Dickinson’s Music Book and the Musical Life of an American Poet:
A Book Launch with George Boziwick
IN-PERSON PROGRAM – The Emily Dickinson Museum offices at 20 Triangle Street, Amherst, MA.
Registration for this program is now full. Thank you for your interest.
After years of studying piano as a young woman, Emily Dickinson curated her music book, a common practice at the time. Now part of the Dickinson Collection in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, this bound volume of 107 pieces of published sheet music includes the poet’s favorite instrumental piano music and vocal music. Offering a fresh historical perspective, George Boziwick’s new book brings this artifact to life, documenting Dickinson’s musical study in the early 1850s, which tellingly coincided with the writing of her first poems. Using Dickinson’s letters and poems, Boziwick explores the various composers, music sellers, and publishers behind this music and Dickinson’s attendance at performances, presenting new insights into the multiple layers of meaning that music held for her. Enjoy an illustrated talk followed by live music in the Dickinson family parlor on the 1851 Hallet and Davis piano.
Please note that KN95 masks will be required for all attendees and social distancing will not be possible during the program.
About:
George Boziwick is a musicologist, music librarian, composer and performer. His forty years in public and academic music libraries included thirty-one years with The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, from which he retired in 2017 as Chief of the Music Division. As a composer, his Magnificat is published by C.F. Peters, and his music has been recorded on the Opus One label among others. George has contributed articles on Emily Dickinson and music to the Journal of the Society for American Music (2014), and the Emily Dickinson Journal (2016). He currently serves on the Board of the Emily Dickinson International Society. George is co-founder with Trudy Williams of The Red Skies Music Ensemble. They co-authored and co-produced a series of programs (2012-2018) on Emily Dickinson and her musical experiences. Two of those programs were sponsored by the Emily Dickinson Museum: “Emily and Lavinia: Music Making and Dickinson’s Eden,” (2018); and “The Musical Parlor of Emily Dickinson,” (2013).
Kit Young is a pianist/composer/devisor, who returned to Washington, DC in 2012 after twenty years living in Thailand, Myanmar and China where she frequently performed contemporary music by Asian composers, co-founded a music school in Yangon and collaborated on performances and recordings with improvising musicians from these countries. In 2018, as a pianist-improviser, Young’s return to reading Emily Dickinson’s poetry after a long hiatus inspired her to cast as extemporaneous song Dickinson’s poems, letters, commentary by family and friends. Imagining Dickinson’s inner aural life, early connection to the piano through repertoire from Emily Dickinson’s Music Book, church hymns, her ensouling the beauty of non-human sounds invites engagement with aurality. What Miss Dickinson Heard… And Didn’t is Young’s chamber opera for duo-pianists and vocal quartet. The opera follows a large arc of the poet’s life as if it were one day by exploring Dickinson’s depth of auditory artistry through improvisation evoking music and environmental sound – expressed in her poetry and letters.
Support The Emily Dickinson Museum:
Admission to this program is free of charge, 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.
Eleanor Hooker is an Irish poet and writer. Her third poetry collection Of Ochre and Ash (Dedalus Press) is the recipient of the 2022 Michael Hartnett Award. Her other poetry collections with Dedalus Press are: A Tug of Blue (2016) and The Shadow Owner’s Companion (2012), shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award for Best First Irish Collection 2012. Her chapbook Legion (Bonnefant Press, Netherlands) was published in 2021, and Where Memory Lies, a 2021 recipient of the Markievicz Award, is due for publication by Bonnefant Press in 2023. Eleanor’s poetry has been published internationally in Ireland, UK, USA, Holland, Romania, Hungary, India, Australia and Italy (forthcoming). Her work has appeared in literary journals including Poetry Ireland Review, POETRY, Poetry Review, PN Review, Agenda, The North, The Stinging Fly, Winter Papers, New Hibernia Review, New England Review (forthcoming), Archipelago (forthcoming). Eleanor is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Limerick. She holds an MPhil in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin, an MA in Cultural History from the University of Northumbria, and a BA from the Open University. Eleanor is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London. She’s a helm and Press Officer for Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat. She began her career as an Intensive Care Nurse and trained as a midwife at the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin.
Cori A. Winrock, author of Little Envelopes of Earth Conditions (Alice James Books 2020), is a poet/multimedia essayist. Her book-length lyric essay, Alterations, is forthcoming from Transit Books as part of their 
Margo Taft Stever‘s latest of three full-length poetry collections are Cracked Piano (CavanKerry Press, 2019), which was shortlisted and received honorable mention for the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize, and The End of Horses, Broadstone Books, 2022. Her latest of four chapbooks is Ghost Moose (Kattywompus Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in literary magazines including Verse Daily, Plant Human Quarterly, Cincinnati Review, Rattapallax, upstreet, Salamander, West Branch, Poet Lore, Blackbird, Poem-A-Day, poets.org, Academy of American Poets, and Prairie Schooner. She is currently an adjunct assistant professor in the Bioethics Department of the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. Stever also teaches a poetry workshop at Children’s Village, a residential school for at-risk children and adolescents. She is founder of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and founding and current co editor of Slapering Hol Press.
