The Emily Dickinson Museum’s Poetry Discussion Group meets monthly, September through May, for lively conversation about Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters.

Join us from 1pm to 2:30pm on Zoom for a discussion on January 15 or January 22. Space is limited. To request a space, please complete this google form. For questions, please write edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org.

This program is free of charge, but we encourage those who are able to do so to make a donation after the program.

Topic: Title: “Nerve in Marble: the Geology of Emily Dickinson’s Poetry”   
Amanda Lowe’s work on Emily Dickinson interprets the processes of geothermal activity and rock metamorphosis as central to Dickinson’s poetic forms. This discussion invites participants to explore a collection of Dickinson’s poems that use images of volcanoes, granite and marble to explore the effects of human emotion on the body. We’ll discuss the development of geologic inquiry during the nineteenth century, Dickinson’s education in it, and suggest ways these theories seeped into her poetry. Through speakers’ depictions of highly alive and dead bodies, we’ll look together at the profound impact geology had on Dickinson’s understanding of the human relationship to the natural world.

About the Facilitator
Amanda Lowe is a PhD Candidate at Columbia University who researches the presence of geologic theory in nineteenth century American Literature. She is a current SOF/Heyman Center Public Humanities Fellow and the Graduate Student Coordinator for the Freedom and Citizenship Program. 

Sweet hours have perished here;

This is a mighty room;

Within its precincts hopes have played, —

Now shadows in the tomb.  

-J1767 

Spend a “sweet hour” in Emily Dickinson’s creative space where she penned her startling poetry. Whether you are a writer, an artist, a composer, or a poet, you’ll find solace and inspiration for your artistic output in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom. Let this quiet virtual experience jumpstart your next creative journey. 

What to expect: As one of a limited number of remote participants, you will need to find a quiet spot with a good internet connection from which to be immersed in a live feed from the poet’s bedroom in the Dickinson family Homestead. Plan to have your camera and audio on. In this room Dickinson found freedom working up late by lamplight. A facilitator in the room welcomes you and gently guides you through three inspirational writing prompts to help you explore this unique physical and psychic space and unleash your own creativity over the course of the hour. Focused on reflection and quietude, this program is not a writing workshop, but you will have the opportunity at the end for a short share-out with the group if you wish. 

Space is limited for this program and you may be added to a waitlist. To sign up please click this link to visit our registration form.

This program is free to participate, but your donation helps the Museum to continue providing free programs! Participants will be invited to make an online donation after the program.

Amherst College circa 1855. Half plate ambrotype by E.W. Cowles, courtesy of Amherst College Archives and Special Collections.

Join Museum staff for a lively lunchtime talk about the impact of Amherst College on the life of poet Emily Dickinson. 

The Dickinson family were instrumental to the College during its first 75 years, beginning with Samuel Fowler Dickinson’s part in its founding and continuing with Edward and Austin’s combined 60 years of service as treasurers. The College was an early and lasting influence in Dickinson’s own life, playing an inestimable role in her early education & friendships, and later connecting her to an ever-widening local and global community. Through original photographs and archival documents, encounter some of the people and places that defined Dickinson’s 19th century Amherst College, including students, professors, workers, and alumni. 

Following the talk, enjoy the Q&A with museum guides Stephanie Bennett, Brenna Macaray, Dr. Christopher Fobare, and Anna Plummer.

All are welcome to attend this free program, but registration is required. Register in advance via zoom. 
Questions? Please write edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org. 

Sweet hours have perished here;

This is a mighty room;

Within its precincts hopes have played, —

Now shadows in the tomb.  

-J1767 

Spend a “sweet hour” in Emily Dickinson’s creative space where she penned her startling poetry. Whether you are a writer, an artist, a composer, or a poet, you’ll find solace and inspiration for your artistic output in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom. Let this quiet virtual experience jumpstart your next creative journey. 

What to expect: As one of a limited number of participants, you will need to find a quiet spot with a good internet connection from which to be immersed in a live feed from the poet’s bedroom in the Dickinson family Homestead. Plan to have your camera and audio on. In this room Dickinson found freedom working up late by lamplight. A facilitator in the room welcomes you and gently guides you through three inspirational writing prompts to help you explore this unique physical and psychic space and unleash your own creativity over the course of the hour. Focused on reflection and quietude, this program is not a writing workshop, but you will have the opportunity at the end for a short share-out with the group if you wish. 

Space is limited for this program and you may be added to a waitlist. To sign up please click this link to visit our registration form.

This program is free to participate, but your donation helps the Museum to continue providing free programs! Participants will be invited to make an online donation after the program.

photo by Jeff Morgan

Sweet hours have perished here;

This is a mighty room;

Within its precincts hopes have played, —

Now shadows in the tomb.  

-J1767 

Spend a “sweet hour” in Emily Dickinson’s creative space where she penned her startling poetry. Whether you are a writer, an artist, a composer, or a poet, you’ll find solace and inspiration for your artistic output in Emily Dickinson’s library. Let this quiet virtual experience jumpstart your next creative journey. 

What to expect: As one of a limited number of participants, you will need to find a quiet spot with a good internet connection from which to be immersed in a live feed from the library of Emily Dickinson’s Homestead. Plan to have your camera and audio on. In this room were gathered Dickinson’s favorite books, her “Kinsmen of the Shelves” that “carried her to lands away.” A facilitator in the room welcomes you and gently guides you through three inspirational writing prompts to help you explore this unique physical and psychic space and unleash your own creativity over the course of the hour. Focused on reflection and quietude, this program is not a writing workshop, but you will have the opportunity at the end for a short share-out with the group if you wish. 

Space is limited for this program and you may be added to a waitlist. REGISTRATION FOR THIS PROGRAM IS CLOSED AS OF 11/4. 

