A Fuffle of Hope: Drawing the Cards with Julia Bird

Tarot Interviews. Welcome to Tarot Interviews, where we explore the creative mind shaping literature, film and storytelling through the power of the cards. Today I'm honoured to welcome Julia Bird, a writer whose work brings together memory, place and imagination in striking ways. Today we'll be exploring her creative journey, the inspirations behind her work and the evolving landscape of contemporary poetry. Hello, julia, can you hear me okay?

I can yes, yeah, all good.

Oh, I'm Fin Hi.

Nice to meet you.

My wife said Julia Bird, as in Julia Bird the poet, and I said yes, her work is way above my head. I don't quite understand it, but I know she mentioned there was a poem I think it's called um 14, a text message poem from 2001 that you wrote.

Yes, that is from a very long time ago.

Yes, yeah and it's part of her course material. She teaches it on a regular basis please pass on my thanks absolutely, absolutely. But yes, she's currently downstairs with the kids. Hopefully they won't be making too much noise. Um, it's a day of, um, I think it's Minecraft and painting.

That's what they're up to down there we should all be doing some, some of that oh, yeah, yeah.

How's your sunday?

it's peaceful so far. I had, um, a busy day yesterday. I'm working on a micro publishing project uh with a friend, so we were doing lots of work towards that. And then today so far I have uh listened to the radcliffe and mcconnie show and I've read a three week old issue of the tls, so that's that feels quite standard for sunday okay, yeah, um, yeah, what did I do?

It's just been housework for me, because it's that thing of you get up on a Sunday and it's right. Right, I've got a podcast later and then I've got another interview in the evening, so everything has to get sorted in the morning, so it's just washing, scrubbing, cleaning and, yeah, yeah, my chance to relax. Okay, so what we do is we pick three cards. What I I do is, depending on the card that comes out, I'll pose you a question Do you have any cards yourself?

I do. Yes, yeah, I've got a full set and then I've got a heart. You know the set, that's just the major cards. That's designed by, I think, sophie Holloway I think I'll have to check the name of that person and then I have an app on my phone, so I have a daily card on my phone.

Wow, Okay. Well, today we're just using the. I say just, you know the classic Rider Waite, and these are the teeny, tiny little ones, the centenary deck, Because I did have, I've had a deck most of my life since I want to say 1995. So that was what 10 years ago.

Yes, barely last week, that was.

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, and the deck that I have is huge, so while I'm on air, I guarantee I'll drop them, whereas this teeny, tiny little deck that I've got is just so. I don't know if you're the kind of person who sort of sits there and needs to fiddle with something, pick something up, play with a pencil, whatever. This deck is the perfect fiddle toy. So the last couple of weeks, I've just been, you know, in meetings, probably doing something far more important. I've just been sat here shuffling cards, so they have been well shuffled. For some reason, though, like for the last four interviews that I've done, uh, pentacle cards really want to show themselves right major arcana, not so much.

So to see what you'll get today, okay, yeah, what were your thoughts when you saw about the podcast?

Anyway, well, I think I think it's because I'm quite new to Bluesky and I'm just trying to sort of rebuild some sort of social media community after um backpedaling from from twitter um, which I loved, and in the early days I found it a really sort of cheery, inspiring, slightly madcap world that I made um sort of lots of inroads into finding things out that I didn't know before, or just, you know, just being entertained and I really miss that I, I really miss that sort of little, sort of whimsical sight of dopamine.

So, as I was trying to rebuild this Blues ky community, following all sorts of people and thoughts that sounded interesting, I came across your post and it sort of coincided post and it sort of coincided. You know, I'm not I, I don't have a in-depth tarot practice, but I am interested in. I am interested in it as a, as a way to surface opposing thoughts to, to the way that your brain sort of uh wants to follow its accustomed pathways. I find it a good way to just like kick myself out of those ruts. So I thought, oh, that's an interesting combination of a person. I don't know practice I'm interested in. Let's drop an email, see what happens oh, thank you so much.

Yeah, I must say that I think I joined twitter twitter in 2007. It was in the early days. I know this is kind of like you know way back when, you know when, when fields were green and all the rest of it was all fields yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I must say in the early days it I made so many friends and you know kind of weird little things came up, like a friend of mine was doing a study into who takes biscuits from a staff room. If you leave a plate down, who takes the biscuits and which biscuits are taken. This was a scientific study. That was done, yeah, and I got paid to do it. I got paid to talk about my favorite biscuits. I got something like 200 quid for a few minutes work and things like that were popping up and it was just this wonderful place of wonder. And now it I mean I've said in previous interviews it's like looking under a paving slab, it's just, it's grim.

