Marta Macdowell and a volunteer work in Dickinson's garden

Summer Garden Days 2024
July – October

IN-PERSON PROGRAM

My Garden — like the Beach —
Denotes there be — a Sea —
That’s Summer —
Such as These — the Pearls
She fetches — such as Me

-Fr429

The Emily Dickinson Museum gardens call for maintenance all season long! Come be a part of the cultivation and growth of the historic Dickinson family landscape. Join a small group of volunteers for a morning of Summer or Fall tending. Participants will help to weed, deadhead, plant new annuals, and more. Gardeners of all experience levels are welcome!

2024 Garden Sessions:

Monday, July 29th 9am – 12pm ET
Monday, August 26th 9am – 12pm ET
Saturday, September 21st 9am-12pm ET
Saturday, October 19th 9am – 12pm ET

Spots are limited; advance registration is required.

To register for one or more sessions, please email edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org with your name and the date you wish to volunteer. Staff will be in touch to confirm your participation.

DETAILS:
Garden sessions will take place rain or shine! In extreme conditions, sessions may be canceled or rescheduled to the following Friday. Participants are expected to stay for the duration of their session.

Volunteers are encouraged to bring the following if they have them:

Gloves
Clean hand trowel and clippers
Bucket
Kneeling pad
Water bottle
Snack
Comfortable footwear
Sun protection

This in-person program is free to attend. Please email for session availability.

Want to join our garden volunteer mailing list to be the first to learn about future opportunities? Let us know at edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org.

Dickinson's daguerrotype tripled and colored in yellow blue and red

Delve Into Dickinson: Educator Workshops

Join us for a new, virtual professional development series for educators exploring Dickinson’s life and poetry. Led by Museum staff and special guests, each participatory workshop will provide context and exercises that illuminate Dickinson’s frequently cryptic poetry. Space is limited; sign up today for one session or all five! Attendees will leave each 90-minute session with new teaching strategies and context to connect Dickinson to broader themes, from her material world to science, faith, and the Civil War. While other educators are welcome, this series is especially designed for middle and high school humanities teachers.

Workshops are available via sliding scale. Your ticket helps provide low-cost programs and supports the attendance of other educators. If the cost is prohibitive, but you would like to attend, please write us at edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.

Professional Development certificates are available upon request — please e-mail edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum if you are interested.

Delve Into Dickinson: Educator Workshop 2024 Schedule:

Thursday, August 22, 6:30pm

“Through the Dark Sod – as Education –”: Reading & Teaching Emily Dickinson’s Poems

Featuring Bruce Penniman

Thursday, September 12, 6:30pm ET

“Nature and God – I neither knew” Emily Dickinson, “The Scientist of Faith”
Featuring Bruce Penniman

Thursday, October 16, 6:30pm ET

“It feels a shame to be Alive -”: Emily Dickinson and the Civil War
Featuring Ivy Schweitzer and Al Salehi

Thursday, November 21, 6:30pm ET

Dwelling in Possibility: The Pleasurable Path of What if Poems
Featuring Tess Taylor

Wednesday, December 18, 6:30pm ET

Digital Dickinson: The Museum’s Collection
Featuring Elizabeth Bradley

graphic delve into dickinson - Dwelling in Possibility

Dwelling in Possibility
The Pleasurable Path of What if Poems
Thurs., November 21, 6:30pm ET

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

graphic delve into dickinson - Dwelling in Possibility For any questions, please e-mail edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

Registration is required for this virtual program and is offered on a sliding scale from $5 – $20. View the full educator workshop lineup.
Please select the ticket price that is right for you, and consider supporting the Museum and the participation of other educators through your purchase. Tickets are non-refundable.

REGISTER

Amid her many unforgettable poems, a surprising number of Emily Dickinson’s poems begin with an “IF”.

