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

Tell It Slant Poetry Festival 2025 Schedule
September 15-21

That’s a wrap on 2024 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival, we hope to see you next year. Sign-up for our e-newsletter to be the first to know!

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 FREE and hybrid Festival includes events happening online, as well as in-person at the Museum under our heated tent. 

This year’s line-up features a talented group of poets from around the country including readings by National Book Award and MacArthur Genius grantee Terrance Hayes, 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. Learn more about the 2025 lineup below. 

REGISTRATION TBA

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

We Are Not Where We Are_ - Tell It Slant 2025 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

Thank You For The Surgery”_- Tell It Slant 2025 Headliner Night and Garden Party - Tell It Slant 2025 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 6 - Tell It Slant 2025 (2)

 

REGISTRATION TBA

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
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
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] — We Are Not Where We Are
Featuring Matt Donovan and Jenny George.
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 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 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 learn more about signing up as a reader!
1-2:30pm [In-Person Workshop] — Open Me Carefully
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 and Garden Party with Terrance Hayes
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 learn more about signing up as a reader!

REGISTRATION TBA


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.

 

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

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
Wednesday, June 18, 6pm ET

Phosphorescence June 2025 featured poets:
Barbara Mossberg, Bridget Lowe, and Rachelle Toarmino

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 poet Barbara Mossberg

Barbara Mossberg is a wordsy and passionate person who will think your story is just what our world needs, author of just released Clown Cantos: Everything Is Alive In Its Own Way, Singing, and the recent Here for the Present: A Grammar of Happiness in the Present Imperfect, Live from the Poet’s Perch, and Sometimes the Woman in the Mirror Is Not You and other hopeful news postings, Professor Mossberg’s distinguished career of five decades as a prizewinning poet, author, teacher, and honored educational leader, is dedicated to a wildly out-of-the-world optimism and brave faith. Mossberg ascribes to Emily Dickinson’s “I dwell in Possibility”–despite how things seem, it is possible to find the beauty—and hope. President Emerita Goddard College, founding Dean California State University Monterey Bay, Professor of Practice at Clark Honors College, University of Oregon, former National Council of Research on Women Senior Fellow, and American Council on Education Senior Fellow, Mossberg uses her public platforms to promote the power of words in each of our lives and human fates. She has been recognized by National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Mellon Foundation (Aspen Institute) and others, twice named the Senior Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer, and a current Fulbright Specialist. At the University of Oregon, she has been awarded the Clark Honors College Faculty Innovation Fellowship, and the University’s highest teaching honors, the Williams Fellowship, and Ersted Award, as well as is nominated for the national teaching Cherry Award at Baylor University.

Barbaramossberg.com


headshot of poet Bridget Lowe

Bridget Lowe is an American poet. In an early interview, Lowe expressed her interest in and commitment to “figures who are rejected by the same social groups for which they are expected to perform.” The Poetry Foundation elaborates “Her poetry is accordingly concerned with those who feel they are both looked at and invisible, who are exploited yet remain deeply unknown.” / Bridget Lowe was born in Kansas City, Missouri. She is the author of two collections of poetry with Carnegie Mellon University Press: At the Autopsy of Vaslav Nijinsky in 2013, followed by My Second Work in 2020. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including multiple times in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New Republic, Parnassus, and the American Poetry Review. Her work has also appeared in the Best American Poetry anthology. Her honors include the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Discovery/92NY Poetry Award, a fellowship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation fellowship to MacDowell for an extended residency.

bridgetlowe.com


headshot Rachelle ToarminoRachelle Toarmino is a poet from Niagara Falls, New York. She is the author of the poetry collections Hell Yeah (Third Man Books, 2025) and That Ex (Big Lucks Books, 2020), as well as several chapbooks, most recently My Science (Sixth Finch Books, 2025), winner of the 2024 Sixth Finch Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in Poets.org, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Southeast Review, The Slowdown, and Omnidawn, which awarded her its 2024 Single Poem Broadside Prize. She earned her MFA in poetry at UMass Amherst, where she received an Academy of American Poets Prize. She is also the founding editor-in-chief of the literary publishing project Peach Mag and the creator and lead instructor of Beauty School, an independent poetry school. She lives in Buffalo.

rachelletoarmino.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, May 15, 6pm ET

Phosphorescence May 2025 featured poets:
Joy Ladin, Niina Pollari, and Joan Larkin

