This summer, a group of Fort River Elementary students joined the literary legacy of one of Amherst’s most beloved poets, not on the page, but through the power of their voices.
As part of a new mixed-media installation titled “A Something Overtakes the Mind,” several fourth-grade students from Fort River were filmed reading Emily Dickinson’s poetry aloud in a multilingual video that will now be a permanent feature of the Emily Dickinson Museum.
The installation opens to the public on August 1 and is housed on the ground floor of Dickinson’s historic Homestead. Visitors are immersed in a thoughtfully layered experience of art and language, where domestic objects, biographical fragments, found poetry, and local voices come together to reframe how we experience Dickinson’s life and work.
At the heart of the installation is a video featuring students reading Dickinson’s poetry in Spanish, Korean, and English, adding new resonance to the Amherst poet’s words through multilingual expression. Their recordings now share space with original wallpaper fragments, quilt pieces, and other family artifacts in a setting that once served as the Dickinsons’ laundry room and kitchen. Fourth-grade Fort River students: Heejin N., ’33, Pablo D., ’33, Christina H., ’33, Zoe G., ’33, and Rosalind C., ’33 were the voices in the video premiering this week.
The students were supported by Fort River ESL teachers Nate Durning and Lissa Pierce Bonifaz, who helped organize the recording sessions this past May. With parent permission, the students’ readings became part of the larger installation created by artist Ligia Bouton and poet Matt Donovan, in partnership with the Emily Dickinson Museum and The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.
“A Something Overtakes the Mind” takes its title from Dickinson’s own words and seeks, in its creators’ words, “to find new ways of engaging with the poet’s life and legacy.” The exhibit runs through December 21 and is free to the public during museum hours.
For the students of Fort River, their voices now echo through history, quite literally, as part of a living, local tribute to poetry, language, and the beauty of collective storytelling.