Today in our poetry news round up we take a look at Taylor Swift’s famous connection and how recipes can become erotic poetry.

Taylor Swift’s Famous Ancestor

Ancestry, the genealogy company have been doing a little bit of digging into the family tree of pop sensation Taylor Swift and have revealed that she is related to Emily Dickinson, the 19^th century American poet.

One of the greatest singer/songwriters of her generation this interesting discovery may come as little surprise to many, Swift has not only referred to the poet as an inspiration to her work in the past but has a way with words that would seem to be in her blood.

The link that Ancestry has discovered shows that Swift and Dickinson are sixth cousins, three times removed. The pair are both descendants of an English immigrant from the 17^th century. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Swift and the sixth great-grandfather of Dickinson. He was one of the early settlers in Windsor, Connecticut. The singers ancestors stayed in Connecticut for six generations before eventually moving part of the family to Pennsylvania where they married into the family line of the Swift family.

Swift recently made an announcement about her upcoming album which she has titled “The Tortured Poets Department,” a title which now seems rather apt. She has also spoken about Dickinson in the past when discussing the types of lyrics that she often pens for her songs. In 2022 she said that when she is writing lyrics, she likes to separate them in her heads as songs that are written in different types of pen – fountain pen, glitter gel pen and quill, a habit she referred to as “dorky”.

she mentioned  in 2022, at the Nashville Songwriters Association International, where she was receiving the songwriter-artist of the decade award.

The word “forevermore” which features in the poem “One Sister Have I In Our House” written by Dickinson is similar to the title “Evermore” which was the title of the album that Swift released in 2020, a similarity that had fans convinced that the singer had been inspired by Dickinson.

The stars 11^th album “The Tortured Poets Department” is due to be released in the middle of April, the big question that everyone is asking now is will there be any Dickinson inspiration for some of the tracks?

Recipes Recycled into “Erotic” Poetry

A workshop has been teaching people how to recycle other words like food reviews and old recipe books into poetry. The first of what is hoped to be a series of workshops took place over the weekend.

This type of poetry, which is usually referred to as “found” poetry, creates new poems by using existing lines and words. Citing TV cook Nigella Lawson, the organiser said that there can be something rather “erotic” about food and words connected to food.

Participants in the workshop were given old books that would otherwise have been pulped to help them create poems by blocking out words in the text.