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 Joy Ladin

Joy Ladin has long worked at the tangled intersection of literature and transgender identity. She has published eleven books of poetry, including Shekhinah Speaks; National Jewish Book Award winner The Book of Anna; and Lambda Literary Award finalists Transmigration and Impersonation, reissued in a revised edition as a free PDF from DoubleBack in April 2023. She is also the author of a critical study, Soldering the Abyss: Emily Dickinson and Modern American poetry; a memoir of gender transition, National Jewish Book Award finalist Through the Door of Life; and another work of creative non-fiction, Lambda Literary and Triangle Award finalist, The Soul of the Stranger. Family, a poetry collection, and Once Out of Nature, a collection of essays on the transformation of gender – were published by Persea in 2024. Her work has been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, and an American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship, among other honors.

joyladin.com

 


headshot of poet Niina PollariNiina Pollari is a poet and Finnish translator. She is the author of the poetry collections Path of Totality (Soft Skull 2022) and Dead Horse (Birds, LLC 2015), as well as the co-author of the split chapbook Total Mood Killer (Tiger Bee Press 2017). She lives in Marshall, NC with her family. 

niinapollari.com

 

 

 


headshot of poet Joan LarkinJoan Larkin‘s most recent book of poems is Old Stranger (Alice James Books, August 2024). She is the author of five previous collections of poetry, including Blue Hanuman (2014); My Body: New and Selected Poems (2007), which received the Audre Lorde Award from the Publishing Triangle; Lambda Literary Award winner Cold River (1997); and Housework (1975). With Jaime Manrique, Larkin translated Sor Juana’s Love Poems, a bilingual edition of Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz’s poetry (1997). Her prose works include If You Want What We Have: Sponsorship Meditations (1998) and Glad Day: Daily Meditations for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender People (1998). Her plays include The AIDS Passion, The Living, and Wiretap. / Larkin co-founded Out & Out Books during the 1970s feminist literary explosion and has co-edited four anthologies, including Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time. A lifelong teacher, she has served on the faculties of Brooklyn College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Smith College, among others. Larkin has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She received the 2011 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.

joanlarkin.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.

Poetry Walk 2025
Saturday, May 10
10am-12pm ET

IN-PERSON PROGRAM

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

REGISTER

Dickinson's tombstone covered in daisies

On May 10, in honor of the 139th anniversary of the poet’s death, join the Emily Dickinson Museum for the annual Poetry Walk through downtown Amherst, the town she called “paradise.” This year’s Walk celebrates the opening of the newly reconstructed carriage house with stops that explore its significance to Amherst’s cultural landscape and to the poet herself. Take the walk at your own pace, but be sure to head to Dickinson’s grave in West Cemetery in time for the 12pm final poems and a lemonade toast to our favorite poet!

The Walk takes approximately 40 minutes to complete. Participants begin at the Homestead at any time between 10am and 11am to pick up their Poetry Walk map and daisies to lay at the grave. The Walk stations close at 11:45am so that all participants can make it to the final stop at noon in West Cemetery.

Registration for this program is free or by donation, but it is required in advance. Registration for the Walk does not include admission to the Museum. For Museum tour tickets click here.

Accessibility Information
The full walk is about 1 mile and is largely accessed by paved sidewalks, though some uneven terrain is possible. Participants who would prefer to meet us for the final toast are welcome to check in at the Homestead before 11:15am and then drive to West Cemetery. Cemetery parking is available behind Zanna’s clothing store.

“And so I pieced it, with a flower, now”

As a part of the 2025 Poetry Walk, the entrance to the Homestead will be transformed into a site-specific installation inspired by Emily Dickinson’s herbarium. 

Created for the Museum by artists Lisa McCarty & D. Edward Davis, the installation features Emily Dickinson’s iconic white dress as a projection screen for images of the Poet’s herbarium. Over 400 images of individual flowers collected by Dickinson will be shown as part of McCarty’s video projection, together with a haunting soundscape of hymns, drones, and birdsong by Davis. As a whole, the installation is inspired by Dickinson’s practice of attentively, and ecstatically, responding to elements of the living world through both her poetry and her herbarium.

About the artists

D. Edward Davis is a composer of electronic and acoustic music. His work often engages with the sounds of the environment, exploring processes, patterns, and systems inspired by nature. In February 2025, cmntx records released his 100 untitled works in resonant aluminum (with original art and design by Lisa McCarty) on CD and all streaming platforms. Davis is currently a Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of New Haven.

