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My name is Brooke and I am based in Toronto, Canada. I am a poet, death-worker, musician, and artist. I move through the world with a polytheistic, spiritual, anti-capitalist, queer lens. My daily practice is met through deep reverence and connection to nature, ritual, impermanence, community, loving-kindness, and compassion. I am a French-Canadian settler with a long traditional Celtic lineage. Here, I acknowledge the space I occupy. Deep gratitude to this Indigenous land and the death awareness fostered through Indigenous ancestries here, as well as my own understandings through Celt Indo-European investigations; gratitude for the guardianship of the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (the Six Nations Confederacy), the Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation of where I currently reside; and importantly, I extend much gratitude for the privilege of my service here, now.
I am most recently trained and certified in End of Life Care through the Institute of Traditional Medicine (2022) though I also completed training with the International End of Life Doula Association (2017). I began my journey at Queens University where I participated in many trauma-informed academic and peer-led extracurricular workshops with themes of harm reduction, anti-racism, diversity and inclusion, queer theory, and theology before completing my BFA at OCADU. I applied this knowledge to the beloved community business I created from 2013-2023 called Likely General. Here, I had the opportunity to create a business model that highlighted the marginalized, celebrated anti-capitalism, inclusion, equality, co-creation, co-working relationships, anti-patriarchal concepts of business, and, embraced the artist by giving the Artist back their agency in creation. Throughout my journeys of knowledge-building and service, I have also trained in Usui Reiki and Jon Kabat-Zinn Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. In November 2024, I received my Clinical Hypnosis certification at the University of Toronto after two years of studying with Georgia Cannon and I am currently training in Psychotherapy at the Gestalt Institute of Toronto in a small 5 year post-graduate program. I am deeply committed to a studied, community-minded, resourced, practised, empathically broad lens of care so that I may support others and myself through a ground cultivated and nourished by curious, compassionate, and clear intention.
In reverence to all that came before the “I” above, with immense gratitude to each teacher, a deep honouring of our own individual death journeys, and the thread of our universal impermanence connecting it all, may this work we do together help soften the collective fear of death, hold space for those that need it, and encourage a return to community-supported holistic death care.
If you’ve browsed my services and aren’t sure where to start, feel free to reach out using the form here. I offer a 20 min free consultation to everyone that is interested in working with me. This is a chance for us to connect and comb through your exact needs so that I may be of best service to you.
I offer full-service doula care 1-3 months, grief processing or re-processing sessions, grief walk+talks, personalized ritual, personalized ceremony, energy healing and clearing, hypnosis sessions, personalized hypnosis recordings, green-death education, spiritual support, legacy planning, home funeral planning, home funeral facilitation, volunteer + donated vigil sitting, holographic will writing and planning, advance directives planning.
@lengthofacandle
@brookeisloom
*please note that I am not very active on social media and the best way to contact me is through the contact form on this page.
Brooke is a prolific published poet most recently guest poet for Arc Poetry and Metatron Press. Her work has been published in longform through ‘You Care Too Much' (Without/Pretend), The 4 Poets (Swimmers Group), Feels Zine, Lighthouse Magazine (Queens University), His/Hers Quarterly, and many others. Her first book, ‘So Far From the Water and Thirsty’ made with visual artist Alicia Nauta, has nearly sold out of the second edition. Her upcoming book ‘To Give a Rock a Name’ will be released in 2025. So Far From the Water and Thirsty is available through Printed Matter, Likely General, Emily Carr READ bookshop, Commune (Tokyo), and Klassic Koole Shoppe.
Loom is the Toronto-based project of Brooke Manning since 2011. A death doula and community driven artist & poet, Brooke creates music from the same place that informs her death service and personal practice. Writing often but performing infrequently, she is motivated by a deliberate slow cultivation of life, self, service, and the understanding that all expression is rooted in both fear and love. She believes in vulnerability as strength and the archetype of the warrior, the clown, the oracle, the seer, unafraid, ever open to the heroines journey. She’d been compared to Low, Julie Dorion, Mazzy Star, and Thom Yorke “without any trace of pretension”. She has most recently opened for Beverly Glenn Copeland, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Kaki King and The Microphones. Whether she performs solo or with rotating band members of dear friends accompaning her through vocal harmonies and very slight minimal intuitive percussion - primarily Leah Fay (July Talk + films Diamond Tongues +upcoming), Kyla Charter (Patrick Watson, Alessia Cara), Julie Title (singer songwriter), Dani Nash (July Talk, Andy Shauf, Sarah Harmer, Fefe Dobson) - her purposely circuitous and deliberate plucking and vocals draw a slow strength from the very place most people run from. Her new live ep ‘rarefied air’ was released April 23rd 2024 through Tibet Street Records with her long-awaited second full length album arriving late 2025.
