There may be some deeper meaning to Taylor Swift’s upcoming album, “The Tortured Poets Department.” She is a distant relative to one of America’s most recognized female poets.
Talk about karma. Swift is Emily Dickinson’s sixth cousin, three times removed, Ancestry.com revealed on Monday. The genealogy company revealed on the “Today” show that the “Anti-Hero” singer and the “Hope’ is the thing with feathers” poet are descended from the same 17th-century English immigrant.
According to Ancestry, the immigrant is Swift’s ninth-great-grandfather and Dickinson’s sixth-great-grandfather, the Los Angeles Times reported. The man originally settled in Windsor, Connecticut.
“Taylor Swift’s ancestors remained in Connecticut for six generations until her part of the family eventually settled in northwestern Pennsylvania, where they married into the Swift family line,” Ancestry told “Today.”
Ancestry did not reveal the man’s name.
“Guess we can truly say that all’s fair in love and poetry,” Ancestry wrote in a caption to an Instagram post unveiling its discovery.
Dickinson, who was born in 1830, lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, the Times reported. A prolific writer, Dickinson was not recognized until after her death in 1886.
According to the Academy of American Poets, the first volume of Dickinson’s work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955.
Her work includes short, lyrical poems including “Success is counted sweetest,” “Wild nights -- Wild nights!” and “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” according to the Times.
Swift has publicly referenced Dickinson while speaking about the types of lyrics she writes for her songs, “Today” reported.
“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 in 2022 when she received the Songwriter-Artist of the Decade Award from the Nashville Songwriters Association International.
Swifties have also speculated that the artist’s ninth studio album, “Evermore,” was inspired by Dickinson.
This is not the first time Ancestry has discovered that two famous Americans were related, according to “Today.” In 2019, the company revealed that two-time Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks, who played Mister Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” was a sixth cousin of the late children’s television host.
©2024 Cox Media Group