Storyteller Janelle Codianni and photographer Courtney Brooke join us as our featured reader and artist during the monthly Emily Dickinson Poetry Open Mic, Reading, and One-Night Art Exhibit. The event, part of Amherst Arts Night Plus, takes place in Emily Dickinson's house, the Homestead. The art exhibit runs from 5 to 8 pm. Poetry open mic signups are from 5 to 6 pm, with the open mic beginning at 6 pm and the featured reader following. Free to all! Learn more at www.EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org/events. . COURTNEY BROOKE Courtney Brooke is a photographer and conceptual artist. She explores the ties of the feminine to nature and spirituality through the lens of nostalgia. Moments are depicted that only exist to punctuate human drama and clarify our cosmic existence, while finding the poetic meaning in everyday life. Brooke’s photos establish a link between the landscape’s reality and that imagined by its conceiver. Her works focus on concrete questions that grapple with our existence. By emphasizing aesthetics, she creates work through labour-intensive processes as a personal exorcism ritual. Rather than presenting factual reality, her illusions conjure the realms of our imaginations. JANELLE CODIANNI Jannelle Codianni is a New England kid who spent half of her formative years in Northern New Jersey, which makes for a formidable upbringing. Jannelle is fiercely passionate about empowerment, connection, and compassion, and aims to use this trifecta to set herself free. With humor, courage, and unapologetic vulnerability she speaks to issues we are usually trained to keep hidden. She has been a featured teller at Club Passim, The Davis Square Theater, The Coolidge Corner Theater, The Out of the Blue Gallery, The Corner, WGBH Boston, The Lilly Pad, The Lars Anderson Auto Museum, and at many Mass Mouth events. She toured nationally with the performance art group The Art Cheerleaders, who performed with bands like Le Tigre, The Need, The Butchies and at the first ever Ladyfest in Olympia, Washington. Jannelle is a graduate of The Massachusetts College of Art’s legendary major: The Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM), where she learned how to perform, produce, and sit calmly through criticism.

A drawing by Emily Dickinson sent to her brother Austin in December 1853, when her father Edward was a member of the House of Representatives and serving in Washington, D.C. Martha Nell Smith, in the chapter "The Poet as Cartoonist" included in the book Comic Power in Emily Dickinson, writes that "Dickinson might well be depicting her exasperated father with his hair standing on end - or 'flipping his wig' - as he approaches the house of government. Whatever one's interpretation, her humor is obvious. As Katharine Zadravec has noted, the poet 'is satirizing her congressman father's arrival in Washington." The writing beneath the cartoon reads "Member from 10th!" Edward, a Whig, was representative from Massachusetts's 10th Congressional district from 1853 to 1855.

" - it would be good to see the Grass, and hear the Wind blow the wide way in the Orchard - Are the Apples ripe - Have the Wild Geese crossed - Did you save the seed to the pond Lily?" - letter from Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert Dickinson, September 1864 Happy first day of autumn from Amherst. If you haven't yet, best set yourself to gathering that pond Lily seed before the frost claims it.

"When everything that ticked has stopped, and space stares, all around, or grisly frosts, first autumn morns, repeal the beating ground." — Emily Dickinson https://www.bustle.com/p/autumn-quotes-for-2017-that-capture-the-beauty-of-the-season-2366399

Thank you to all who read and listened at the Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon and day three of the Amherst Poetry Festival on Saturday. A perfect morning, afternoon, and night at Emily Dickinson's!

The Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon has begun. Come get your number and join in! www.EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org/amherstpoetryfestival

Due to popular demand, tonight's Poetry in the Planetarium reading, the Amherst Poetry Festival's Day Two feature event with Dara Wier and Bianca Stone at Bassett Planetarium, will have roughly 25 seats available to the general public. We will begin letting people in at 7:30 pm, please arrive early as we're afraid seats may go quickly! Tomorrow's events at the Emily Dickinson Museum will have unlimited seating. See the full schedule at www.EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org/amherstpoetryfestival

The Emily Dickinson Museum's Board of Governors is pleased to announce the selection of author and radio personality Garrison Keillor as recipient of the 2017 Tell It Slant Award. The Tell It Slant Award honors individuals whose work, in any field, is imbued with the creative spirit of America's greatest poet, Emily Dickinson. Presentation of the award to Mr. Keillor will take place at a program on Sunday, October 29, at 6 pm at Amherst College's Johnson Chapel. Tickets are now available on the Emily Dickinson Museum website. Find out all the details at https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/tellitslant

A Spider sewed at Night Without a Light Upon an Arc of White. If Ruff it was of Dame Or Shroud of Gnome Himself himself inform. Fr. 1163 Hydrangea flowers and pinecones, laced with spiderwebs, on a damp, foggy morning at Emily Dickinson's grave.

‪Emily Dickinson's headboard, very familiar to the head which produced the 1,789 poems we'll read Sept. 16 during the thirteenth annual Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon. We hope you'll join us in reading! www.EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org/AmherstPoetryFestival‬