It pains me. I've stopped posting. I occasionally lurk and see what's happening and it's all terrible. My best experience was I accidentally founded a global book club based on the Dark Is Rising, the Susan Cooper book.

Robert McFarlane, the writer with a far greater reach than I, posted a picture of the cover of the 70s or 80s edition of this children's novel, which is what I had when I was a kid and was such a rush of uh, sort of pleasurable familiarity. I said, oh, we should. We should form a book club, a twitter book club, around this book. And he said, yeah, all right, then how do we do that? And it just took on a complete life of its own. Um, it was before the pandemic, so, you know, maybe five years ago, five, six years ago, and the book takes place during the period midwinter to twelfth night, so it's a very sort of discrete time that you can read the book in real time. And so that's what we did. We sort of, you know, put prompts and thoughts and analysis and had thousands and thousands of people all over the world joining in, people joining in with their kids, people also making artwork and music in response to this novel, and it was glorious, and those days I miss.

You've just reminded me of. I've not read the story, but I did hear that I think Radio 4 did a dramatization. It sounded so good, especially in stereo as well, and it did give me flashbacks of um days when childhood books were a little more grotesque and a little harder to read and a little bit more grim, but so much more fun. Um, things like um, you know the box of delights which came out in the 80s as well. Yeah, it was such a nostalgic trip.

I did love that story yeah well, I recommend reading uh, the dark is rising because it's really scary. It's a kid's book, but it is.

It's properly life or death scary I have your cards in my hand, right? I'm just shuffling away, so hopefully you can see that card uh, it's reversed looks.

Five of swords, no page of swords page of swords.

What are your impressions from looking at that?

Isn't a page card, one that sort of tells you to get ready for something? What I'm looking at and it's reversed, so that might have, uh uh, an effect on my interpretation. So it's a figure in a sort of medieval outfit, very fetching yellow tights and red boots. Got a bit of Shakespeare in he was a big lover of the yellow stockings, wasn't he?

Standing with a single sword raised on a sort of a bit of rolling countryside and when I see rolling countryside it's obviously Gloucestershire, which is where I'm from. There's a blue hill in the background, so that makes me think of Dennis Potter. There's a blue hill in the background, so that makes me think of Dennis Potter and Blue Remembered Hills. It's very literary what's coming through, and then standing in front of a big, blue, fluffy cloudscape blue and white fluffy cloudscape of the sort that we haven't seen for a good number of weeks and the figure has got their sword raised, as if they are about to either chop somebody or they are rallying somebody, rallying a crowd, an unseen crowd to follow them. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, quite like, let's go with the rallying rather than chopping well, what we'll do is we'll use um.

I don't know whereabouts in the world you are in relation to me, so let's use the um, the upright definition for this card. No, that tends to be more positive as well. We we need some of that in 2025, I think.

I'm in South London.

Oh right, this card normally indicates a message or important news coming your way, often in the form of ideas, conversations or written communications. So you need to stay alert and be ready to adapt to changing circumstances. Oh, change in 2025.

Well, that's probably a standard bit of good advice, that is, and be ready to adapt to changing circumstances. Oh, change in 2025. Well, that's probably a standard bit of good advice.

That is so. The question I'll take from that is what new ideas or areas of knowledge are you currently exploring?

I mean a relatively new job that is a specific area. So I'm an arts administrator, that's how I learned my living and I'm in a relatively new job that is exploring a specific area. So I'm an arts administrator, that's how I earn my living and I'm in a relatively new job that is exploring a specific aspect of arts administration that I haven't really focused in depth on before. So there is a lot that you know. It's been a year of learning that that's definitely coming through. So I think it sort of it describes. It feels like it links to the current state of where I am at the moment. Whether it describes, it feels like it links to the current state of where I am at the moment, whether it's whether it's speaking about what the future might be, I'm not quite sure feels like an analysis of where I am right now rather and this is what you need to take with you okay, so creatively.

So I mean the card that is is looking at messages or important news coming your way, form of ideas, conversations, right communication telling you that you need to stay alert, all of those things. Have you been inspired by recent events creatively and if so, what's popped up?

What's popped up. So I'm coming to the end of a big project that I've been working on for about seven years really, which is a poetry collection, which is to do with responding to a set of prompts or set of questions. I might talk about that more in more detail maybe later. I really feel that there's a sort of winding up energy in that now just telling me you know, got to finish this, finish this one, get it out into the world. There's the inklings of something new that I mentioned the publishing project that I'm working on with a friend. We're publishing 25 micro books and I might have one of those titles to fill and I'm thinking about what I might do with the idea of the bestiary uh, a bestiary.

Did you say bestiary?

