Twenty Minutes

The American poet Emily Dickinson was very reclusive and spent most of her adult life in her room in Amherst, Massachusetts where, after her death, her extraordinary poems were discovered. When Aaron Copland was composing the settings of her poems that are being performed in this evening's concert, he spent many hours there trying to capture something of the spirit of Emily Dickinson. Someone who knows the room well is the poet Fred D'Aguiar, who lived in Amherst for several years. In tonight's Twenty Minutes he reflects on Emily Dickinson's room, the place where he himself writes, and the significance of "The Poet's Room".