The Poet's Tarot Playlist

Like many writers, I listen to music as I work. I tend to make a lot of YouTube playlists organized by project. For the longest time, I didn't know if The Poet's Tarot would ever truly happen, and it wasn't easy to predict what sorts of music I'd need to hear when creating it compared to my fiction projects. The Tarot embodies the human experience, and that means just about every human emotion is enscapulated in some way or another. So, my "soundtrack" was quite random at times, depending on which emotion or tone I was going for.

With only a couple months remaining until its release date (April 1!), I figured now would be a great time to share the songs/albums I listened to most when writing this collection.

Utopia | Björk

I was writing cards for The Poet's Tarot to this album before I ever knew I'd actually try and write the entire deck. Utopia came out very early into my writing for this collection. It consists of some of the most beauitful pieces Björk has ever composed, and naturally, I felt inspired by its lush creativity. I wrote several of the more feminine cards to songs from this album.

Medúlla | Björk

I listen to metal, y'all, but this album terrified me the first time I heard it. I only returned to it and began to understand its beauty, creativity, and complexity when I was starting to pick up the pace on The Poet's Tarot. I primarily listened to this album when writing the Cups cards. Björk truly embodies the emotional, feminine nature that dominates the suit of Cups, and the vulnerability of the human voice on this mostly a cappella album made it even more of a perfect match for Cups.

Halfaxa | Grimes

Grimes' album Halfaxa is pure magic. Weird, whispery magic. I listened to songs from this album while writing the Major Arcana as well as the cups cards. Like Utopia, I listened to Halfaxa very early in my writing process in my attempts to capture the mysticism of Tarot while clearly communicating the cards' meanings.

"Fragments of the Future" by Grimes

A Grimes demo - like the album Halfaxa, I listened to this regularly in the beginning of the writing process. This was what I mainly was listening to when composing poems for my Advanced Poetry Writing class, which focused on astronomy and spirituality. My first tarot poem, "Queen of Wands," was composed for that class.

A collection of Pink Floyd songs

Pink Floyd dominated the final section I needed to complete: Pentacles. The pentacles are the most "grounded" suit, with its specialties lying in money and family. Unlike the more electronic sounds I listened to in order to bring out the mysticism of tarot, Pink Floyd's acoustic guitars brought me down to earth when composing the Pentacles. I believe the structure of these poems, which are more verbose than the other suits, also helps ground the section.

Some of the spookier Floyd songs also came in handy when exploring darker themes in both the Pentacles and Swords poems.

"Helplessly Hoping" by Crosby, Stills, and Nash

Like Pink Floyd, this track by Crosby, Stills, and Nash helped bring the writing back to Earth when writing some of the sadder poems in the suit of Pentacles section.