Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute: Jen Bervin and Martha Nell Smith (2018)

This article is about a single event. For other uses, see the Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute (disambiguation).

The O.B. Hardison Poetry Series, co-sponsored with the Poetry Society of America, presented the Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute reading on December 10, 2018 at 7:30pm in the Folger's Elizabethan Theatre. This reading and conversation engaged with Dickinson scholar Martha Nell Smith, executive editor of the Dickinson Electronic Archives and artist/poet Jen Bervin, creator of The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson's Envelope Poems—the first full-color facsimile edition of Dickinson’s manuscripts, which reproduces her experimental late work composed on scraps of envelopes.

At the reception following the reading, Emily Dickinson’s black cake was provided by The Suga Chef.

This project was supported by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanties, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jen Bervin

Jen Bervin.

Jen Bervin is the co-editor of The Gorgeous Nothings. Bervin is a poet and visual artist. Her other books include Draft Notation and The Dickinson Composites. She has received fellowships and residencies in art and writing from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, MacDowell Colony, and Center for Book Arts.

Martha Nell Smith

Martha Nell Smith.

Martha Nell Smith is Founding Director of the Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland and Executive Editor of the Dickinson Electronic Archives projects at the University of Virginia. Her publications include Emily Dickinson, A User’s Guide and Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson.