Discovering who Taylor Swift is secretly related to blew my mind

Back in another life, during my PGCE, when I was training to be an English teacher, I devised a lesson plan where I taught a group of year eights how to recognise iambic pentameter by getting them to analyse “Rappers Delight” by The Sugar Hill Gang. I may have even done some light rapping myself.

In my mind, I guess I thought it was going to be my “Michelle Pfieffer in Dangerous Minds” moment, but really it just earned me a reputation as “Mr Coogan, that embarrassing teacher”. In the aftermath of that disaster, I made a solemn vow to myself that I would never try to make the study of literature cool and relatable to Gen Z ever again.

Until now.

According to genealogy company Ancestry.com, it turns out that Taylor Swift, of both musical and NFL fame, is related to Emily Dickinson, one of the most influential and important poets of the 19^th century. The company revealed in a statement that both Swift and Dickinson “descend from a 17^th century English immigrant (Swift’s ninth great-grandfather and Dickinson’s sixth great-grandfather who was an early settler of Windsor, Connecticut)”.

By my math that makes them sixth cousins, three times removed, which means that’re only very tangentially related, and probably won’t be reconnecting at any family barbeques any time soon (also because, you know, Emily Dickinson has been dead for more than 130 years). But if you’ll allow me to turn this chair backwards and get “real” with you for a moment, I think you’ll find that Tay Tay and Emmy D actually have a lot in common.

There are some superficial similarities, for starters. Both women are known for their relationships to other people who helped shaped the trajectory of their art – Emily Dickinson to her mysterious “master”, and Taylor Swift to… Joe Jonas? Or Harry Styles? It might be both.

They’re also both, if the title of Taylor’s next album is to be believed, “tortured poets” (although I’ve heard that title might be based on a WhatsApp group Joe Alwyn was part of, which is admittedly less enigmatic).

The crucial thing is that both women speak to the heart of the human experience in a way that resonates across social and cultural boundaries. The bulk of Dickinson’s work wasn’t found until after he death – only 10 of her more than-1800 poems were published in her lifetime. Her refusal to conform with the agreed upon rules and conventions of poetry spoke to writers who also felt constrained by the formality of the medium, ultimately helping to kickstart literary modernism and everything that came after.

Today, her work is held in extremely high regard not just in the literary world, but among anybody who can find common ground with this brilliant loner and her meditations on love, death and mental health from a perspective that up until that point hadn’t really received any popular consideration. In particular, her work resonates with women, who often struggle to find themselves represented in a largely male-dominated literary canon. It sits alongside that of writers like Sylvia Plath and Charlotte Bronte as an example of the defiant and enduring power of women’s voices over time, and helps remind modern readers of the universality of even the most private experiences.

I know it seems a little sacrilegious to compare the person who gave us “Though I than He – may longer live/He longer must – than I –/For I have but the power to kill,/Without – the power to die –” to the person who gave us “haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate”, but bear with me.

Taylor Swift isn’t just famous because a boardroom full of executives saw a pretty blonde white girl who could sing and got dollar signs in their eyes like a cartoon wolf (although I’m sure that happened, too). The fact is, her music genuinely speaks to people. Remember that video that went viral a few days ago, of a fan bursting into tears outside one of Swift’s concerts because she was playing a song that “saved her life”? Sure, people mocked it because it was a little overwrought, but the fact is that people – especially young women, really do see something in her music that speaks to them.

Sometimes art – and you can roll your eyes, but that is what Swift is creating – finds a following because it captures something that people feel about themselves, but might find it difficult to articulate. That’s what happened with Dickinson. She talked about her fear of dying, her relationship to God and her struggles with depression in a way that felt so authentic and universal that people still connect to it today.

Swift is doing the same thing, only this time it’s for a 21^st century audience of Gen Z women who, between social media, a global pandemic and a dramatic rise in sexist hate speech, could probably use a reminder that they aren’t going through all of this alone. It’s a vital service, and reminds us of both the value and increasing necessity of real art, made by and for women (and, while we’re at it, humans).

Now if we’ve got time, I’d like to explain to you why Lil Uzi Vert is the modern day James Joyce. You see… guys. Where are you going? Could one of you at least help me out of this chair?