“…a minimalist strumming style to say the least, with an absolutely beautiful, haunting voice. In a way, she struck me as a bit of a female Thom Yorke, except without any trace of pretension.”
-consequence of sound
”The voice of Toronto-based artist Brooke Manning – aka Loom – is inviting, like the warmth of the morning sun or the comforting touch of a loved one. There is poetry and dreaminess in her delicate vocals, which are charming, unassuming, and timid. Despite all this, Manning’s singing would not be as interesting if not for the music she accompanies it with. This is something that has been evident from her previous EPs and is most certainly clear on this full-length debut.
Manning’s singing style, combined with her music, has the gentle surrealism of Nordic exports like Sigur Rós and Stina Nordenstam. Epyllion has this kind of spaced-out vibe where the songs drift along like soft breezes or calming waves.
However, there is tension nestled in the apparent serenity of the music. Like a horror movie where there is a sense of anxious anticipation for the moment of shock to come out of nowhere and startle you, Epyllion creates the sense of always being on edge.
The track “Promised Land,” for example, has an urgent repeated electronic pulsing tone in the beginning, as if it is going to detonate at its very onset. But this only leads to hushed guitars, which are calm but have a somewhat ominous feel. “Wholesome” is even more tense; it is reminiscent of early Sinéad O’Connor numbers, where the song explodes in the end. Only in this case, it doesn’t: the screeching guitars (although they are dampened) keep building up for an explosive climax, but instead of reaching a crescendo, die in a hushed silence as the song comes to an end.
On “Grown,” Manning’s jazzy singing sounds absolutely relaxed but also eerie at the same time. This number is absolutely strange and awesome, in that the music is brilliantly reduced to dark and subliminal effects in the backdrop. “Dream Doe” is very similar but darker, and it will give you even more chills. “Between Fires” seems like it came out of the womb of Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah:” stripped down but hauntingly powerful, consisting of very little other than a gorgeous voice that will bring tears to your eyes.
The raucous “Around Again” is a beautiful outlier on this otherwise contemplative album. Its rough and bluesy “industrial” sound, which is reminiscent of PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love-era, shows that this disc can still rock if it feels like doing so.
Epyllioncannot be easily classified. It is a very simple album, yet it cannot be cut down to any particular music style. This is an album that you just give into and be open to feeling it on a deep and indescribable level. In its own subtle way,Epyllionis chilling, comforting, and seductive all the same, like a late night swim in the ocean.
- Vish Iyer
“After several iterative imaginations, LOOM's hypnotic perturbations are wholly realized within Epyllion's twilight embrace. Tenuous cinders warm the mesmeric dissonance embedding LOOM's succession into dactylic grace and splendid nylon minimalism; a transfiguration well worth Epyllion's meditative endurance. Existing in a plane beyond idyllic notions of folk, pop, and mellowtude, the album emerges between disparate walls of sinusoidal classification, unveiling the lingering ashes of lysergic ritual. Grip gently.”
-weird canada
“Too many artists seem to think the way to create atmosphere is to break out the synths and build up a bed of airy new-age nonsense. Loom, the vehicle of songwriter Brooke Manning, knows otherwise. Epyllion, Loom’s debut, deals in ambience, but it’s always organic and warm to the touch. It comprises languid, barely-strummed guitars and little else, aside from Manning’s exquisite voice. She’s been compared to “a female Thom Yorke,” but her tenor is much less strident and, frankly, a lot more listenable. Standout tracks “There is Blood in My Body” and “Is It Love” float atop two chords or less for up to seven minutes, but there’s nothing boring about either. Epyllion is slow and ragged. It’s sad like the best Julie Doiron records, it shivers like the best Microphones records, and it’s easily the best thing to grace the Carillon review shelf this year.”
-carillon
In 2013 Brooke created Likely General, a celebrated shop, art gallery and multi-functional community space in Toronto encouraging the work of over 300 queer and marginalized artists. With new exhibits and events each month celebrating worldwide up and coming artists, annual events like the Kids Art Show, and a vibrant community of outreach, Likely’s impact rippled far beyond Toronto in it’s decade of programming. Deeply motivated by responsible consumerism, empathy, and transparency, Likely was established through a fervent passion to help foster a community of sustainability, reciprocity, reverence and care surrounding artist-made work. Likely maintained a regular donation budget and distributed funds and fundraising efforts throughout communities based on need and urgency. Though Likely closed it’s doors in 2023, the spirit lives forever in those that supported and encouraged it’s growth. Please stop by the Likely instagram to read our goodbye and the thousands of incredible messages that followed.