Lisa McCarty’s photographs, books, and videos explore environmentally conscious communities and rituals. McCarty has participated in over 100 exhibitions and screenings at venues including Amherst College, Cassilhaus, Duke University, Fruitlands Museum, Griffin Museum of Photography, Microscope Gallery, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, the New York Film Festival, and the Visual Studies Workshop. Her recent books include Transcendental Concord (Radius Books) and The Arboretum Aphorisms (SF Cinematheque Press). McCarty lives and works in Boston where she teaches at Northeastern University.


a boy places a daisy on Dickinson's graveA Daisy for Dickinson: Be a part of the beloved tradition of outfitting Emily Dickinson’s final resting place at Amherst’s West Cemetery with fresh daisies on the anniversary of her death.  Make a supporting donation to the Museum in honor of Emily or in memory of a loved one and we’ll place a daisy in their name at the poet’s grave as part of this year’s Poetry Walk (May 10).

If you would like to make a supporting gift to the Museum in honor of Emily or in memory of someone you’ve loved, you may do so below.

 

 

Logo for PHOSPHORESCENCE reading series featuring the Homestead glowing at night

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

Phosphorescence April 2025 featured poets:
Carlene Kucharczyk, Avia Tadmor, and Silvia Bonilla

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 Avia Tadmor

Carlene Kucharczyk’s debut collection “Strange Hymn” is the winner of the Juniper Prize for a first book of poems and will be published by the University of Massachusetts Press in April 2025. She is the recipient of a Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council, and her work has been published in journals such as Poetry Northwest, Tupelo Quarterly, Green Mountains Review, Conduit, Mid-American Review, and Permafrost Magazine, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She was the Henry David Thoreau fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, where she worked for two years in the Writing Program, and was the Writer-in-Residence at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. She has received support from The Center for Book Arts Fine Press Seminar and The Frost Place Poetry Seminar. She holds an MFA from North Carolina State University, where she also taught creative and expository writing. She lives in Vermont, and works as an Administrative Assistant in the English and Creative Writing Department at Dartmouth College.


headshot of poetAvia Tadmor is the author of the poetry collection “Song in Tammuz,” winner of the Tupelo Press International Berkshire Prize, forthcoming 2026. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Best New Poets, The New Republic, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Avia’s poetry received support from Yaddo, the Rona Jaffe Foundation/ Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Adroit Journal’s Gregory Djanikian Scholars Program. Previously, she has taught writing at Columbia University, where she directed the Columbia Artist/Teachers program, promoting no-cost arts education in schools and community organizations in NYC. Currently, she is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. Born in Jerusalem, she lives in New York.
aviatadmor.com

 


headshot Silvia BonillaSilvia Bonilla was born and raised in South America. She received an MFA in Poetry from The New School. She is the author of a chapbook called “An Animal Startled by The Mechanisms of Life” (Deadly Chaps 2024) and “Town of Eves,” forthcoming from Arizona University Press. Her work has been featured in Blackbird, Green Mountains Review, Cream City Review, Reed, Cimarron Review, among others. She has received support from Kenyon Writers Workshop, The Staltonstall Foundation, Sewanee Writer’s Conference, Community of Writers, Napa Valley, The Frost Place, Colgate Writers Workshop and The Post Graduate Conference at The Vermont College of Fine Arts.

 

 


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.

Emily Dickinson's handwriting on a letter and envelope

Poetry Discussion Group Spring 2025 Series

Emily Dickinson's handwriting on a letter and envelopeJoin us for a lively virtual discussion of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters, meeting once a month from March to June. This program is designed to welcome newcomers and seasoned readers of Dickinson alike. 

Each session is facilitated by a guest scholar with unique expertise, who leads the group in discussion following an introductory talk. Brief reading handouts will be distributed prior to each month’s program.

Topics and Leaders:

  • March: Possession and Dispossession: Jewels in Dickinson’s Poetry with Kylan Rice
    Examining Dickinson’s treatment of gemstones, with respect to her attitudes toward race and class privilege 
  • April: “Because I could not stop:” Courting Death in Apple TV’s Dickinson with Marianne Noble
    Revisiting the poetry and plot of Apple TV+ first
    episode of Dickinson, with a focus on the oft-anthologized “Because I could not stop for Death”
  • May: “Sphere of simple Green -” with Renée Bergland
    A discussion on Dickinson and natural science, drawing from her recent book,
    Natural Magic
  • June: “A formal feeling comes -“: Defining Nameless Feelings with Eliza Richards
    A look at poems that explore feelings with no precise definition in English, such as “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”

Format

As a registrant, you are signing up to join a small group of 25 or fewer regular participants for four 90-minute Zoom sessions. Meetings are participatory, with video and audio encouraged. Because we want everyone to feel comfortable speaking, full sessions will not be recorded. The program is designed for adult audiences (18+).

Registration

We are offering an identical program for Wednesday and Friday groups. Please review the dates carefully — space is limited.
Refunds are not available for this program.

