why I sing Brontë poems
When I finished reading every single book in the juvenile section of our local library as a kid, the librarian suggested I move along to romantic fiction. There I discovered the timeless novels of Emily Brontë, Jane Austen and so many more. Later I discovered the poems by Emily and her sisters and felt pulled into their world of sweeping drama and story. Perhaps it was also their tragic history, all those deaths by tuberculosis that resonated with me as my mother struggled with the same dangerous illness. Or the windswept landscapes that were so like my own rocky places in the wilderness.
As I started working with composing as a teen, I pulled out some of them and began singing. There’s something so angst-ridden, evocative and rhythmic that makes them easy to sing in any genre, and the words seem to contain melodies and rhythm within them. And they lend themselves well to energetic free playing as I think to myself: what would Emily think of a punk or experimental jazz version of her poems? And I wanted to sing songs that reflected the stories I loved as a girl, the female voices from my experience.
And so I’ve been singing them for decades now, in different contexts and you can find my versions of Brontë poems spread out over a series of recordings including Lone Jack Pine with Barre Phillips and Michel, also Michel’s Unclouded Day with Mat Maneri, Raoul Björkenheim and on my own release, Genius Loci Mixtape. I have compiled them and re-master some and released them! It is at Bandcamp and also streaming on Spotify, Apple Music and Youtube Music and more.
This is a version of Anne Brontë’s poem Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day, from Genius Loci Mixtape which is available at my Bandcamp page. And this track is also on the Brontë ep.