Emma Ruth Rundle, THE BELLA VISTA

turns to language as the best and perhaps only tool suitable to express, in Rundle’s words, “the tenderness and brutality of romantic love.” Written on the road and in the air between tour locations, the chronological, self-referential poems of The Bella Vista follow a relationship from its enthralling genesis through its twisted convulsions and the devastation of its dissolution; culminating, eventually, with a sort of peace.

The collection is a concept album, an addiction memoir, a family tree, and a love letter all at once—to music, mistakes, and womanhood; to cross-country drives and other artists and the long road to finding oneself.

Emma Ruth Rundle is an internationally recognized musician and a multi-disciplinary artist: a painter, director, and poet. She has released six full-length solo albums and collaborated with other artists such as Dylan Carlson of Earth, Chelsea Wolfe, Thou, and others. Her music has been described as a hybrid of folk, ambient noise, and metal; as well as "patiently haunting" (New York Times), "swelling with gothic drama" (Pitchfork), and "starkly beautiful" (The Guardian). She was the first female curator of the Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands and has performed extensively all over the western world. She has had two solo exhibitions of her artwork (On Dark Horses at Ars Memoria, Chicago 2018; Dowsing Voice at Lethal Amounts, Los Angeles 2022) and has published poetry in The Heartworm Reader and in Sad Happens, an anthology by Brandon Stosuy.

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