If she had been the Mistletoe/ And I had been the Rose/ How gay upon your table/ My velvet life to close

If pain for peace prepares/ Lo what “Augustan” years—

If I should die/ And you should live/ And time should gurgle on—

These iffy openings not only destabilizes the present, it opens the poem to the richness and pleasure of multiple imaginative realms. Yet how does the “if” help us read Dickinson, and poetry more broadly? If we began our own writing with an if, what words or worlds might we discover? In this workshop, we’ll examine Dickinson, as well as other poets across time, looking at poems that begin in speculative space, exploring how we too might write poems that begin in surprise and motor towards wisdom, or delight. Our time will include close reading, discussion, and prompts.

Headshot of Tess Taylor

Tess Taylor is the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry including Work & Days, which was named one of the 10 best books of poetry of 2016 by the New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Times Literary Supplement, CNN, and the New York Times. Taylor has been Distinguished Fulbright US Scholar at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Queen’s University in Northern Ireland, and the Anne Spencer Poet-in-Residence at Randolph College. She has also served as on-air poetry reviewer for NPR’s All Things Considered for over a decade. Taylor lives in El Cerrito, California, where she tends to fruit trees and backyard chickens.

Questions?
Email edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

graphic delve into dickinson - It feels a shame to be Alive -

It feels a shame to be Alive
Dickinson and the Civil War
Weds., October 16, 6:30pm ET

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

graphic delve into dickinson - It feels a shame to be Alive - For any questions, please e-mail edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

REGISTER

It feels a shame to be Alive –
When Men so brave – are dead –
One envies the Distinguished Dust –
Permitted – such a Head –
(fragment Fr524)

Although myths about Emily Dickinson portray her removed from the issues of her day, current scholarship proves that Dickinson was profoundly concerned with and affected by the issues that caused the American Civil War and wrote many poems about them, such as this one, which implicates the speaker directly in a kind of survivor’s guilt. In fact, in the summer of 2020 as we began to write poems about the Black Lives Matter movements, we looked to Dickinson’s extensive Civil War poems for inspiration about this earlier social movement to liberate Black lives. The result is our co-written collection of poems, Within Flesh: In Conversation with Our Selves and Emily Dickinson, published in 2024. Written by a Muslim man of Iranian descent and a Jewish woman from Brooklyn, it offers a unique three-way conversation over space and time about the history of social injustices and how we begin to repair ourselves and the broken world.

We will frame this seminar with readings from Within Flesh to illustrate how Dickinson’s poems facilitated our creative work on contemporary issues and can provide the impetus for your students to think deeply about the world around them. Our goal is to provide you with materials for a unit or assignment on Dickinson and the War as a mirror for exploring social movements of our own time. As a resource, we will use two posts from Ivy’s year-long and freely-accessible blog, “White Heat: Emily Dickinson in 1862”, which explores the Battle of Antietam and the use of photography (the new social medium of the day, which radically changed the reach and effect of the war.) We will discuss how to contextualize Dickinson’s war poetry, the poetic strategies she used to represent the war, and her recurring themes and images. We will end with a few of our poetic “conversations” as examples.

Joint headshot for poets Al Salehi and Ivy Schweitzer Born in Southern California, Al Salehi is a multilingual American poet and entrepreneur of Persian descent who lives in Orange County with a background in technology. Al graduated from UCLA and went on to study at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Al is a graduate from Dartmouth College’s Guarini Graduate School where he studied Creative Writing, and currently serves on the Alumni Council. He also completed a creative writing program at the University of Oxford, Exeter College. Al’s short film Love, Basketball won second place in the My Hero International Film Festival, 2021, under the “Poetry” category. He has published and/or presented poetry in the Society of Classical Poets, The Dartmouth Writers Society, The United Nations Association, Southwest Airlines, O.C. Registrar, Dartmouth Leslie Center Lifeline’s Poetry Share, Houston Library Poetry Share, Clamantis Journal, and the Dartmouth Medical School Lifeline’s Journal. Al’s collection, Enter Atlas, was a Semi-Finalist for the University of Wisconsin’s Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry, judged by Natasha Trethewey.