Yeah, all the animals I write about will be barely there. That, if that, if that makes sense. That's the idea. That's sort of bubbling at the moment. Just you know, I don't want to go and write a poem about a hippopotamus or a or an porcupine. They're going to be something that's much more elusive and barely perceptible. Um, so that's that's the idea, that's the new idea that is just beginning to sort of form out of the clouds, form out of the clouds that I can see in the page of swords there so I'm fascinated by these, um by the hint of these shadow creatures.

Are they real creatures from the physical realm, or are they slightly more fantastical?

I, when I'm writing, I have like a little poet poem light that goes on. So if I come across a subject or an idea or something that is, that is something that I know definitely will become a poem, there is like a little light that goes on in my head and if it's not, if the light's not there, there's no point writing the poem. And so I was talking to one of my colleagues the other day who was telling me about this, like urban myth or a little bit of um, you know, passed on peculiar wisdom, that wherever you are or whoever you are, you see an elephant every day. And uh, and honestly, the lights in my head it just was like one of those christmas houses that is lit up you see an elephant every day. What on earth does that mean? How can I write about that? So it'll be that sort of animal, the elephant that you see every day, and how that happens and what that means I love that idea of that self-fulfilling prophecy.

It's like, yeah, I don't know. It's like when you say, for example, if you're lucky enough to buy a mini and you're driving around, you suddenly notice how many other minis are on the road, all the men. Um, I'm going to be spotting all of the elephants now and you will, you will.

It is now.

You've been told it, it will come true my goodness, I'll be haunted um, and I don't know if that's linked to the phrase of the elephant in the room as well. That's a good thing for thought.

I like that. Maybe it is, maybe that'll come in.

Keep looking alright, I've got the deck in my hand.

I've always been talking, okay let's go a bit of a longer shuffle this time, so keep shuffling okay, here we go oh, The Star this, that's quite a nice one it is one of my very favorite cards, but what do you say?

Do you know? I'm just gonna, that's oh no, well, it was the moon. I had on my phone, one today, so very celestial, um, the star. So we have got, uh, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven little stars in the sky and then one giant big gold star and then a very nice bucolic must be nighttime scene, because the stars are out of a nymph, a naked nymph, a naked blonde nymph, next to a tiny little pool and she's got two dugs of water, one of which she appears to be pouring into the pool and one of which she appears to be pouring into the ground just to the side of the pool. So that speaks to me of immediately.

There's something about the water cycle, the absolutely irrepressible water cycle that cannot be, uh, that cannot be interfered with, that is always going to just carry on doing its evaporation, precipitation thing, whatever dams and confoundments people try and put in its way. I don't know, is this a go with the flow? This is go with the flow card, because this is a. There are passions and energies that cannot be resisted by mere human, human form.

Yeah, that, maybe that's what I am getting from looking at this lovely nymph and her pouring water we have had the star previously and I wasn't aware that it's the card immediately after the tower, so it's often right, okay optimism after disaster.

and, as you say, yes, and, and, to go into something slightly more woo, it's the card of embracing your authentic self, authentic self being a phrase that sometimes makes me get, but that's the star and it shines so proudly. So it's about sharing your gifts with the world as well. So the star, I would say, as it's an optimistic card, what inspires hope and optimism in your poetry? What inspires that?

Hope and optimism in my poetry. So somebody once told me that my poetry has the aesthetics of the ant in the wine glass, uh. Which I thought, yeah, I'm happy with that, I will go with that, and so I write. My poems are funny and however much I want to be an absolute sort of gray-haired, blue stocking intellectual academic, I am not that person. I'm somebody whose primary way of interacting with people in person and on the page is to is to try and raise a laugh sometimes. That's not appropriate and I just have to put a lid on it, but that's my default. That is my authentic self.

So on the surface they are all sort of jolly and light and funny and wry and amusing, but there is an undercutting of something darker and more verminous. Do I think that they are positive and hopeful? If they're about, if they're about anything, it's about observation. I don't. That's not very profound analysis, but when I write from, from myself, if I write with a persona, it is. It's a. It's about taking care of very, very tiny little things that I have observed and want to protect, mark out or just make sure that everybody else knows, or the people who are reading knows, of their importance, if that correlates to anything more widely. Perhaps it's to do with individual action rather than mass action, individual action being one of the things that's in our control in these turbulent times. So that might be as far as I would go in terms of hope. Even if you're not explicitly a political writer, like I'm not, the very act of spending your time and your attention making something, contributing something, is a positive act. I think I see it as a collective act.

