We recently connected with Zoe Branch and have shared our conversation below.

Zoe, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

My business, flora & phrase, started as a side hustle while I was working full-time in journalism, and was so for almost two years. I started it not with the intention to run it full-time but just because I enjoyed what I was doing — typing up some of my favorite poems and quotes, as well as work by myself and my friends, on my great grandfather’s typewriter and pairing the pieces with flowers I’d been pressing for years. I was selling online and at my local night market several times a month, and just making a little extra money with it.

Everything changed when COVID hit, and I left my job and moved to New York to be closer to my community. I gave myself a year to see if I could figure out how to take my business full-time and replace my journalism income; if I couldn’t do it within a year, I told myself, I would seek out other work.

I spent months working on the backend of my site, taking marketing and business courses, and connecting with other local businesses. I started seeing some success on social media (Tik Tok has blown up my sales multiple times) and began taking my typewriter out on the streets of New York City and writing poems on the spot for people — originally as just a marketing mechanism, and then also by donation. I was then picked up by a typewriter poetry agency, Ars Poetica, to do on the spot typewriter poetry at events like weddings and baby showers. By the time that first year was up, my business was succeeding beyond what I could have imagined — multiple streams of income, healthy online sales, growing social media audiences, and a new community of poets around the world, many of whom became close friends.

When I was in the beginning of that first year taking the business full-time, I was definitely stressed and didn’t know where things would go. I also don’t think I could have sped up the process. Things happened when they needed to and because I was patient and open, I think. I also had the advantage of having had my business for years before I tried to seriously turn a profit with it, so I had been able to work out a lot of kinks and questions without the stress of the answers being tied to my ability to pay rent.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I became a poet because I have always been a poet and just started really allowing myself the space to be so and take myself seriously in my early 20s. My business started because I inherited my great grandfather’s 1931 Remington Noiseless typewriter as a gift one year — it was a machine I’d loved as a kid and used to write stories and poems from as early as I can remember. After spending about a decade in my grandparents’ basement unused (the keys had started to stick and I thought I had broken it), my mom discovered it and repaired it back to working condition herself before gifting it to me in 2017. A year later, my grandfather — the other poet of the family — was diagnosed with a terminal lung cancer, and, in trying to process the news, I took his father’s typewriter off my shelf and wrote him a poem on it. To make it more presentable, I figured out how to cut some thin birch wood (originally with a box cutter, before I invested in a table saw) and put a small pressed flower at the bottom to fill out some empty space. That’s how the business was born.

When I posted a photo of the piece on my social media, I was stunned at how many people reached out and asked me to make something similar for a loved one. It was enough requests that, by the time I finished all of them, I realized there was a demand for this thing I had unintentionally created, and that I should try to expand it. I created a website and Etsy and started applying for local markets. I made an inventory of over 200 different quotes and poems you could buy, customizing size, flower color, and more. I started mounting and selling my own work, as well as the work of local queer, Black, and Indigenous writers and paying them for their writing.

This was the structure of my business entirely for the first two and a half years, after which it also started including on-the-spot typewriter poetry. I set up at formal events or in Central Park (or anywhere in the world, really) with my typewriter and a sign that says “Poetry for Strangers.” People approach me and we have a short conversation, then I use what we talk about to write them a short custom poem — just for them. I do this by donation on the street and for a flat rate when hired out for events. People can commission custom mounted poems with pressed flowers as well on my website, Etsy, and recently, via Uncommon Goods. I now also work on the internal team of the poetry agency, Ars Poetica, to close deals with clients and set up events logistics.

My business fills a simple creative and emotional gap: People need poems. People may not realize they need poems, or people may think that they don’t like poetry at all. My mission is to bring poetry directly to people, and in doing so, capture a moment, reflect something back to them, and create a piece of art that is as immediate and personal as possible. On the spot poetry provides strangers a beautiful platform to connect with each other, to slow down, and to be heard. Often when receiving their poem, people cry or hug me, and I get to witness that in real time. When selling poetry on my online platforms, people tell me what a poem means to them, or why they want this specific piece and for whom. People send each other poems in the wake of grief, celebration, confusion, and more. Tapping into this with a business has been really an extraordinary thing to watch, and reminds me of the power art has to comfort and soothe us in our every day lives. At the end of the day, that is my mission: To bring poetry to people in a way that makes them feel seen, comforted, and loved.

As far as what I am most proud of: I am unbelievably proud that I am able to make a living as a poet, full stop. It is not something I take for granted for one moment of any day. I am proud to be able to connect with people from all walks of life, and to see often what I think is the best of humanity brought forth by words alone. I am proud to have built a business that feels regenerative and not extractive, and that feels connected authentically to the core of who I am as a person and as an artist.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I think the mentality of the starving artist is such a harmful one, and one that does not necessarily have to hold water. There are a lot of creative ways to figure out how to be a successful, thriving artist today — they may not present themselves immediately or seamlessly, but they do exist. I wish artists were championed more readily by everyone in our society and that we were not told from an early age how hard it will be, how impossible, how little money we’ll make. There have always been artists and there will always be artists — we are needed in every sector, at every budget, in every city and country. I’ve had to learn how to value my work, worth, and time as an artist, which has meant unlearning a lot of narratives about creating that are ingrained into us at every turn.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Anything and everything written by the brilliant poet, Ada Limón..

For any creative or maker, especially of physical goods, I cannot recommend Paper & Spark more highly. It’s a company that helps small businesses understand their finances, tax liabilities, bookkeeping, inventory, and more. Before I took a class with them and bought their extremely helpful spreadsheets, I felt so overwhelmed by this piece of my business, and now am able to do it all smoothly and easily myself. Most valuable thing I have invested in.

Contact Info:

• Website: floraandphrase.com
• Instagram: @flora.and.phrase
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoe-branch-2b0b3a148/
• Twitter: @branchzoe1
• Other: Tik Tok: @flora.and.phrase

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