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Mikaela Brewer
Multi-disciplinary Writer & Artist ​
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Instagram: @mik_brew
Blog: mikbrew.substack.com/p/murmurs
Spotify: Murmurs Album
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"Murmurs" © 2024 by Mikaela Brewer
The Inspiration Behind 'Murmurs': A Poetry-Album by Mikaela Brewer
— Interview by Helena Nikitopoulos ​for The 44 North
Content advisory: This post discusses feelings of suicide. In the artist's words, this album "connects suicide with deeper elements of attempts, loss, love, heartbreak, pain, responsibility, loneliness, ancestry, and imagination." If it's the right time for you, we invite you to read the full interview.
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On November 28, 2024, I sat down with Mikaela Brewer, cross-disciplinary published poet, speaker, and contributing writer for The 44 North to discuss her new poetry collection, Murmurs. Murmurs is a poetry-music album composed of 4 spoken word poems and 2 songs, which, in Mikaela’s own words, “connects suicide with deeper elements of attempts, loss, love, heartbreak, pain, responsibility, loneliness, ancestry, and imagination”. Her album collection also evokes music through musical composition (by Murray Foster, Mike Evin, and Dave Matheson) and singing which she hopes will allow her listeners to feel their own deep pain but also a profound sense of hope and a capability of moving forward.
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When reflecting on her decision to infuse her poetry with music, Mikaela states how she felt a sudden gravitational pull towards music and its storytelling prowess. She goes on to say that while she has always enjoyed poetry and spoken word there was something encapsulating about music’s ability to enhance the delivery of lyrics and words. She reflects on her artistic direction when creating Murmurs, saying, “When you write, you write from a scar but when you sing, you sing from a wound”. By singing her poems and pairing them with the guitar’s musical composition, she infused her work with joy, intimacy, and a raw, emotional depth. Similarly, the piano scores within her spoken word poems also amplify the impact of her raw and authentic poetry.
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When asked which of her tracks resonate with her the most, Mikaela shares a special connection to her poem The Moth. This piece draws on a Malaysian poetic form, the pantoum, characterized by the repetition of lines and meanings in a looping pattern. This repetitive structure for her reflects both the artistic process of creating poetry, which often involves revisiting and revising ideas over and over again, and the way we tend to dwell on thoughts or emotions before taking action. Mikaela also speaks about her work Ghost Ships, which evokes a powerful image of those lost to suicide liberated and at peace on a ship in the middle of the ocean. Through this imagery and her words, she aims to give a voice to those who struggled in silence for so long.
Excerpt from "Ghost Ships", Murmurs, 2024
Find Mikaela’s blog here and her poetry-album here. Stay tuned for the release of 'Murmurs’ print edition, coming soon!
Excerpt from "The Moth", Murmurs, 2024
In all of her poems, Mikaela weaves in powerful symbolic imagery—such as pills, rope, ships, and moths—to represent a quiet, often overlooked pain that she seeks to recognize and give expression to throughout her collection. She also uses silence and stillness in her poetry album to “help readers see what isn’t on the page” and read between the lines to gain a deeper understanding of “the silent pain experienced by those at risk of suicide” and those whose pain became too overwhelming to endure.
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One of Mikaela’s songs, Fight While I Survive, offers a particularly poignant example of her desire to inspire action through her art. In the song, she sings, “Will you fight now if I sing? / If my words wear music’s wings?” “This line serves as a sort of plea for people to fight for themselves and each other”, Mikaela states, “while emphasising my hope that adding music to my poems will bring me closer to inspiring this kind of action.” Mikaela hopes that Murmurs will encourage people to confront their own struggles by going to an emotional place they don't often want to go to. By doing so, she believes listeners can grow — not only as individuals but as artists and individuals.
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Mikaela discloses how she was born with a heart murmur and shares that much like how “her heart murmur may speak to what her heartbeat cannot express”, she wants her work to speak to what is sometimes difficult to say.
"Guns, Pills, Rope", Murmurs, 2024.