTION (external webpage)

FAQS

What is the history of the collections?
The EDM collection comprises the combined personal effects of Dickinson family members from the Dickinson Homestead (built 1813) and The Evergreens (built 1856), left at the latter house after the death of the family’s last heir in 1988. Dickinson’s niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, sold the Homestead in 1916 and moved her aunt’s personal belongings and household furnishings next door to her own home at The Evergreens. Bianchi’s heirs transferred manuscript material, books, and a few dozen objects associated with Emily Dickinson to Harvard University in 1950 and Brown University in 1993. The vast majority of Dickinson family possessions remained at The Evergreens, overseen between 1988 and 2003 by a private testamentary trust established in Bianchi’s name. The Trust transferred the property and  collection to Amherst College in 2003 so that the two neighboring Dickinson family houses and collections could be operated as a united Emily Dickinson Museum.

A photo of a women in 19th century clothing in a decorative gold rimmed locket.
Close-up of Emily Dickinson's shawl
Pembroke Style Drop Leaf Table
Daguerreotype of Susan Gilbert Dickinson
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Shawl
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Pembroke Style Drop Leaf Table - Collections
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Where can I find Dickinson manuscripts or other material?

To view Dickinson's manuscripts, visit www.edickinson.org

For information on other Dickinson repositories:

Houghton Library, Harvard University

Amherst College Special Collections

Brown University Library

Yale University Library

Boston Public Library

Amherst Historical Society

Jones Library

Who can I contact with questions?
Email collections@emilydickinsonmuseum.org with any questions about the collections or online catalog.

How can I access the collections?
Physical access to the collections is very limited at this time. Email Collections@EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org with questions.

Use of these images must be approved by the Emily Dickinson Museum.
Please contact us at: Info@EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org

Institute of Museum and Library Services logo

The Emily Dickinson Museum has received funding for collection documentation from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. IMLS is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries and museums. They advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grant making, research, and policy development. Their vision is a nation where museums and libraries work together to transform the lives of individuals and communities. To learn more, visit www.imls.gov.