This program is free to participate, but your donation helps the Museum to continue providing free programs! Participants will be invited to make an online donation after the program.

Artists wrestled here!
Lo, a tint Cashmere!
Lo, a Rose!
Student of the Year!
For the Easel here,
Say Repose!

-F111

Since 2009, artists from all over the world have chosen to spend October participating in challenges based on lists of prompts put together by other artists and institutions. Some make a piece of work every day, some every other day, and others are happy to simply take inspiration from all the lists floating around. We’re so excited to be participating in this year’s #Artober by releasing our own list of prompts consisting of phrases from Dickinson poems! We encourage you to pick and choose from the prompts, to work from either the lines we’ve provided or from the whole poems from which they’ve been plucked, and to create in any medium you desire. We look forward to seeing what you create—make sure to tag us on social media so we catch your work! You can tag your pieces with #artober2020, #emilytober, and @emilydickinson.museum. We’ll share our favorites from our instagram account, and feature some of them here on our website!

Update! The #Emilytober Gallery is live!
Check out all the fantastic work here!

Emilytober #Artober Prompt List, 2020

Full text of each prompt, in order, with Franklin edition reference numbers

1. F32 The maple wears a gayer scarf –
2. F1158 Best Witchcraft is Geometry
3. F1350 The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants –
4. F168 Ah, Necromancy Sweet!
5. F1286 There is no Frigate like a Book
6. F407 One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted
7. F796 The Lightning showed a Yellow Beak And then a livid Claw –
8. F111 Artists wrestled here!
9. F1268 A Word dropped careless on a Page
10. F1199 For Captain was the Butterfly
11. F1163 A Spider sewed at Night
12. F166 Dust is the only Secret.
13. F260 I’m Nobody! Who are you?
14. F1393 Those Cattle smaller than a Bee
15. F656 the Mermaids in the Basement/Came out to look at me –
16. F1426 Buccaneers of Buzz –
17. F140 Bring me the sunset in a cup –
18. F1394 The long sigh of the Frog
19. F916 Or Porch of Gnome
20. F918 We met as Sparks – Diverging Flints
21. F479 The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality.
22. F162 From some old Fortress on the sun
23. F1311 Art thou the thing I wanted?
24. F1489 A Route of Evanescence,
25. F296 Where ships of purple gently toss
26. F1649 Back from the Cordial Grave I drag thee
27. F1402 His Heart was darker than the starless night
28. F1405 The absence of the Witch does not Invalidate the spell –
29. F200 The Rose did caper on her cheek –
30. F89 Imps in eager caucus
31. F710 Where Squirrels play – and Berries dye – And Hemlocks – bow – to God
32. F43 The Satyrs fingers beckoned
33. F1747 That Love is all there is/Is all we know of Love,
34. F509 A curious Cloud surprised the Sky
35. F510 Upholsterer of the Pines – is He –

In collaboration with the Emily Dickinson Museum, the 2020 EDIS Annual Meeting will be held virtually from July 31 to August 1. This remote event requires advance sign up; to register, click this link: https://edis.press.jhu.edu/membership/conference

This year’s focus is “Dickinson at a Distance” –  How does Dickinson respond generatively and creatively to friends, relatives, and other writers even over distances of time and space? How does she engage with events that happen elsewhere or in other historical periods? What does she think about strangers, immigrants, people living in other places? In what ways did Dickinson and others in her era close geographic and emotional distance, and how might we learn to overcome or interrogate the same issues? This virtual, one-day Annual Meeting explores how figurations of isolation, distance, and remoteness in Dickinson’s work can teach us ways to connect more deeply with each other on personal, emotional, and intellectual levels.

 A variety of synchronic and asynchronic scholarly panels, cultural events, and poetry sessions, using Zoom and YouTube as platforms, are planned for this event.

To find out more about the schedule for this event, click here: [Link]

During the pandemic, the Emily Dickinson Museum is celebrating monthly Amherst Arts Night Plus with remote poetry readings every first Thursday at 6:30PM (EST).

This program is free to attend. Registration is required. To sign-up and receive the link, click here.

In August, our feature poets are:

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

Photo credit Jen Fitzgerald

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

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

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

– Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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

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

About the book:

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

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

About the author: 

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

Summer was arguably Dickinson’s favorite season: more of her poems are set in summer than any other time of year. It’s not hard to understand why–summer at the Homestead brought with it trumpeting lilies, fragrant old-garden roses, delicious strawberries, and stores of fresh vegetables.

Join Marta McDowell, master gardener, landscape historian, and author of Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life for a virtual stroll through the Homestead gardens. Bring a cup of tea and spend an hour savoring blooms, stories, and verse gathered from Dickinson’s gardens. Learn about the flowers and plants Dickinson and her sister Lavinia cultivated in summer and how they preserved the fruits of their labor throughout the year.

This FREE program will be held on zoom from 12:30pm to 1:30pm EST. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

Would you like Summer? Taste of our’s –
Spices? Buy – here!
Ill! We have Berries, for the parching!
Weary! Furloughs of Down!
Perplexed! Estates of Violet – Trouble ne’er looked on!
Captive! We bring Reprieve of Roses!
Fainting! Flasks of Air!
Even for Death – A Fairy medicine –
But, which is it – Sir?
(F272)

About Marta
Marta McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden and consults for private clients and public gardens.  Her latest book is Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life, 2019. Timber Press also published The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, New York Times-bestselling All the Presidents’ Gardens, and Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life, now in its seventh printing.  Marta is working on a new book about The Secret Garden and its author, Frances Hodgson Burnett, due out from Timber Press in 2022. She is the 2019 recipient of the Garden Club of America’s Sarah Chapman Francis Medal for outstanding literary achievement.