Please use the following form to register for the Virtual Poetry Walk, held May 15, 2020 from 12pm to 1pm EST.
Upon your successful registration, you will receive a thank you message. The Museum will e-mail the program link and any reading assignments to participants by 5pm EST on May 14, 2020.
Registration for this program is closed.
Questions? Please write edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org
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It took eight years of correspondence before T.W. Higginson arrived in Amherst to meet his elusive advisee, Emily Dickinson. Before You Became Improbable reimagines the day of that meeting, offering audience members an encounter with her words and poems in a remarkably personal theatrical experience.
Before You Became Improbable is not a stationary production, but a walking theatrical journey through downtown Amherst and the Dickinson grounds. Equipped with a special pair of headphones, audience members are guided through the show, following a path visible only to them. After a series of compelling encounters, the journey culminates in the Dickinson parlor, where participants will gather to share insights and experiences.
Before You Became Improbable is written and directed by Amherst Regional High School Performing Arts Department Head, John Bechtold, and produced by Wendy Kohler and the Emily Dickinson Museum. Designed as an experience for two people at a time, audience participants should come prepared with comfortable shoes, the willingness to walk for much of the show, and a venturesome spirit.
Our special thanks to our program partners: The Amherst Historical Society and Museum and the Town of Amherst.
More information and tickets coming soon!
When choosing your preferred and second choice date, please note that studio sessions are scheduled for Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. In March through May, sessions are offered between 9AM – 11AM or 4:30PM – 6:30PM. In June through August, sessions are offered between 8AM – 10AM and 5PM – 7PM.
Appointment availability is limited; appointments are are scheduled at the discretion of Museum staff.
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A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides –
You may have met him? Did you not
His notice instant is –
The Grass divides as with a Comb –
A spotted Shaft is seen,
And then it closes at your Feet
And opens further on –
He likes a Boggy Acre –
A Floor too cool for Corn –
But when a Boy and Barefoot
I more than once at Noon
Have passed I thought a Whip Lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled And was gone –
Several of Nature’s People
I know and they know me
I feel for them a transport
Of Cordiality
But never met this Fellow
Attended or alone
Without a tighter Breathing
And Zero at the Bone.
Pre-registration is strongly suggested for the following Festival Workshops:
In this family-friendly workshop, multilingual poet María Luisa Arroyo will warmly welcome and guide participants to draw pictures and write new poems. Multicultural and multilingual children’s books, such Francisco Alarcón’s Poems to Dream Together, will inspire participants of all ages and stages to create images and poems using their family or heart language(s). At the end, María Luisa will encourage participants to share their new work.
If a poet creates pictures with words, and an artist tells stories with images, what narrative possibilities emerge when the two work in tandem? This dynamic workshop will share inspiration, strategies, and prompts for creating imagery in response to words, creating words in response to imagery, and experimenting with the real-time collaborative high jinks of mixing the two. Participants will look at highlights from landmark collaborations by Frank O’Hara and Larry Rivers, Anne Carson and Bianca Stone. This workshop is perfect for all levels in either writing or visual art. Participants will leave feeling electrified by new ways of thinking and creating and with an original visual/verse piece!
Please fill out the form below to secure your space. You will receive a success message once your form has submitted. An Amherst Poetry Festival representative will contact you via email with a confirmation and more information.
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THE EMILY DICKINSON MUSEUM RECEIVES A $22 MILLION GIFT AS PART OF A $25 MILLION BEQUEST TO AMHERST COLLEGE FROM THE LATE WILLIAM MCC. VICKERY ‘57
The Endowed Gift, the Largest Ever Received by the Museum, is to be Used for the Maintenance and Improvement of Its Buildings, Grounds and Collections
The Remainder Will Fund the Maintenance of Pianos for the College’s Music Department
(AMHERST, Mass., June 5, 2019) — Amherst College today announced a gift of approximately $25 million from the late William McC. Vickery ’57 to the College’s endowment, approximately $22 million of which is designated for use by the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Mass. The transformative gift, the largest ever received by the museum, will be known as the “William McCall Vickery ’57 Emily Dickinson Fund” and is specifically earmarked for the maintenance and improvement of its buildings, grounds and collections. Vickery, who was a devoted Amherst alumnus, volunteer, employee and supporter, also was a founding member of the Dickinson Museum’s board of governors.
The Emily Dickinson Museum was founded in 2003 when the neighboring house, The Evergreens, a 19th-century Dickinson home, was transferred to the College. (The Dickinson Homestead has been owned by the College since 1965.). Today, the Museum includes those two historic structures, three acres of the original Dickinson landscape, and more than 7,000 objects. The Museum, a part of Amherst College, earns and raises independently the majority of its own resources.