I have to say that I'm always glad to see the star anyway, because I'll often wear it as a pendant around my neck just to see if it enhances my day. But the other reason why I'm glad to see that is I was looking through some of the activities that you've been involved with online and there was a mention of origami pigeons carrying a message of hope. Is that true?

I did a project at the guys hospital cancer center a few years ago where the I'm not sure if they still have it, but they had an amazing sort of art program that, uh, ran throughout the workings of the center. So, in terms of what was on the walls and in terms of what happened in the building and they said, as a poet or a public poet, what can you come in and do? And I wanted to find a way to get the tiniest little bit of poetry into many, many, many, many interactions with people. So poetry gives people the fear. If you're coming at it the first time and you've had a bad experience at school or whatever the idea that you've gone to get some horrific chemotherapy treatment and you're confronted by a poet saying, come down and sit with me and let's talk about poetry you'd run screaming for the cafe, screaming for the for the cafe.

So what I did was I would sit with people and we would make an origami pigeon, which is a really, really simple fold. Um, that anybody can do and and I've done it with two-year-olds and 90 year olds and people who don't speak English and people, you know, with limited mobility or or physical ability everybody can do it or get somebody to help them do it, and we would talk. So just have you know who are you, how's it going? Let's write a little bit of something lovely on the inside of this pigeon, and it might be something to do with their name. We talk about their name, the meaning of their name, and if there was any strength to be found in the definition of the name and we would record a tiny little thought in the inside of this pigeon, then we'd fold it up and then we would pin it to a ribbon and I think over the week that I was there made 2 000 odd pigeons together, so they're just like garlands all around lovely huh.

Yeah, I don't know quite what the um collective noun of pigeons would be. I mean, it's probably flock, but it Like a fuffle. Like a fuffle. Yes, that's about right. Yes, yeah, wow, that's an amazing story. And you mentioned that these pigeons are easy for me to make, so if I was to sit down, grab myself a piece of paper roughly, how long does it take to make an origami pigeon?

About 45 seconds, I would say I think there's like seven folds. I will send you a link and you can have a go Do it with the kids.

Thank you so much for that Right.

Third card Knight of Pentacles. Did you say there was lots of pentacles showing up?

It seems to defy all probability. It's as if two thirds of my deck are composed of pentacles. Do I ever see The World? Never. Do I ever see The Hierophant, never do I see pentacles all of the time all the time right. So could you describe in your own words what you see here?

So what I'm seeing now. So we're in a different landscape to the uh ones that we have seen before. So we've had sort of quite bucolic rolling hills. This seems to be more into an unknown territory, so we've got like a, an either a plowed field or something that's a bit more desert-y mountains in the background, sort of flatter foreground, and we're seeing a knight in absolute full armor. He's got his visor up, but he is in full armor. He is sitting on a very well-dressed black horse with all his reins and stirrups and saddle and bits and pieces, all in decorative red.

They are looking to the oh wait, a minute, I'm looking at a reversed version of this card. So I think they're looking to the right rather than left. So they're looking to the right and if that's the direction that we read, then that's a direction that looks to the right rather than left. So they're looking to the right and if that's the direction that we read, then that's a direction that looks to the future rather than the past. So that looks sort of quite unmystical. It looks quite tough. It feels like it's quite a tough card, but the weird thing is that the sky is yellow. The sky is completely yellow compared to the lovely blue, fluffly clouds of the first card, the riddick tat, and then the night sky of the of the second one that feels very unheimlich the, the yellow sky like apocalyptic or you know, the, the portent of some dramatic storm. Yeah, I think it's sort of a bold direction from a tough situation or into a tough situation is what I'm getting from that absolutely.

And you're right about the armor, about the night moving slowly, never rushing into things without thinking them through. It's, yeah, a, an appreciation of stability and reliability. Um, it's. This card is classically associated with a commitment to hard work, whether it's career, finance, personal growth. And that caution, that dullness, it's a little bit like personal growth. And that caution, that dullness, it's a little bit like the tortoise and the hare, ensuring lasting success. Yeah, so it encourages you to stay focused, to put in the effort. So, knight of Pentacles, how do you maintain perseverance and dedication in your creative work?

For me it's I work in a project by project way now. So the first couple of books that I published were collections of unconnected poems, occasional poems, quite personal. But then when I finished the second book, I thought I've come to the end of that way of way of thinking now, and since then I've used the establishment of a structure or a project structure as a as a way to generate new work. So it's not like I have to have 40 new ideas for 40 poems at a time. I just have to have one overarching idea for this structure of the project and then I I interrogate my imagination in a different way to find things to fill that structure.

