Share Your Poetry:

Open Mic Night at Tell It Slant Poetry Festival

Featuring Joaquín Zihuatanejo
Friday, September 25, 7pm ET

Hybrid Program

The reader lottery for our annual Open Mic Night is now open!


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). Open mic lottery entries are handled in advance via a Google Form, and must be entered by 9/13. Selected readers will be notified on 9/14. All readers must be available to read in-person.

Learn more and register

Headliner Night

with Victoria Chang and Samyak Shertok
Saturday, September 26, 7pm ET

Hybrid Program

Join us on Emily Dickinson’s lawn, or virtually, for a celebration of creativity and poetry at this year's Tell It Slant Poetry Festival! Our headlining poets, Victoria Chang and Samyak Shertok will read from their work and discuss their poetic practice and inspiration. Q&A and book signing to follow.

Learn more and register

Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon

September 21-27

Hybrid Program

The cornerstone of the Festival: the Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon — an epic reading of all of Dickinson’s poems across the Festival week.



Learn more and register

The 2026 Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon is supported by a donation from Martha Nell Smith and Marilee Lindemann and held in memory of Eleanor Heginbotham, who dwelled in Possibility!

Visit the Place She Called Home

It's all in the details. 

See Emily Dickinson's world up close by visiting the Museum. 

Tour tickets are now available through the end of October.



We strongly encourage visitors to purchase their timed tickets in advance — weekends tend to sell out quickly. General admission is available during the weekend of the Poetry Festival by separate purchase.

Plan your visit

New Shop Item:

Emily Dickinson Face to Face by Martha Dickinson Bianchi

“I cannot tell when I first became aware that she [Emily Dickinson] had elected her own way of life. To us she had always been as fixed in her orbit as any other star. We had been born into her life. It never seemed to us that it should have been any other than it was.”

– Martha Dickinson Bianchi 

It's not too late to add to your summer reading list. The Emily Dickinson Museum recommends the essential Face to Face written by the poet's niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi.

Learn more and shop

Every purchase you make supports the Museum. Your shopping directly funds our programs, such as the upcoming Tell It Slant Poetry Festival. Thank you for helping us continue to spark the imagination of poetry lovers around the world!

Your Support of the 14th Annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival

The Tell It Slant Poetry Festival is sustained by the Emily Dickinson Fund, which provides critical, unrestricted support for the Museum’s day-to-day operations. Your generous donation helps us offer immersive poetry programs to a global audience and preserve the historic Dickinson legacy in Amherst. As the Fund supplies 36% of our annual budget, your tax-deductible contribution is essential to our mission. Join us in inspiring learners of all ages by making an immediate impact today.

Learn more about the Emily Dickinson Fund

Mild Nights

October, November and December sessions are now available!

Spend an evening in Emily Dickinson’s home in quiet community with fellow creatives! Reserve a desk in one of the Homestead’s restored nineteenth-century spaces where the poet spent her own ‘Wild Nights!’ Participants can write letters, compose poetry or prose, draw, read, or contemplate for two uninterrupted hours. Each participant will be provided with a chair, small writing table, and desk light in their designated space.

Learn more and register

Looking for a private experience? Try our Studio Sessions program.

In Case You Missed It
Between the Dashes - Blog #3:

A House That Reveals a Poet

"By the end of the tour, I realized I wanted to do something I had not expected: read more Emily Dickinson. Not because I felt obligated to appreciate a famous poet, but because the tour made me curious. It introduced Dickinson not as an icon frozen in history but as an endlessly questioning thinker whose poems continue to reward careful reading.

That may be the highest compliment one can give a literary house museum. It did not simply teach me about Emily Dickinson. It made me want to know her better."

Read the Emily Dickinson Museum blog guest post by Mary A. van Balgooy of Engaging Places.

Poem of the Week

A tribute to Dolly Parton. This Dickinson poem was included in Dolly Parton's autobiography:

If I can stop one Heart from breaking

I shall not live in vain

If I can ease one Life the Aching

Or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin

Unto his Nest again

I shall not live in vain.

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