In the enterprise of making music, there are a variety of entry points depending on the person. For me, the primary pull has always been language, especially what it does in the mouth and on the tongue, ‘performed’ and heard. Inwardly I maintain that I am not really a poet, though my closest loved ones tell me that I am; however I will concede at least that I operate as a poet tends to, favoring the world of thought processes and quiet considerations, chewing hard over words and reluctant to write anything that (in the spirit of Tolkien’s Ents) isn’t worth taking a long time to get on the page (and in turn into the microphone).
In 2024, desiring the solace of someone else’s thoughts and seeking fresh language, I picked up a small book of poetry by Christina Rossetti; reading the texts turned to singing them, and I found that they were rich with a pure kind of feeling. I dug up (figuratively speaking) other poets of the mystical, spiritual and romantic variety, like Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson, William Blake, Thomas Traherne; these were poets who loved the natural world as well as the one they could not see because they knew that the two were not entirely separable. Explosive developments in science were expanding rather than undermining their sense of wonder, stimulating rather than silencing the dynamic relationship they each personally navigated with faith-mysteries. The prohibitions erected in more recent times around ideas of transcendence in the face of these other things called facts, had not yet asserted themselves and hardened hearts. Their voices are full of personality, too, and vulnerable, never hiding behind fancy words or obscure poetics.
T.S. Eliot spoke of “Romanticism” as having a quality of “sensuous thinking” or “thinking through the senses” to it. I like this. Letting these poets bear the brunt of the lyrical work, I have been enjoying where their words took me melodically, instrumentally, and in my own spirit. And what do you know? A record has emerged…
TREASURE
Treasure is the title I’ve chosen for this project, and there are a few layers to this naming: the Treasure we have in the Earth in all her particularities, rhythms and splendour; the Treasure of language when handled with care and playfulness, and with reverence for its powers; the Treasure of a cultural heritage shaped profoundly by a story that sets hope and Goodness at the centre of things, and offers redemptive possibilities on the other side of suffering, and in the midst of grief.
Some of the poems I have lifted verbatim and others I have condensed, sometimes taking material from more than one of the author’s poems and mashing them together. I’ve had the audacity at points to contribute some of my own words here and there.
RECORDING
I have begun the recording process in my space at home in Buckinghamshire: Raveloe Studios I call it, after the village in George Eliot’s ‘Silas Marner’. I think in a way, reading that novel, over and over again, was what lead me to being able to sit so long with Rossetti, and then with Bronte. Fiction, I believe, can baptise our imaginations in mysterious ways, and cultivate its own stillness in us.
My aim with this Crowdfunder campaign is to raise funds to bring a few other instrumentalists on board in September, October, November of this year—so far this includes Nashville, multi-instrumentalist Jeff Taylor, and Bristol based cellist Emma Hamilton on cello. I’d like to offer both CD and Vinyl versions of the album, and to otherwise get the record made and put out into the world.
I’d love for you to join me in facilitating this work! Head on over to https://miriamjones.com/crowdfunding-campaign-unearthing-the-music-in-the-mystical-poets and see how you can pre-order the album or become a patron.
Stay tuned here for updates on the recording process and fundraising progress.
Yours in creativity,
Miriam