I don't, I think this isn't, I don't think this is an analogy that I've come up with, but somebody else said it's like you know, you mine, you, you mine the top layer first, and that's your first couple of books, and then you have to go deeper and you might need a different tool. It can't just be the things that pop into your head. There needs to be something that is helping you excavate more deeply held thoughts or ideas perhaps, and so maybe that's a bit like reading the tarot cards or ways into alternative patterns of thought that might not have come to you. Naturally, I think the way that I set up writing projects is a way for me to uncover ideas and thoughts that might not have occurred to me easily.

A little bit like the elephant in the room.

Yes, my imaginary elephants. Yeah, that's how I keep it going. And also, it doesn't matter if you have five years off. People aren't champing. People are not like clapping down the door. You do what suits you whenever it suits you. I don't. I've never wanted to be somebody that has. And now, with her 47th collection, people can have too much of one voice, I think. I think the six inches on the shelf is all I want to go for that many books, and maybe I'm halfway there, I don't know. A little bit further. I can fit a lot of slim pamphlets in the remaining two or three inches.

It's a lot of interests. So, for example, if it's a Sunday, like it is and I don't know, you need to pop out to the garden centre, or you're off to a cafe, or however you spend your Sunday afternoons. And then you suddenly get, while you're in the middle of just doing something mundane just day to day, you're gripped with an idea for a poem or a story or a fleeting something. Yeah, how do you, how do you capture that and then keep it until you've actually got a place to write it down?

I think you know like prosaically it would be like a note on a piece of paper or a note in my phone or something like that, and but with the awareness that I don't, I can't, I can't drop everything in the garden center, in the imaginary garden center, and then go off and write is I don't have that sort of life really or that sort of personality. But if the notes there and it's still flashing its perim light, um, when I have got some time to write, when you know have got a weekend or or a few days, if it's still, if it's still vital enough, something will come from it. It might not be the original thought, but it, but but the process of turning that thought around and playing with that thought might make something vital come from it yeah, I'm curious about this.

Uh, this poem like so how do you visualize it? Is it like a lighthouse, is it like a neon, neon light that you get in a bar?

Uh, no, it's like it. It's more like um, it's got it's on a very quick switch, so it'd be like an alarm light, I think all right, yeah, somebody's pressed a big red button and then a light has gone on, right well, um, that that is.

That is a lovely thought. Do you know what I'm? You've just caught me there thinking I've tried to write sort of throughout my life. Um, and I, perseverance of writing my own poetry isn't something that I buy, buy at all. I have so many backs of tickets, so many beer mats, so many dog ends of, uh, notepad. For some reason, opening a notebook is one of. I can't write it. I, I will try, I will get myself the nicest morskin notebook that I can afford and I'll write one page and that's all that stays there. Yeah, give me, just, just, give me a massive paper. Just give me stuff off the floor, give me, you know, flyers for a nightclub and I can write all over that thing and I don't know quite why that is I don't know it's.

I mean you have to. There's a lot of tricking of the brain. I think that's involved. I can't write in public. I can't go to a cafe or a garden. You can't write in public? No, no, because the public's too interesting. There's always something going on that I want to listen to or, you know, get distracted by the, the buttons in the cafe or the I don't know the bulbs in a in a garden center. Um, I have to be undisturbed at home, with no claims on my time. I can do a notebook, that's fine, yeah but no distractions.

How does that controlled environment look? It's like being in the garden. Do you have a particular room?

I write in bed, just in bed, oh right, yeah, but I used to do my homework in bed and I did my degree in bed, just writing all my essays and everything, partly because when I was a student it was really cold. I quite like that. I'm going to write something, then I'm going to have a snooze and then, who knows what I will dream and then it might get in, incorporated into what I into, what I write. Can't write on a laptop because there's a little clock going. Oh, it's been seven minutes since you wrote anything, you know. So, yeah, pen notebook bed excellent, right?

Oh, I need to take a leaf out of that book then, because I've tried so many times. I I even have a button on the side of my phone, so there's no excuses. If I think of something, I press that button and a notepad app appears. But straight away after that they are going to get a notification from work or get an email. Something will interfere with that thought process. So I'm going to try, getting into bed tonight, get myself a notebook out and just see what appears on the page. I like that idea. Thank you so much.

My pleasure, my top tip.

Right, Julia, thank you so much for being with us today.

It's been an enjoyable conversation, thank you.

That brings us to the end of the conversation with the brilliant Julia Bird. From the lyrical landscapes of Hannah and the Monk to her groundbreaking work in live literature, Julia continues to shape the way we experience poetry. Her insights into storytelling, memory and performance remind us the enduring power of words. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share it with fellow poetry lovers. Thanks for listening to Tarot Interviews. We'll be back soon with more conversations on creativity and storytelling.