January Artist Spotlight: Thoughtful Poet Zoë Bird

Zoë, thank you so much for taking time out of your day, especially on this historical Inauguration Day, to tell us a little more about yourself. Let's get started! Can you tell us about what your background and what your art forms are?

I'm a queer, white cis woman (she/her) who was born and raised on Dakota land in Minneapolis. From 1996 to 2010, I lived in Northern New Mexico, where I studied book arts, letterpress printing, and photography at Santa Fe Community College and later, in my 30s, went to college full-time, for the first time, in the College of Santa Fe's Documentary Studies program (with an emphasis on writing and still photography).

Thanks to my dear friend and mentor Gary Glazner, I got started as a teaching artist with the Alzheimer's Poetry Project (APP) in 2006. I returned to Minnesota in 2010, and started APP-MN in 2012 with another COMPAS roster artist, the wonderful and supremely talented Rachel Moritz.

I love making all kinds of things, from books to postcards to assemblages and found-object jewelry, and I have always aspired to become a musician, but writing is the one thing I have always done and--all the goddesses and gods willing--am pretty sure I always will do.

When did you first become interested in writing and poetry? How did it happen? Who were some of your influences?

I am extremely fortunate to have been raised by creative, eccentric people, avid readers and polyglots who, though lacking in formal education, were extremely well-read and totally in love with language. So I grew up breathing that air.

I was also really, really lucky to attend public school in Minneapolis, where I had my first poetry class at age 8. I still have the little handbound book of haiku that I made in that class.

A poetry class with George Roberts in my freshman year at North High School, though, cinched poetry as my lifelong, primary form of creative expression. As a suicidally depressed white girl I was, predictably, obsessed with Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton back then. These days, I'd much rather read Kaveh Akbar, Anne Carson, and Natalie Diaz, Ross Gay, Danez Smith, and Monica Youn.

Your program participants are usually older adults and frequently those with memory loss and other cognitive, physical and emotional challenges. What have you learned about yourself and life itself from working with these individuals? What do find the most joyful about this work?

As an eldest child and a really nerdy one, I always gravitated toward adults rather than kids my own age. They were much kinder, and they had so many great stories to tell. I still gravitate toward older people. The oldest folks alive today, those from the so-called "Greatest Generation" and "Silent Generation," are my favorite people to spend time around. Almost across the board, they've suffered great hardship--at least at some point--and so they never expected not to suffer, or to have everything they wanted. They take nothing for granted, and they are ready to find joy in small moments. You ask how they're doing, and they'll say, "I'm still above ground!" and laugh. I've started doing the same.

Being around these folks teaches me humility and patience. And it is so, so satisfying to spend enough time with them in a creative context for the protective shells around the more stoic people to begin to crack, and the emotions and stories to start to flow.

Also, my brain just *gets* the brains of people with dementia. We share nonlinear, lyrical thought processes and thrive best when allowed to live in the moment.

People with dementia naturally make lyrical connections that artists of all kinds actually struggle to make. They are natural poets and artists; all they need to be those things is time and encouragement and a thoughtful, supportive environment in which to create. The wonderful thing about poetry is, there's no wrong way to do it--there's no wrong answer. People with dementia are so often told or shown that the way they are or what they have to say is somehow wrong or upsetting. I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction out of affirming, repeating, and celebrating whatever they have to offer.

What do you get out of teaching versus creating your own work?

I adore the collaborative nature of creation in these poetry sessions. We all play off of one another; it's about improvising, riffing on sounds and ideas, and opening up and telling our stories in response to others doing the same. So it's extremely active, and involves my constant reading of each individual for their responses, and affirming and amplifying those responses while keeping the group as a whole connected and moving along. That requires a lot of energy, but being with the poets, reveling in their brilliance and discoveries, and soaking up their love and enthusiasm infuses me with plenty more.

I've been a part of writing groups for half my life, so I'm used to writing in community and really love it. It's the editing and tinkering that are mostly solitary for me, and I need and cherish that time, too.

In this time of virtual programming how are you adjusting? What do you find challenging? Any unexpected benefits?

So far, virtual programming has worked really well with people who don't have dementia, or small groups of folks who are in early stages of memory loss. As hard as we're all working to switch to virtual platforms, though, nothing takes the place of actual sustained, unequivocally accepting, attentive in-person contact for people with dementia. Some of the most effective ways I've found of connecting with people in later stages of dementia are through respectful, caring, consensual touch, like holding or shaking a hand or helping tap out a beat on a knee, and through offering a range of sensory experiences to bring folks into the present moment in a joyful way. People are so hungry for engagement and connection they'll take it any way they can get it, but lack of in-person connection with others was a major risk factor for dementia even before COVID and its near-total lack now is a tragedy, both for those with dementia and for the terrifically hardworking, dedicated, underpaid staff of elder living communities who are trying to be and provide everything for them in the necessarily enforced absence of family, friends, volunteers, teaching artists, etc.

Have you been working on any new projects lately?

My newest project is a book of tiny erasures. I'm trying to figure out what form that book should take--a limited edition artist's book, a chapbook, a sort of non-religious, non-holiday-oriented poetry advent calendar?

During this time of great change in Minnesota and around the world, how do you see the arts as fitting into that story?

Now, as always, artists are the visionaries who lead us in dreaming and manifesting genuinely just and beautiful realities. A society that does not value and uplift its cultural workers is a society that will never reach, much less eclipse, its ideals. Artists insist on revealing to us the extent of our connectedness and the depth of our illusions, and help us to engage with our collective history as a dynamic, living thing.

I'm writing this on Inauguration Day, and I think many who watched today's ceremony would agree that the amazing National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, and her tremendous poem, "The Hill We Climb," transported those watching and listening to a plane of beauty and possibility that political rhetoric simply could not reach.

I also think of Junauda Petrus-Nasah's stunningly powerful poem, "Give the Police Departments to the Grandmothers." Works of art like this not only show us how the world could be and what we need to do to get there, but how joyful it can be to work together toward such a vision.

You’ve been on the COMPAS roster for seven years now! What’s it like for you to be a part of COMPAS?

It's a huge honor to be a part of COMPAS, along with so many artists I admire and respect! The COMPAS roster is overflowing with genius. Thanks to COMPAS, I've made a lot of meaningful connections with artists and program sites that I would not otherwise have made. I'm grateful.

How do you practice creativity in your everyday life?

Moving helps my brain work. I love to amble, with or without my dog. I read broadly and constantly, listen to lots of music, and soak up as much art in all media as possible. I make sure to bring a little notebook with me wherever I go. And I show up for Zoom writing with my Santa Fe writing group most Saturday afternoons, and to my writers' accountability group once a month.

Perhaps the most important and challenging thing I try to do to practice creativity is simply take care of myself. If I manage to do that, I can't help but feel alive, and that leads me to create.