Born in Brooklyn, NY, and raised in a Jewish-American family, Ivy Schweitzer has lived in Vermont for many years and taught courses in American Literature and Women and Gender Studies at Dartmouth College. She has recently published poetry in Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Antiphon volume 19, Clear Poetry, Passager, Ritualwell, Tikkun, New Croton Review, Mississippi Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. In 2018, she felt called by Emily Dickinson to spend a year immersed in that poet’s most creative period in which she wrote almost a poem a day; the result is a year-long weekly blog called White Heat: Emily Dickinson in 1862, https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/whiteheat. In February 2024, she and Al Salehi published their co-written book of poetry titled “Within Flesh: In Conversation with Ourselves and Emily Dickinson.” Her solo collection, titled Tumult, Whitewash and Stretch Marks, will appear from Finishing Line Press in 2025.
sites.dartmouth.edu/ivyschweitzer

Questions?
Email edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

graphic delve into dickinson - Nature and God – I neither knew

Nature and God – I neither knew
Dickinson, Scientist of Faith
Thursday, September 12, 6:30pm ET

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

graphic delve into dickinson - Nature and God – I neither knew For any questions, please e-mail edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

REGISTER

Nature and God – I neither knew
Yet Both so well knew Me
They startled, like Executors
Of My identity –
Yet Neither told – that I could learn –
My Secret as secure
As Herschel’s private interest
Or Mercury’s Affair –
(Fr803)

Emily Dickinson’s opening claim in this poem is a bit disingenuous: her poems contain hundreds of references to nature and God. She “knew” them quite well, yet both continually “startled” her, and her true “identity” was an explorer of their “Secrets.”

Dickinson’s allusions to local flora and fauna, as in “The Lilac is an ancient shrub” and “A narrow Fellow in the Grass,” are well known, but her fascination with science extended to many fields, from astronomy (as in the Herschel reference above—he discovered Uranus) to geology (including five poems about volcanoes alone) to medicine (five about surgeons) to mathematics, technology, and many more (White).

Science, which she studied with great interest from her school days onward, and which was burgeoning with new developments during her lifetime, provided Dickinson the poet more than a rich technical lexicon and a trove of startling metaphors; it also offered a method for experimenting with spiritual problems.

In this workshop, we will read and discuss a range of Dickinson poems with scientific content and examine the ways they intersect with her lifelong struggles with religious faith, confirming or confounding her understandings of nature and human life. We will also explore contexts for teaching the “science poems.”

Work Cited: White, Fred D. “‘Sweet Skepticism of the Heart’: Science in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson.”College Literature, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 121–128.

Bruce M. Penniman, Ed.D., taught writing, speech, and literature at Amherst Regional High School for 36 years and is still an advisor to the Sene-Gambian Scholars exchange program there. He served as Site Director of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project at University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he has taught numerous graduate courses for teachers. In 1999 he was named Massachusetts Teacher of the Year and finalist for National Teacher of the Year, and he is the author of Building the English Classroom: Foundations, Support, Success (NCTE, 2009). He has been a teacher curriculum mentor in all four NEH Emily Dickinson: Person, Poetry, and Place workshops and has facilitated discussions for the Emily Dickinson Museum’s Poetry Discussion Group on topics ranging from “Emily Dickinson and the Bible” to “Emily Dickinson and Science.”

Questions?
Email edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

graphic delve into dickinson - Through the Dark Sod – as Education –

Through the Dark Sod – as Education
Reading & Teaching Dickinson’s Poems
Thursday, August 22, 6:30pm ET

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

graphic delve into dickinson - Through the Dark Sod – as Education – For any questions, please e-mail edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

Registration is required for this virtual program and is offered on a sliding scale from $5 – $20.
Please select the ticket price that is right for you, and consider supporting the Museum and the participation of other educators through your purchase. Tickets are non-refundable.

Professional Development certificates are available upon request — please e-mail edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum if you are interested.