Wednesday Group, $100 program fee (inclusive of all sessions),  limited to 25 participants: SOLD OUT
March 19, 6-7:30pm ET

April  23, 6-7:30pm ET

May 14, 6-7:30pm ET
June 11 6-7:30pm ET

Friday Group, $100 program fee (inclusive of all sessions), limited to 25 participants: SOLD OUT
March 21, 12-1:30pm ET
April 25, 12-1:30pm ET
May 16,  12-1:30pm ET
June, 13 12-1:30pm ET

For Educators:
Educators may request a certificate attesting to your participation in the program. 

Reservations are made on a first-come, first-served basis. 

Questions: Don’t hesitate to reach out to edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org with any questions about the program.

MARCH

Kylan Rice, PhD, is a scholar of nineteenth-century American poetry. His work on the subject has appeared in ELH, Arizona Quarterly, CR: The New Centennial Review, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, and Women’s Studies. He is the author of An Image Not a Book, a collection of poetry, and his creative writing has been published in numerous literary journals, including Colorado Review, Image, and West Branch.

APRIL 

Marianne Noble’s teaching and research interests include American literature, intimacy and the emotions, and philosophical approaches to literature. She is the author of Rethinking Sympathy and Human Contact in Nineteenth-Century American Literature: Hawthorne, Douglass, Stowe, Dickinson (Cambridge UP 2019) and The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature (Princeton UP 2000), which won a Choice Outstanding Book Award. She co-edited Emily Dickinson and Philosophy (Cambridge UP 2013). Recently, she has published articles on Dickinson, Hawthorne, phenomenology, and human contact. In 2016, she was a Fulbright Scholar in South Korea.

MAY

Renée Bergland is a literary critic and a historian of science who teaches in the Department of Humanities at Simmons University where she is Program Director of Literature and Writing. Her most recent publication is Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science (Princeton University Press, 2024). She contributed an essay, “Dickinson Emergent: Natural Philosophy and the Postdisciplinary Manifold”, to the Oxford Handbook to Emily Dickinson (2022). Bergland is writing a forthcoming general audience book examining Dickinson’s poetry as interpreted through the lens of different sciences, including astronomy, geology, and ecology. She is a member of the board of the Emily Dickinson International Society. 

JUNE

Eliza Richards is the Director of Graduate Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, where she teaches American literature with a specialization in American poetry before 1900. She is especially interested in the way historical events and changes in media networks shape and inform the way that people write poetry, as well as the ways poetry participates in cultural transformations. Her work broadens understanding and awareness of important nineteenth-century poetry written by women, African Americans, and popular writers. Her books include Battle Lines: Poetry and Mass Media in the US Civil War (U of Pennsylvania P, 2019) and Emily Dickinson in Context (edited collection; Cambridge UP, 2013), and she is currently working on The Collected Works of George Moses Horton: A Critical Edition.

 

A pen and inkwell sits on Dickinson's writing desk with light cascading through her curtains

Call for Submissions:
Phosphorescence and
Tell It Slant 2025

The Emily Dickinson Museum is now accepting proposals for our 2025 programs: Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Series – a virtual event held monthly from April through September AND the 13th annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival, held September 15-21! The Museum’s poetry programming features established and emerging poets who represent the diversity of the flourishing contemporary poetry scene and fosters community by placing poetry in the public sphere.

To submit for the Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Series and the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival, please click on the appropriate submission link and complete the free application process. All submissions must be received through SurveyMonkey Apply (via Amherst College) using the submission links provided below. Email or paper submissions will not be considered.

If you wish to submit multiple proposals, please complete a new application for each proposal (up to 3 allowed per program).

TIMELINE:

All proposals must be submitted by Thursday, January 16 2025, 8am ET. All submitters will be notified of their acceptance status by March 5. Participating poets and presenters will be asked to sign a letter of agreement confirming participation on assigned dates.

Learn more about each program below.


About Phosphorescencea banner for PHOSPHORESCENCE Contemporary Poetry Series

Produced by the Emily Dickinson Museum, the Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Series celebrates contemporary creativity that echoes Dickinson’s revolutionary poetic voice. The Series is a place to connect virtually over a shared love of poetry and an appreciation for Dickinson’s literary legacy. This year, poets may read remotely from the location of their choice or travel to the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA, to have their reading live-streamed to a virtual audience. Poets will indicate their preference for reading location on their submission form.

Featured poets are promoted on the Museum’s event web page, through a mailing list of over 25,000 addresses, and through the Museum’s social media. Each participating poet receives a $200 honorarium. There is no fee to submit proposals.

