June’s Featured Poet
Naila Moreira
6:30pm
Naila Moreira is most often inspired by the natural world. After earning her doctorate in geology at University of Michigan, she worked as a journalist, Seattle Aquarium docent, and environmental consultant. She now teaches at Smith College and has served as writer in residence at the Shoals Marine Laboratory in Maine and Forbes Library in Northampton, MA. Her poetry, fiction and nonfiction are published or forthcoming in Terrain.org, The Boston Globe, Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, Cape Rock, Connecticut River Review, Rosarium Press Trouble the Waters anthology, and other venues, and her second poetry chapbook, Water Street (Finishing Line Press, 2017) won the New England Poetry Club Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. She writes a monthly environment column for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
June’s Featured Speaker
“Emily Dickinson’s Wildflowers” with Marta McDowell
7pm
Join Master Gardener and garden historian Marta McDowell for an informal talk on Emily Dickinson’s wildflowers. Following the relationship between the pen and the trowel led MartaMcDowell to Emily Dickinson for Emily Dickinson’s Gardens (2005), which will be reprinted in full color by Timber Press in 2019. Marta also scripted the Emily Dickinson Museum’s landscape audio tour, and was an advisor for the New York Botanical Garden’s 2010 show, “Emily Dickinson’s Gardens: The Poetry of Flowers.” Her other works include The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2017), All the Presidents Gardens (2016) and Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life (2013).
June’s Featured Artist
Poetry in Silver: The Language of Flowers in the Works of Emily Dickinson by Kandy Vermeer Phillips
On View from 5pm to 8pm
Dickinson-inspired art by Kandy Vermeer Phillips
This pop-up exhibition features a series of silverpoint drawings that compares specimens found in Dickinson’s herbarium to those housed in the U.S. National Herbarium. Dickinson collected her specimens in the 1840’s from the woods, fields and bogs that surrounded her Amherst, MA home as part of her formal botany education. Poetry in Silver highlights several of these cherished woodland flowers that inspired Dickinson’s poetry along with her use of the popular Language of Flowers. Silverpoint drawing is a Renaissance technique and is ideal for close observational botanical drawing. A silverpoint drawing’s unique tendency to develop a patina over time also provides a metaphor for a plant’s evolving environmental status from the mid-19thcentury to the present day. Although Dickinson’s herbarium is now over 175 years old, it continues to speak, and remains a significant part of her letter to the world.
Kandy Vermeer Phillips has been drawing with silverpoint since the 1970’s. This exhibition is a part of her recent Julius I. Brown Award from the American Society of Botanical Artists. Kandy’s silverpoint drawings are included in the collections of The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Pittsburgh, PA; The National Gallery of Art, and The National Museum of Natural History, Botany Department, Washington, DC.
The Emily Dickinson Museum participates in Amherst Arts Night Plus on first Thursdays each month. Free and open to all! Each month enjoy the following:
- 5PM-8PM View the pop-up exhibition of contemporary art in the Homestead
- 5 to 6 pm: Open mic signups for poets, writers, performers of any kind. Share your work in a safe, welcoming, and inspiring place!
- 6 pm: Open mic begins
- Featured readers follow the open mic
Please note that the works of guest artists may contain sensitive or mature material and do not necessarily represent the views of the Emily Dickinson Museum.