REGISTER

Through the Dark Sod – as Education –
The Lily passes sure –
Feels her white foot – no trepidation –
Her faith – no fear –
Afterward – in the Meadow –
Swinging her Beryl Bell –
The Mold-life – all forgotten – now –
In Extasy – and Dell – (Fr559)

If poets are “the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” as Shelley asserted (The Defence of Poetry), they are also the most underrepresented writers in the literature curriculum in many schools. Poetry is intimidating to many students—and to many teachers, too—because, unlike the Lily, we don’t always “pass sure” through the “Dark Sod” of convoluted diction, unfamiliar allusions, and concentrated ideas that characterize many poems.Like our students, we crave certainty and control.

The poems of Emily Dickinson can be especially challenging for students and teachers because, despite their simplicity of form, they deny straightforward readings or unified interpretations. But if we can learn to read with “no trepidation,” delving into Dickinson’s complexities can be a true delight, an opportunity for students and teachers alike to “swing their Beryl Bells” in “Extasy.”

In this workshop, we will read several poems together, developing our tolerance for ambiguity and sharing methods that help students overcome their fears of “getting it wrong” when they discuss Dickinson’s work. Using simple protocols, we will explore strategies for decoding the paraphrasable content of the poems, interpreting their evocative language, and making personal connections through low-stakes writing and discussion. We will also consider various approaches to choosing Dickinson poems for study and developing curriculum units.

Questions?
Email edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

3 people on a tour of Dickinson's bedroom

FREE Day [Sold Out]
Highland Street August Adventures
Weds., August 14

IN-PERSON PROGRAM

Photo by Lynne Graves

Join us for FREE admission to the Emily Dickinson Museum sponsored by Highland Street Foundation. Space is limited, register in advance.

Navigate to August 14 and select your timed entry to reserve your free Museum tickets! Find more information on guided and general admission experiences here.

THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT.

Special Program: 2PM-3PM Crafts and Conversation with illustrator Tatyana Feeney
Enjoy crafts and conversation with celebrated illustrator Tatyana Feeney, whose newest work illustrates Emily Dickinson’s poem ‘Hope is the thing with Feathers‘. Discover the joy of poetry in this simple introduction to Emily Dickinson, celebrating the power of hope perched within and the promise of sunnier days. Originally written in 1861, this enduring poem is now accessible to early learners. Books will be available for sale in the Museum’s gift shop.

Image of the cover of Tatyana Feeney's illustrated 'Hope is the Thing with Feathers'. A little girl walking outside under a rainbow, a bird perches on her umbrella overhead.

Tatyana Feeney grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and spent a lot of her early childhood going to the library and listening to stories. She still loves books and reads as much as she can in her free time. She is now based in County Meath, Ireland where she spends a lot of time working on illustrations and new story ideas. Most of her artwork is done using monoprinting but she often adds collage or watercolor to the finished pieces. Her books have been nominated for several awards including: The UKLA Book Award, the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize, and the Kate Greenway Medal. Little Owl’s Orange Scarf was the winner of the Rotherham Children’s Book Award in the Picture Book Category in 2014. Her artwork has been exhibited in Dublin, Belfast, Vienna, Bologna, London and The Hague. Illustrations from Small Elephant’s Bathtime were included in the Society of Illustrator’s Original Art Exhibition 2015. In addition to children’s books, she has also provided illustrations for CD covers, magazines, greeting cards and websites. Learn more at tatyanafeeney.com

About August Adventures

August Adventures, modeled after Highland Street’s long-standing Free Fun Fridays program, will provide enriching opportunities for individuals, children, and families across the Commonwealth. From children’s museums, to art, to science and history, there is something for everyone.

“As we celebrate our 35th anniversary this year, we are excited to partner with such a wide array of institutions, all of which add to the incredibly rich cultural fabric of our Commonwealth,” said Highland Street’s Executive Director Blake Jordan. “Increasing access and opening doors to wide and diverse audiences are shared goals of all of us and we hope to welcome many visitors during August Adventures.” The August Adventures program offers opportunities throughout the Commonwealth, from Greater Boston to Cape Cod, and out to Central and Western Massachusetts.

