I grew up in Gloucestershire and now live in London, where I work for the Poetry Society and as an independent literature producer and promoter at Jaybird Live Literature. My professional specialities are producing touring live lit shows and devising bookish projects with public involvement – see www.jaybird.org.uk for details of previous activities, and if you’d like to talk about working on a project with me, do get in touch.
Hannah and the Monk is my first poetry collection, published by Salt in 2008, and Twenty-Four Seven Blossom, my second, was published in 2013. You can download recordings of individual poems direct from the Poetry Archive website. Now You Can Look, an illustrated poetry pamphlet, was published by The Emma Press in 2017. Paper Trail, an artist’s book with Mike Sims and Roy Willingham was released in 2019. In 2021 is, thinks Pearl, another pamphlet, was published with The Emma Press, and A Joy Forever: a walk out with John Keats by Mike Sims and me and illustrated by Linda Hughes came out from Paekakariki Press in 2022.
Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @juliamarybird (Twitter is usually me shouting at Question Time, and Instagram is purposely unfiltered post-it note commentary), and click about here for details of readings, projects, articles, reviews and other poetry-related news.
Julia Bird 
Dear Julia, I would like to talk to you about this year’s Bridport literary festival (November). Can you email me and we could discuss? I really like the look of A Joy Forever, and your exciting poetry projects.
Of course! What’s the best email for you?
Hello Julia,
I saw you speaking in Newbury last week about the collaboration with Historic England and wanted to pick your brains about community participation in creative projects.
In particular I’m interested in the lessons you’ve learnt around engaging participants in past projects, be that around timescales and possible unforeseen pitfalls. In a nutshell, what has worked/not in terms of getting people engaged in the creative process?
I’m based in Bristol and am looking to develop an outdoor arts project that will hopefully look at divided/conflicted communities within Bristol and how to try and build bridges between these.
All the best
Aaron
Hello! Drop me a line at jbird@poetrysociety.org.uk and we can have a chat …