Taylor Swift is related to famed poet Emily Dickinson and now it all makes sense
Mar 4, 2024, 12:25 PM
Taylor Swift is performing on March 2 in Singapore. (Ashok Kumar, TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
(Ashok Kumar, TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
(CNN) — Turns out Taylor Swift was spot on naming her forthcoming album, “The Tortured Poets Department.”
The company Ancestry, which helps people trace their genealogy, has found evidence that Swift is distantly related to the famed poet Emily Dickinson.
“We need to calm down…but how can we when we have BIG news!?” a post on the Ancestry Instagram account reads. “Renowned American poets Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson are 6th cousins, three times removed.”
CNN has reached out to Swift’s representative for comment. The news was first announced on NBC’s “Today.”
Dickinson, who lived from 1830 to 1886, is known for her poems such as “Because I could not stop for Death” and “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers.”
Taylor Swift is distantly related to the famed poet Emily Dickinson, pictured here around 1850. (Three Lions, Hulton Archive, Getty Images)
The writer, who should have been a celebrity in her own time, even wrote about fame like her distant cousin. “Success is counted sweetest/By those who ne’er succeed/ To comprehend a nectar/ Requires sorest need,” Dickinson wrote in her poem, “Success is counted sweetest.”
“Swift and Dickinson both descend from a 17th century English immigrant (Swift’s 9th great-grandfather and Dickinson’s 6th great-grandfather who was an early settler of Windsor, Connecticut),” according to Ancestry.
Swifties have long made the connection between the two women.
Her album “Evermore” was announced in 2020 on December 10, which happens to be Dickinson’s birthday. The title is believed by some to have been inspired by Dickinson’s poem “One Sister Have I in Our House,” which includes the word “forvermore.”
Two years after that announcement, Swift referenced the legendary writer in her acceptance speech for the songwriter-artist of the decade award from the Nashville Songwriters Association International.
Swift explained that the lyrics she writes fall under three genre categories: quill lyrics, fountain pen lyrics and glitter gel pen lyrics, which reference the writing instrument she imagines she would have been holding while penning the lyrics.
“If my lyrics sound like a letter written by Emily Dickinson’s great-grandmother while sewing a lace curtain, that’s me writing in the quill genre,” Swift said, noting that her single “Ivy” from “Evermore” would fall under that category.
Welcome to Swift’s historical era.