To learn more about August Adventures and the Highland Street Foundation, visit highlandstreet.org

About Highland Street Foundation
Founded in 1989, the Highland Street Foundation is committed to addressing the most pressing needs and concerns for children and families in Massachusetts. Highland Street Foundation provides access and opportunities in education, housing, mentorship, health care, environment, and the arts.

Tell It Slant Poetry Festival 2024 Schedule
September 23-29

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 23 – 29, 2024!

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 Pulitzer Prize winners Carl Phillips (2023) and Diane Seuss (2022), generative writing workshops, poetry panels, a masterclass with celebrated poet Oliver de la Paz, a musical theater performance by the Wilde Irish Women exploring Dickinson’s relationship to her Irish maid Margaret Maher, 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 2024 lineup below.

THE SCHEDULE:

REGISTER

Monday, September 23:
6-8:30pm [Virtual] — 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 24:
12-2:15pm [Virtual] — 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!
6-7pm [Virtual] — Our Roots as Muse: Family & Ancestry as Creative Inspiration [SOLD OUT & RESCEDULED! Registrants have been invited to join us on Monday, October 14]
Facilitators will lead participants in a series of generative writing exercises using personal family and ancestral history as creative inspiration and content. Participants will leave the workshop with at least two writing sketches and other writing resources to continue developing their ideas and creatively archiving their own family histories.
Featuring .CHISARAOKWI. and Tamara J. Madison.
6:30-8pm [Virtual] — Telling our Medical Stories Slant [SOLD OUT!]
In this workshop, participants will learn how to translate their personal stories of illness and disability into poetry, something Dickinson herself practiced, and something that’s employed by practitioners of Narrative/Poetic Medicine.
Featuring Rosemarie Dombrowski and Catharine Clark-Sayles.

Wednesday, September 25:
12-2:15pm [Virtual] — 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!
4:30-6pm [Virtual] — Poetry, Spirituality, and New Forms of Attention
Emily Dickinson’s poems interact with silence to open spaces of questioning, recognition, and keen attention to spiritual matters and questions of meaning. In this workshop, we’ll place our own poetry in the context of Dickinson’s poetry, offer a short guided meditation and generative prompts for participants to explore their own relation to silence, voice, and spiritual attention.
Featuring Rachel Zucker and Nadia Colburn.
7:30-9pm [Virtual] — “Bee! I’m expecting you”: Dialogues with the Non-Human
Emily Dickinson lived in a time of ecological change and painful civil conflict. Against this backdrop, Dickinson’s poems reach out to the world around her—the frog, the snake, the hummingbird, train, “slant of light,” even the “loaded gun,” addressing these others as companions, fellow witnesses. In this panel, poets explore both Dickinson’s and their own dialogues with the nonhuman.
Featuring Carolina Ebeid, Julia Guez, Anna V. Q. Ross, and Tess Taylor.

Thursday, September 26:
12-2:15pm [Virtual] — 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!
6-7:15pm [Virtual] — 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 Jane Huffman, Molly Akin, and Diane Seuss.

Friday, September 27:
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!
3-4:30pm [Hybrid] — Poetry Masterclass with Oliver de la Paz
This generative workshop, with the Poet Laureate of Worcester Oliver de la Paz, will attend to the possibilities of creating new work that is in-tune with a subject that haunts you. We will be looking at how to write and sustain work within a singular focus, obsession, or motif.
7-8:30pm [Hybrid] — Open Mic Night with Oliver de la Paz and Diannely Antigua
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) Featured poets Oliver de la Paz and Diannely Antigua will follow the open mic. Open mic sign-ups will be handled in advance via a Google Form, and selected readers will be notified. Submit to read by Wed., Sept. 11th.

