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In a captivating episode of Tarot Interviews, poet Julia Bird offers a fascinating glimpse into her creative process through the lens of tarot cards. The cards selected – Page of Swords, The Star, and Knight of Pentacles – serve as touchpoints for exploring Bird's approach to poetry, revealing the intricate relationship between structure, observation, and perseverance in her work.
The conversation opens with reflections on social media's evolution, with both Bird and the host lamenting Twitter's transformation from a vibrant creative community to something more troubling. Bird shares a delightful anecdote about accidentally co-founding a global book club centered around Susan Cooper's "e Dark isTh Rising" – a perfect example of how digital spaces once fostered unexpected connections and collaborative creativity.
As the Page of Swords appears, Bird discusses her current creative explorations, including a forthcoming poetry collection that culminates seven years of work. She hints at new beginnings, particularly a fascinating micro-publishing project involving 25 tiny books, one of which might feature her concept of a "bestiary" populated by animals that are "barely there." This idea crystallizes when she describes hearing about an urban myth – that everyone sees an elephant every day – which immediately triggered her "poem light," an internal signal that a subject has poetic potential.
The Star card prompts Bird to reflect on the nature of optimism in her poetry. She embraces an unexpected self-characterization: her poetry has "the aesthetics of the ant in the wine glass." On the surface, her work is funny, light, and wry, but beneath runs something "darker and more verminous." Rather than explicitly political, her poetry focuses on careful observation of tiny details, protecting and elevating the easily overlooked. In this way, she suggests that individual action – paying attention and creating something – stands as a hopeful response to turbulent times.
One of the most touching moments comes when Bird describes a project at Guy's Hospital Cancer Centre, where she helped patients create origami pigeons carrying messages of hope. Over a week, approximately 2,000 pigeons were created, each containing personal reflections or meanings connected to participants' names – a beautiful testament to poetry's ability to provide comfort and connection in difficult circumstances.
The Knight of Pentacles leads Bird to share her evolution from writing collections of unconnected poems to developing project-based structures that help her "excavate more deeply held thoughts." She likens early poetry collections to mining the top layer of ideas, while subsequent work requires different tools to dig deeper. By establishing frameworks for her projects, she creates pathways to ideas that might not otherwise surface – similar to how tarot cards offer alternative patterns of thought.
The conversation concludes with Bird's disarmingly practical insights into her writing environment. Despite being an accomplished poet, she can't write in public ("the public's too interesting") or on laptops ("there's a little clock going"). Instead, she writes exclusively in bed with pen and notebook – a habit dating back to her student days, when she wrote essays under the covers to stay warm.
Throughout the interview, Bird's reflections on the creative process remind us that poetry isn't just about inspiration but about developing systems that help us access deeper layers of thought. The tarot cards provide not only engaging prompts for discussion but mirror Bird's own creative methodology – using established structures to reveal unexpected connections and insights.
