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.

Schdule of Events:

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 or reader by registering for the Festival.

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 or reader by registering for the Festival.

6-7:30pm [Virtual] — Our Roots as Muse: Family & Ancestry as Creative Inspiration

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 .chisaraokwu. and Tamara J. Madison.

6:30-8pm [Virtual] — Telling our Medical Stories Slant

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 or reader by registering for the Festival.

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 or reader by registering for the Festival.

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 or reader by registering for the Festival.

3-4:30pm [Hybrid] — Poetry Masterclass with Oliver de la Paz

Hone your craft in this generative writing workshop.

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 5 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 Diannelly Antigua will follow the open mic. Open mic sign-ups will be handled in advance via a Google Form and a lottery, and selected readers will be notified. Stay tuned for the Google form, which will be posted here.

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. Sign up as a listener or reader by registering for the Festival.

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 [Hybrid] — “Picnic, Lightning”: Concision, Compression, & Brevity in the Very Short Poem

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. Sign up as a listener or reader by registering for the Festival.

Fest Date: September 23 - 29, 2024

Location: Online and Emily Dickinson Museum - 280 Main Street Amherst, MA 01002

Click here to Register.

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