Saturday, September 28:
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 [Hybrid] — Poets of the Public: New England Poet Laureates
Poets will share about their role as Poet Laureate in their respective communities, sharing information about the programming we each developed, and will discuss what it means to be a “Civic Poet” with a broad set of responsibilities and audiences while also maintaining one’s own personal writing practice.
Featuring Oliver de la Paz and Diannely Antigua.
3:30-5pm [Hybrid] — “I am afraid to own a Body”: Continuing Dickinson’s Legacy of Braving the Body
A discussion of Dickinson’s poems about the body and embodied experience, particularly her exploration into the often-contradictory needs between body and mind. A selection of contemporary poems by women and non-binary poets from Braving the Body who have been inspired by Dickinson’s work. Prompts will be provided for a generative writing exercise.
Featuring Jennifer Franklin, Pichchenda Bao and Nicole Callihan.
7-9pm [Hybrid] — Headliner Night and Garden Party with Carl Phillips and Sebastian Merrill
Join us in Emily Dickinson’s garden or virtually for a celebration of creativity and poetry! Our headlining poets, 2023 Pulitzer Prize recipient Carl Phillips and Sebastian Merrill, read from their work and discuss poetic practice and inspiration.

Sunday, September 29:
10-11:30am [Virtual] — “Picnic, Lightning”: Concision, Compression, & Brevity in the Very Short Poem [SOLD OUT!]
Emily Dickinson is one of the greatest masters of the short poem. In this workshop for writers at all stages in their practice, we’ll focus on the Very Short Poem, the highly pressurized lyric that casts off a resonance far bigger than its real estate.
Featuring Patrick Donnelly.
11:30am-1pm [Hybrid] — Margaret Maher and the Celtification of Emily Dickinson
Featuring the poems of Emily Dickinson with music and lyrics by Rosemary Caine. If the Irish can claim they saved civilization, then the Wilde Irish Women dare to claim that Margaret Maher saved Emily Dickinson’s poems. Experience the lauded musical play that reveals the unlikely story of a humble Irish maid’s influence on her reclusive mistress, Emily Dickinson. Margaret Maher defied Emily’s deathbed decree to burn her poems. Her brave, independent thinking and courageous action came from being born in Ireland, a country where poems are respected, not burned. But there is so much more to the story…
Featuring Rosie Caine and Wilde Irish Women.
2-4pm [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!

REGISTER

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 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.

Improving the Environment for Collections at The Evergreens

INTRODUCTION
parlor of evergreens with furniture, piano and paintings The Emily Dickinson Museum (EDM) received a Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to enhance environmental conditions renowned poet and her family. The largest and most varied collection of non-manuscript objects associated historically with the poet and her family had been stored since 1916 in The Evergreens, an Italianate two-story wood-frame house built by the Dickinson family in 1856.

THE PROBLEM
The Evergreens has been heated by a residential-grade forced hot air gas furnace through a distribution system that has changed little since the mid-20 th century. Heat reached heated only five of the eleven first floor rooms and only two of the six rooms on the second floor. There was no form of air conditioning until 2007. Monitoring data confirmed that significant swings in temperature and humidity between different areas of the house and across seasons threatened very limited life expectancies for Dickinson family artifacts including art, family furniture, and personal possessions. The central problem has been the “stack effect” caused by The Evergreens style of architecture. Stack effect results from infiltration of cold outdoor air through crevices in masonry, gaps between window sash/frames and door frames, and openings for building systems, and exfiltration of warmed air through gaps on upper floors. The Evergreens open main hall and the difference in height between perforations in the three-story structure create the stack effect which reaches extremes in the winter. The effect is reversed in summer with exfiltration of cooled dehumidified interior air at perforations in lower stories and infiltration of warm moist air in upper stories and attics.