Of Vickery’s gift, Amherst College President Biddy Martin said, “There was no aspect of Amherst’s mission that did not interest him, no area of the College that did not benefit from his energetic, wry, and deeply insightful engagement. His gift to the Emily Dickinson Museum is a gift to us all and to generations to come, as is his gift to the College’s Department of Music. Bill understood and he helped ensure that the poetry and music that were special to him will remain at the heart of Amherst.”
A pivotal figure in the Museum’s advancement over the last 16 years, “Bill Vickery truly cherished the Emily Dickinson Museum,” said Executive Director Jane Wald. “He was acutely aware of the importance—and possibility—of restoring Emily Dickinson’s Homestead, her brother’s house, The Evergreens, and the historic gardens and grounds. He was at the lead in every undertaking for the Museum’s improvement, and his quiet enthusiasm was infectious and never deterred. His transformative gift will enable the Museum to become the true center of celebration of Emily Dickinson’s life and work.”
Part of the Vickery’s gift will be used to create the “William McCall Vickery ’57 Piano Fund” to fund the restoring, rebuilding, repairing and purchasing of pianos for the College’s music department. A patron of the music program at Amherst, in 2007, in honor of his 50th reunion, Vickery endowed The William McCall Vickery 1957 Professorship, honoring a senior faculty member who is distinguished by and dedicated to teaching and research of art history or musicology.
John Beeson ‘71, chair of the Board of Governors, said, “Bill’s extraordinary legacy gift will inspire others to support a wide range of projects related both to historic preservation and to the continued expansion of key programs about Emily Dickinson’s life and significance. It will require that continued support to help realize the full potential of Bill Vickery’s vision.”
Born in Savannah, Ga., Vickery attended Ridgewood High School in New Jersey. At Amherst College, he majored in economics and graduated cum laude. After earning an MBA from Harvard Business School, he launched a 27-year career in advertising with Dancer Fitzgerald Sample in New York City. In 1987, Vickery retired as vice chair of the company’s board and chair of DFS International. The year following his retirement, Vickery began his “second career” at his alma mater, holding positions in Advancement and as assistant treasurer until his retirement in 2008. Throughout his life, Vickery contributed generously to more than 26 individual funds at Amherst College, including the Russian Culture Fund, the Robert Frost Statue Fund, the squash courts renovation fund, the Orchestra Fund, the women’s basketball program, and the Choral Society, and he endowed the William McCall Vickery 1957 Professor of the History of Art.
Throughout the years, Vickery’s philanthropy set an example and inspired others to support the Emily Dickinson Museum. He served on its collections and physical plant committee and development committee and was a generous supporter of the Museum’s operations and restoration projects, including the campaign to restore Emily Dickinson’s bedroom in 2014, which Vickery led and championed.
“My husband, Hubbard, and I shared a wonderful friendship with Bill for most of our lives,” said Linda Smith, a member of the Museum’s Board of Governors. “He led us and many others into supporting the Emily Dickinson Museum in so many ways. He believed in the truth and enduring nature of Dickinson’s poetry, and he demonstrated his commitment to the Museum’s future over and over again by his extraordinary generosity.”
Since its inception, the Museum has welcomed more than 150,000 visitors from 50 countries and serves as the premier center for study, interpretation, and celebration of Emily Dickinson’s place in literature, history, and culture. This generous gift will support the Museum in furthering its mission to spark the imagination by amplifying Dickinson’s revolutionary poetic voice from the place she called home. The Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Learn more at www.EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org.
Amherst College prepares students to use ideas to make a difference in the world. Since its founding, in 1821, in Western Massachusetts, Amherst has demonstrated steadfast confidence in the value of the liberal arts and the importance of critical thinking. Today, its financial aid program is among the most substantial in the nation, and its student body is among the most diverse. Small classes, an open curriculum and a singular focus on undergraduate education ensure that leading scholars engage daily with talented, curious students, equipping them for leadership in an increasingly global and complex world. The College will celebrate its bicentennial in 2021.
Date: Thursday, August 6, 2018
Time: 5-8 p.m.
Location: Homestead Parlor
Join us for our monthly Amherst Art Walk program.
This month, poet and Paris Press Executive Director Jan Freeman and Ellen Hart, co-editor (along with Emily Dickinson International Society President Martha Nell Smith) of the Paris Press publication Open Me Carefully, will be the featured readers starting at 7 pm in the Homestead parlor. Freeman and Hart’s presentation will address women’s voices, past and present, in publication. Paris Press, founded in 1995 as a platform for overlooked women’s literature, published Open Me Carefully in 1998, which features Emily Dickinson’s 40-year correspondence with her sister-in-law and neighbor Susan Huntington Dickinson. Freeman and Hart’s readings will explore the arc of a relationship through these letters and through Freeman’s own contemporary poetry.
Tours of The Evergreens will also be offered for $5 from 5pm to 7 pm.
Offered periodically each day, these bite-sized programs led by knowledgeable guides offer a closer look at special topics pertaining to Dickinson.
Short Daily Programs are free with purchase of guided house tours.