View last year’s Phosphorescence lineup

Watch past Phosphorescence readings on YouTube

READINGS: Readings will take place on Thursdays at 6PM ET on the following dates: April 17, May 15, June 19, July 17, August 21, and September 18. Each reading may feature 2-3 poets. Readings are 15 minutes long on average per reader. Poets who submit alone will be paired with other poets if selected. Poets are welcome to promote sales of their books and awareness of other media during the program. (The Museum does not sell books for this series.) Poets should be prepared to engage in a facilitated conversation after their readings.

The following submission qualities are especially encouraged:

    • Group submissions of up to 3 poets
    • Builds community
    • Features BIPOC and/or LBGTQ+ voices
    • Highlights a connection to Dickinson’s life and legacy
    • Pushes poetic boundaries

SUBMIT FOR PHOSPHORESCENCE

Only complete submissions made through the SurveyMonkey Apply (via Amherst College) platform linked above will be considered. (You may be prompted to create a free account if you do not already have one.)

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Thursday, January 16 2025, 8am ET.

About the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival

Produced by the Emily Dickinson Museum, the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival celebrates the poetic legacy of Emily Dickinson and the contemporary creativity she continues to inspire from the place she called home. The Festival’s name, “Tell It Slant,” pays homage to Dickinson’s poem, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” This title underscores the revolutionary power of poetry to shift our perspective and reveal new truths.

The Festival is a hybrid event, with programs happening in-person at the Museum and online, for both in-person and virtual audiences throughout the week of September 15-21. We invite you to “dwell in possibility” and submit your most inventive proposals for in-person or virtual, generative workshops and panels! Submissions for virtual programs should be for live, synchronous content only. Honoraria of $350 are provided per event. There is no fee to submit proposals.

View last year’s Festival schedule

The Festival Steering Committee especially welcomes the following submission qualities:

    • From groups of 2 – 5 facilitators
    • Generative writing programs
    • Creatively encourage audience participation or foster a strong sense of community
    • Engage young attendees and/or those new to poetry
    • Ensure people with a range of abilities can participate meaningfully

The Committee is seeking submissions for the following program types:

IN-PERSON OR VIRTUAL WORKSHOPS:

  • Public poetry workshops are typically 90-minutes long.
  • Workshops must be interactive and generative, centering around skill-building activities.
  • Virtual workshops must be adaptable for large virtual audiences of around 200.

IN-PERSON OR VIRTUAL PANELS:

  • Public poetry panels are typically 90-minutes long.
  • Panels must consist of at least three people, including a facilitator.
  • Panels should foster a strong sense of community and include moments for audience participation. They may include short readings by panel members.
  • Virtual panels will be recorded and live-streamed to large virtual audiences of around 200.

SUBMIT FOR THE FESTIVAL

Only complete submissions made through the SurveyMonkey Apply (via Amherst College) platform linked above will be considered. (You may be prompted to create a free account if you do not already have one.)

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Thursday, January 16 2025, 8am ET.


SUBMIT FOR PHOSPHORESCENCE

SUBMIT FOR THE FESTIVAL

All submissions will be notified of their acceptance status by March 5. Participating poets and presenters will be asked to sign a letter of agreement confirming participation on assigned dates.

Please direct questions about submissions to EDMprograms@EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org.


archival lithograph showing the carriage house next to The Evergreens

Carriages – Be sure – and Guests – True:
A Dickinson Birthday Celebration
Tuesday, Dec. 10, 6pm ET

VIRTUAL PROGRAM
This free event has limited capacity, we encourage you to register in advance.

REGISTER

archival lithograph showing the carriage house next to The Evergreens

Reconstruction of The Evergreens Carriage House has begun at the Museum! In this virtual celebration of Emily Dickinson’s 194th birthday, we explore what it takes to re-create a historic structure, from conducting archaeology to designing an environmentally passive building within a historically-sensitive shell. Join Jane and Robert Keiter Family Executive Director Jane Wald and special guests as we go behind the scenes of this exciting moment in the Museum’s history. Along the way we’ll hear special birthday messages to the poet from fans around the world. 

All are welcome to this free VIRTUAL program. Space is limited, register in advance.


Give a Birthday Gift
It’s not a birthday party without gifts! If you’re looking to honor Emily Dickinson with a birthday present, please consider a donation to the Museum to support our free virtual programs which are made possible with your support. Gifts of all sizes are deeply appreciated.

DONATE


About Dickinson’s Birthday

Emily Dickinson, the middle child of Edward Dickinson and Emily Norcross Dickinson, was born on December 10, 1830, in the family Homestead on Main Street in Amherst, Massachusetts, now the home of the Emily Dickinson Museum. She celebrated 55 birthdays before her death in 1886. Some of the poet’s most favored themes were time and immortality; she wrote, “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.” (Johnson L379)