Aristilde Kirby

This interview with Aristilde Kirby took place on June 12,2021, via Zoom. Aris is a 30-year-old Black trans woman who has lived in Hudson for three years. She is a poet who came to attend Bard’s MFA program and did not want to go back to Georgia. Aris talks about her search for employment and housing in Hudson. Aris offers an assemblage tour of Hudson via “shout-outs” to venues, businesses, and personages who have touched her life, especially “the gays and the queers.” Aris talks about the Bard MFA program as a fulcrum for her departure from Georgia, and the intensive daily critiques that the program is built out of. Aris talks about her poetic forms, which are experimental, and about her hybrid text-performance art, and how she has been pushed successfully out of her comfort zone, both in art and also in her exploration of rivers and mountains. Aris reflects on her growth toward transition and how she escaped an oppressive environment that was not supportive of her gender identity, and explains how this has been a progress toward confidence and pride. Aris discusses trans “myths”— the value of myths in general, and the value of New York State support for medical care for transitioning, and the value of the LGBTQIA scene in Hudson, especially the queer performance night at Lil’ Debs Oasis. She talks about the path ahead toward continuing to write, perform, paint, and possibly teach. She describes the role of meditation in her mental health and life, and the vista of wetlands out her window. Aris returns to talking about Lil’Debs and the excellent quality of the employee-employer relationship, its creativity and idiosyncrasy, its pay equity, its customer base, and the general shape of its future. The interview concludes with a stream of shout-outs to everything that has made life feel like it’s worth living, including Aris herself.