THE PROJECT

Cellar mechanicals at The Evergreens

The Emily Dickinson Museum established seven objectives for the environmental improvements project, and all have either been accomplished or will be born out through further monitoring and evaluation.
1. Set realistic expectations for building and system performance. A first step was a study of the building’s “comportment” – that is, the limits of an improved environment that the structure’s architectural style, building materials, and location in a New England valley climate will allow. The results of the study helped the Museum establish refined and more reasonable performance standards.
Specification for ASHRAE Classes and Proposed Class Control for the Evergreens table
2. Reduce the loss of conditioned air and the intrusion of water vapor. Non-mechanical improvements to the building envelope included attic insulation and a vapor barrier combined with storm window upgrades, weatherstripping, air-sealing, and segregation of unconditioned spaces to reduce exfiltration/infiltration.
3. Reduce the sensitivity of the internal environment to external conditions. Upgraded insulation and reduction of cold air and moisture infiltration will do a better job of maintaining relatively constant conditions inside the building even though outdoor climate conditions change more quickly.
4. Filter pollutants and inhibit conditions leading to pest infestation and growth of mold and mildew. The system criterion for MERV 13 filtration standard, recommended by previous conservation assessments, has been implemented in this project. Standards for relative humidity are set to inhibit mold/mildew growth, which had been a persistent issue in the uncontrolled Evergreens environment. In past years, some visitors remarked on the house’s dank air quality. Although the general public may not be aware of the specific benchmarks the Museum wishes to achieve, those familiar with the house who have entered since the system has become operational have remarked on the improvement in visitor comfort.
5. Reduce thermal, solar radiation, and ultraviolet loads at windows and French doors. New solar shades have significantly reduced the infiltration of visible light as well as UV light.
6. Control temperature and humidity within acceptable ranges. The new HVAC system has proven its ability to control temperature and humidity during variable winter conditions and has successfully transitioned into spring. Continuous monitoring and immediate response to anomalies solidify both temperature and relative humidity control.
7. Significantly enhance the building and collections environment while controlling operating costs. The Museum has noted that the switch from gas to electric heat has had a positive sustainability impact and has not increased operating costs.

THE OUTCOME
Since 2003, the Emily Dickinson Museum has charted a steady course to improve its historic
physical plant. Focusing first on a healthy infrastructure, EDM has undertaken numerous
projects to stabilize and protect The Evergreens as a singular expression of nineteenth-century
history and culture and as a unique component of Emily Dickinson’s life and legacy.
This environmental improvement project is the last in a series of “invisible” upgrades leading to
the goal of conserving the evocative interior finishes and collections as they were left by the
Dickinson family. Ultimately, this project has enabled the planned conservation and
interpretation of a unique collection for its highest humanities purposes as well as the
preservation of distinctive decorative and architectural finishes representing the evolution of
provincial nineteenth-century New England aesthetic values.

READ THE WHITE PAPER

What I can do – I will –

What I can do – I will –
Though it be little as a Daffodil –
That I cannot – must be
Unknown to possibility –

Fr641

image of the Homestead in spring

Inspired by the continuing wave of intense interest in Emily Dickinson around the world, we’re building a multi-year education plan to bring the wealth of the Museum’s historical, interpretive, and pedagogical expertise to K-12 and College educators and students. Immersive in-person learning experiences and dynamic virtual/remote modules will offer multiple ways to access the Museum’s education programs. Our goal is to bring the power of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, place and life’s story to bear on inquiry-based education experiences that kindle curiosity, creativity and self-expression in learners of all ages.

We’re beginning our education initiatives with a six-session educator professional development series that explores Dickinson-related digital resources, object-based learning, teaching Dickinson’s poetry, and creative writing responses. Over the next couple of months, we’ll develop a robust curriculum unit for middle and high school teachers and learners focused on the ways Dickinson embraced her unique personal vision, defying expectations in her life and in her poetry. On tours of the Homestead, students will consider why and how Dickinson used poetry to ask questions and challenge norms. Through hands-on exercises, they’ll learn about Dickinson’s experiments with poetic form and variant word choices – that is, the nuts and bolts of the creative process. Newly designed education kits will be available physically or digitally to support this and other outreach programs.

