Phosphorescence October 2024 featured poets:
Stephanie Choi, Saba Keramati, and Samyak Shertok
VIRTUAL PROGRAM
This virtual program is free to attend. Registration is required.
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:
Stephanie Choi’s poems appear in Copper Nickel, Blackbird, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona and the University of Utah. She is currently the poet-in-residence at Sewanee: The University of the South. Her debut collection, The Lengest Neoi, was selected by Brenda Shaughnessy for the 2023 Iowa Poetry Prize and will be published by the University of Iowa Press in 2024. xostephchoi.com
Saba Keramati is a Chinese-Iranian writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her debut poetry collection, Self-Mythology, was selected by Patricia Smith for publication in the Miller Williams Poetry Series at University of Arkansas Press, and is forthcoming in Spring 2024. A winner of the 2023 92NY Discovery Poetry Prize, Saba holds an MFA from UC Davis, where she was a Dean’s Graduate Fellow for Creative Arts. She is the Poetry Editor at Sundog Lit. sabakeramati.com
Samyak Shertok’s debut collection, No Rhododendron, was selected by Kimiko Hahn for the 2024 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press (Pitt Poetry Series) in 2025. His poems appear in The Cincinnati Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, POETRY, Shenandoah, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and the Jake Adam York Prize, he has received fellowships from Aspen Words, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. His work has been awarded the Robert and Adele Schiff Award for Poetry, the Gulf Coast Prize in Poetry, and the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Originally from Nepal, he was the inaugural Hughes Fellow in Poetry at Southern Methodist University and is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Hendrix College.
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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.
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a transsexual poet. Her work has been featured in Poetry Magazine, The American Poetry Review, Split Lip Magazine, Gulf Coast Journal, The Southeast Review, MoMA Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the author of I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (2019) and THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS (2016). She holds an MFA in poetry from UC Riverside and is currently a professor of creative writing. Jennifer lives in California with her wife, poet/essayist Eileen Elizabeth, and their cat and dog. 
Marta McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden and is a popular lecturer and writer. Her latest book is Gardening Can Be Murder, about the horticultural connections to crime fiction. Timber Press also published Unearthing The Secret Garden, Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, New York Times-bestselling All the Presidents’ Gardens, and Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life, now in its ninth printing. She was the 2019 recipient of the Garden Club of America’s Sarah Chapman Francis Medal for outstanding literary achievement.
Richard Michelson’s poetry collections include Sleeping as Fast as I Can (Slant Books), More Money than God (U of Pittsburgh Press), Battles and Lullabies (U of Illinois), Tap Dancing for the Relatives (U of Florida) and two limited edition Fine Press collaborations with the artist Leonard Baskin’s Gehenna Press. Michelson wrote the libretto for the off-Broadway music-theater piece, Dear Edvard, and his many children’s books have been named among the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and The New Yorker; and among the 12 Best Books of the Decade by Amazon.com. Michelson has received a National Jewish Book Award, and two Sydney Taylor Gold Medals from the Association of Jewish Libraries. He has received two Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowships, and his work was chosen to “highlight the literary culture and history of Massachusetts” at the 2018 Library of Congress National Book Festival. In 2019 Michelson became the sixth recipient of the Samuel Minot Jones Award for Literary Achievement. Michelson’s poems have appeared in The Harvard Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Common and many other journals. A native of East New York, Brooklyn, Michelson served two terms as Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts. He is the owner of R. Michelson Galleries, and the host of Northampton Poetry Radio.
A Daisy for Dickinson: 
In-person tickets are now sold out. Please register to join us online!