.chisaraokwu. is an Igbo actor, poet, and healthcare futurist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in GRIST, Obsidian, Zone3, Berkeley Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Glass, Tinderbox and others. Thrice nominated for Sundress’ Best of Net (2019, 2020, 2021) and awarded writing fellowships and residencies with BANFF, Cave Canem, Tin House and Brooklyn Poets, she calls just about any beach home.
Shin Yu Pai is a poet, essayist and visual artist. She is the author of several books of poetry, including “Virga”(Empty Bowl, 2021), “ENSŌ” (Entre Ríos Books, 2020), “Sightings: Selected Works (2000-2005)” (1913 Press, 2007), “Aux Arcs” (La Alameda, 2013), “Adamantine” (White Pine, 2010), and “Equivalence” (La Alameda, 2003). She served as the fourth poet laureate of the city of Redmond from 2015 to 2017. She is a three-time fellow of MacDowell and has also been in residence at Taipei Artist Village, Soul Mountain, The Ragdale Foundation, Centrum, and The National Park Service. Her poetry films have screened at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival and the Northwest Film Forum’s Cadence video poetry festival. She lives and works in the Pacific Northwest.
Stacy Szymaszek is the author of the books Emptied of All Ships (2005), Hyperglossia (2009), hart island (2015), Journal of Ugly Sites and Other Journals (2016), which won the Ottoline Prize from Fence Books and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in 2017, and A Year From Today (2018). Her books Famous Hermits and The Pasolini Book will be published in 2022. She is the recipient of a 2014 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant in poetry. Szymaszek was the Director of The Poetry Project at St.Mark’s from 2007-18. Since then she was the Hugo Visiting Writer at the University of Montana-Missoula 2018-19, Poet-in Resident at Brown University, and Visiting Poet for the Fire Island Artist Residency. She has been a mentor for the Queer Art Mentorship, visiting faculty for Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, and workshop teacher for Woodland Pattern, The Poetry Project, and Wendy’s Subway. She currently lives in the Hudson Valley region of NY. 
Marta McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden and consults for private clients and public gardens. Her latest book, Unearthing The Secret Garden explores the plants and places that inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett to write the classic children’s book. Timber Press also published Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, All the Presidents’ Gardens, and Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life. All the Presidents’ Gardens made The New York Times bestseller list and won an American Horticultural Society book award in 2017. Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life won the Gold Award from the Garden Writers Association and is now in its eighth printing. Her books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese and Korean. She is the 2019 recipient of the Garden Club of America’s Sarah Chapman Francis Medal for outstanding literary achievement. 
A Daisy for Dickinson: 
Dr. Tara Betts is the author of Break the Habit, Arc & Hue, and the forthcoming Refuse to Disappear. In addition to working as an editor, a teaching artist, and a mentor for other writers, she has taught at several universities. She is the Inaugural Poet for the People Practitioner Fellow at University of Chicago, an Artist in Residence at Northwestern University’s English Department, and founder of Whirlwind Learning Center. Tara can be found on twitter at @tarabetts. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including The Breakbeat Poets, Essence magazine, and Poetry Magazine.
Dr. Shauna M. Morgan is a poet-scholar and Associate Professor of creative writing and Africana literature at the University of Kentucky where she also serves as Director of Equity and Inclusion Initiatives in the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT). Before joining the University of Kentucky, Morgan was tenured on the faculty of English at Howard University where she taught from 2012-2019. Both her scholarly work and her poetry are deeply engaged with traditions of global Black art and culture. Her poetry has appeared in A Gathering Together, Interviewing the Caribbean, A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, ProudFlesh: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness, among other periodicals and anthologies. Morgan’s chapbook, Fear of Dogs & Other Animals, was published by Central Square Press.
April’s Phosphorescence also features guest host, Lisa Pegram. Pegram is a writer, educator, literary publicist and acquisitions editor. Her chapbook Cracked Calabash was published by Central Square Press and she is contributing author of The Next Verse Mixtape vol. 1. She has over 20 years of experience in high-level arts integration program design for such organizations as the Smithsonian Institute, Corcoran Gallery of Art and National Geographic. Passionate about the arts as a tool for activism, she served as DC WritersCorps program director for a decade, and as co-chair of United Nations affiliate international women’s conferences in the US, India and Bali. As a publishing professional, her mission is to amplify and celebrate the voices and stories of BIPOC authors. Find our more at https://ladypcoq.wordpress.com/
