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Biog

Helen Bowell is a poet and producer based in London. Her debut pamphlet The Barman was published by Bad Betty Press in 2022, and selected as the Poetry Book Society Summer 2022 Pamphlet Choice. She runs the Bi+ Lines project for bi+ poets, and will edit the first anthology of bi+ poets in English with fourteen poems in 2023. She is also a co-director of Dead [Women] Poets Society, an Arts Council England-funded collective which seeks to ‘resurrect’ women poets of the past through events and online. On their behalf, she co-guest-edited the Autumn 2020 Modern Poetry in Translation focus on dead women poets in Autumn 2020. She produces events at the Poetry Translation Centre and for seven years worked in The Poetry Society's Education team.

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Helen is a Ledbury Poetry Critic with reviews in Magma, The North, Poetry Wales and Ink, Sweat & Tears. She is a graduate of The Writing Squad, the London Library Emerging Writers Programme, London Writers Awards and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective. She was a commended Foyle Young Poet in 2010 and 2011. She was commended in the 2021/22 Magma Poetry Competition, the 2021 Verve Poetry Competition and Winchester Poetry Festival Prize, and the 2020 Mslexia Poetry Competition. In 2020, she won the Bronze Creative Future Writers’ Award. She was Poetry Business’s first digital Poet in Residence in February 2021 and during the summer of 2021 wrote "plant portraits" for visitors to Kew Garden. Her poems and translations have appeared in Poetry London, Magma, Ambit, Under the Radar, bath magg, fourteen poems, Tentacular, Where Else: An International Hong Kong Anthology (Verve, 2023), 100 Poems To Save The Earth (Seren, 2021), The Book of Bad Betties (Bad Betty Press, 2021), Introduction X: The Poetry Business Book of New Poets (2017) and elsewhere.

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As a facilitator, she has run poetry and reviewing workshops for young people for The Writing Squad and The Poetry Society; and poetry workshops for adults for Creative Future, Spread the Word, Poetry Translation Centre, the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, fourteen poems and Queer Circle.

Shorter biogs:

30 words: Helen Bowell’s debut pamphlet The Barman (Bad Betty Press, 2022) was a PBS Choice. She co-directs Dead [Women] Poets Society and runs Bi+ Lines, a project for bi+ poets.
 
50 words: Helen Bowell is a poet and producer. Her debut pamphlet The Barman (Bad Betty Press, 2022) was a PBS Choice. She co-directs Dead [Women] Poets Society, edited the first anthology of bi+ poets, Bi+ Lines (fourteen poems, 2023), and is producing the Poetry Translation Centre's 20th birthday programme of events in 2024.
 
100 words: Helen Bowell is a poet, producer and editor. Her debut pamphlet The Barman (Bad Betty Press, 2022) was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Her poems, reviews and translations have been published in bath magg, Poetry London, Poetry Wales and elsewhere. She co-directs Dead [Women] Poets Society, which resurrects women poets through events and online, and co-guest-edited Modern Poetry in Translation's Autumn 2020 focus on dead women poets. Helen runs Bi+ Lines, a project for bi+ poets, and edited the first anthology of bi+ poets (fourteen poems, 2023). She is currently producing the Poetry Translation Centre's 20th birthday programme of events in 2024.

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