SUPPORT EDUCATION INIATIVES

The Emily Dickinson Museum is also developing new interpretive themes and tools to give visitors a broader range of ways to experience Emily Dickinson’s home, poetry, and life’s story. Bringing interpretive interventions to the Homestead — lively vignettes, poetry and musical soundscapes, projection mapping to enliven our sense of Dickinson’s nineteenth century milieu – will require research, design, writing, and staff training.

Meanwhile, at The Evergreens, we’ve just re-opened the house after a substantial upgrade to the air handling systems to protect the large collection of Dickinson family possessions. One of the most significant aspects of opening is the need to train new guides in updated interpretive information for visitors. This intensive training takes weeks to complete so that guides are fully ready to offer visitors an informative and exhilarating experience. And, now, with the systems work behind us, we’ll begin a deliberate multi-year process of room-by-room preservation, which we intend to carry out as part of the tour interpretation.

SUPPORT POETRY

Year after year, the Museum presents programs focusing exclusively on poetry – Emily Dickinson’s own work, the monthly Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Series featuring both established and emerging poets, and our week-long Tell it Slant Poetry Festival each fall. These programs gather a community eager to experience Dickinson’s revolutionary poetic voice and the work of those for whom Dickinson was a singular inspiration. For our virtual programs, participants tune in from all over the world to celebrate, learn, and connect with others who value poetry as they do.

To produce such vibrant poetry programming, Museum staff spend weeks each year soliciting and reviewing program proposals, working with a streaming service to share our larger events (though expense prohibits us from streaming all events), and setting up a digital event platform where participants can network, find event links, and reserve seats. For the Poetry Festival, our largest hybrid program, the Museum staff send numerous communications to the thousands of event registrants with event links and program-specific information. Extra staffing is required to not only ensure orientation and welcome of in-person visitors, but to run the virtual space, ensuring that the live stream is an engaging experience for remote participants.

SUPPORT OUR PROGRAMS

We’re truly excited about these three vital areas of programming, which are offered at low cost or no cost to make them broadly accessible. For that reason, we’re especially grateful for your support in enacting our core mission to “spark the imagination by amplifying Emily Dickinson’s revolutionary poetic voice from the place she called home.” To initiate new programs and to sustain existing efforts, we hope you’ll consider making a gift for education, interpretation, and poetry. If you’d like to talk over these goals, I would be very pleased to set up a phone, Zoom, or personal meeting with you!

With my appreciation and best wishes,
Jane H. Wald Jane and Robert Keiter Family Executive Director

IN-PERSON PROGRAM

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

It feels a shame to be Alive – When Men so brave – are dead – One envies the Distinguished Dust – Permitted – such a Head – (fragment Fr524)

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

Nature and God – I neither knew Yet Both so well knew Me They startled, like Executors Of My identity – Yet Neither told – that I could learn – My Secret as secure As Herschel’s private interest Or Mercury’s Affair – (Fr803)

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

Through the Dark Sod – as Education – The Lily passes sure – Feels her white foot – no trepidation – Her faith – no fear – Afterward – in the Meadow – Swinging her Beryl Bell – The Mold-life – all forgotten – now – In Extasy – and Dell – (Fr559)

IN-PERSON PROGRAM

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 SCHEDULE:

About the Festival:

What I can do – I will – Though it be little as a Daffodil – That I cannot – must be Unknown to possibility –

Fr641

It feels a shame to be Alive –
When Men so brave – are dead –
One envies the Distinguished Dust –
Permitted – such a Head –
(fragment Fr524)

Nature and God – I neither knew
Yet Both so well knew Me
They startled, like Executors
Of My identity –
Yet Neither told – that I could learn –
My Secret as secure
As Herschel’s private interest
Or Mercury’s Affair –
(Fr803)

Through the Dark Sod – as Education –
The Lily passes sure –
Feels her white foot – no trepidation –
Her faith – no fear –
Afterward – in the Meadow –
Swinging her Beryl Bell –
The Mold-life – all forgotten – now –
In Extasy – and Dell – (Fr559)

What I can do – I will –
Though it be little as a Daffodil –
That I cannot – must be
Unknown to possibility –