Friday, May 14, 2010

Celebrating Emily Dickinson


Emily Dickinson has been on my mind since I just installed a set of digital compositions combining hand-lettered lines by the poet with kaleidoscopic flower imagery at the Newton Free Library in Newton, MA.

This month's project is small book in celebration of Emily Dickinson. You can put one poem in the book, or a collection. I was inspired by Emily Dickinson's fascicles, small booklets into which she copied more than 800 of her poems. While Dickinson made the small volumes from folded sheets of paper that she bound with string, this book is a simple fold and cut book that I call the Hot Dog Booklet with papers from the collage box and lines from the poet.

Written directions


in Spanish

Video

A sheet of Emily Dickinson poems for your book


My Emily Dickinson Book on flickr

My Artwork: The Emily Dickinson Series

LINKS AND BOOKS
The Emily Dickinson Museum
A wonderful site with information about visiting the Homestead in Amherst, MA (a wonderful experience) and lots of information about Emily Dickinson and her poetry.


Jeannette Winter frames a short collection of Emily's poems with the story of her sister Lavinia finding the poems after Emily's death.


Jane Yolen tells a beautiful story of poetry, love, and truth-telling based on a poem and dead bee that Emily Dickinson gave to her six-year-old nephew, Gib.


Michael Bedard tells another story of Emily's connection with children is told here by a girl who lives across the street.


Elizabeth Spires wrote this delightful small chapter book about a mouse who lives in Emily's house and is inspired to write poetry. As the white mouse Emmaline describes herself: "Before I met Emily, the great poet of Amherst, I was nothing more than a crumb-gatherer, a cheese nibbler, a mouse-of-little-purpose.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

As I viewed the Flicker photos of this little book, I enjoyed the design. Emily Dickinson's poetry has been the topic of one volume in a special artistic series of poetry books in Canada:
My letter to the world and other poems is the title of the book with illustrations by Isabelle Arsenault. --
Imprint Toronto : Kids Can Press, [2008]

Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord said...

Thanks for sharing this book. I'll look for it.

Anonymous said...

Awesome website, I had not noticed makingbookswithchildren.blogspot.com previously during my searches!
Keep up the wonderful work!