Emily Dickinson, the renowned poet known as “The Belle of Amherst,” died more than a century ago, but a poetry festival held at her homestead is honoring her legacy and connecting it to modern writers.
The Emily Dickinson Museum will host its annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival from Monday, Sept. 15, through Sunday, Sept. 21. The festival aims to celebrate Dickinson’s work and its intersections with contemporary poetry.
Tell It Slant takes its name from one of Dickinson’s poems, which reads:
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
“I think there’s something about it that’s so inherently Dickinson,” said Brooke Steinhauser, senior programs director at the Emily Dickinson Museum. “She simultaneously makes herself so available to our shared human experiences of grief and truth and our hopes about immortality, but, even at the same moment that she’s doing that, she is sometimes asking a little bit or turning away a little bit or surprising us. We think we’re kind of all in the same thread, and then suddenly there’s a twist at the end of her poem.”
“This is a poem about the human capacity to examine our own lives – is there a way that we can tell the truth slant to ourselves to help us to face some of these big life questions that we face?” Steinhauser added. “And I think poetry is a way of retelling the truth but telling it slant. In some ways, you could read this as a poem about poetry.”
This year’s headliner poets are Terrance Hayes, a MacArthur Genius grantee and National Book Award winner, and Krysten Hill, the current Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University. On Saturday, Sept. 20, at 7 p.m., the two will read from their own works and discuss their approaches to poetry.
Other programming includes panels, readings, an open mic night, and (new this year) three paid workshops on Sunday morning – one about collage and poetry, one about nature and poetry, and one about using children’s book covers for creative inspiration.
Arguably the biggest component of Tell It Slant is the Poetry Marathon, a reading of Dickinson’s poems — all 1,789 of them. Over seven sessions (five virtual and two hybrid), volunteer readers sign up for a timeslot in which they get to read 10 to 20 of Dickinson’s poems from an anthology edited by Ralph Franklin. They start from the back of the book with the undated poems, then move to the front, reading the works in chronological order. Since the poems aren’t assigned in advance – in the in-person sessions, the order merely follows the circle the readers are sitting in – the experience for the readers is what Steinhauser called “Emily Dickinson roulette.”
“Every year, I think I hear poems for the first time that I’ve never heard before,” she said. “Everybody lends their voice in different ways, and you hear things really new.”
It’s a huge draw for both readers and listeners – every year, it draws people from 60 to 70 countries, including all 50 states; when the festival was fully virtual during the pandemic, it welcomed people from 90 countries. In fact, all of this year’s reader slots have already been claimed.
One of the perks of the marathon, Steinhauser said, is bringing in people who otherwise “wouldn’t have thought that the Emily Dickinson Museum is for them.” She recalled a young woman from India who signed up as a reader at a past festival. The woman found the Emily Dickinson Museum, and, through that, found the town of Amherst, through which she found the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She enrolled in a program there, and two years ago, she returned to the marathon, again as a reader – but that time, in person.
It was “an amazing moment,” Steinhauser said, “where the world really grows and shrinks all at one time.”
Ultimately, Steinhauser said, she hopes that people who attend the festival take away creative inspiration and a renewed appreciation for poetry – Dickinson’s and not.
“I think there’s something for everyone, whether or not you’re an Emily Dickinson fan,” Steinhauser said. “It’s not an Emily Dickinson festival for us – at the museum, every day is an Emily Dickinson festival. Emily Dickinson is the center of it because we believe that she has something to say about our lives, but we are so happy to be putting that in conversation with contemporary poetry.”
Admission to Tell It Slant is free and open to the public (though VIP options are available), but registration is required. Admission to each workshop is $25. To register or for more information, including a complete schedule and lineup, visit emilydickinsonmuseum.org/tell-it-slant-2025.
Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com.