Rae Howells

In 2017, Howells' poem 'Airlings' won the Welsh Poetry Competition.[2] This win was followed by another prize the next year, when 'The Winter-King' took first place in The Rialto's Nature Poetry Competition.[3] Both of these poems would eventually appear in Howells' first full collection The language of bees, published by Parthian Books in April 2022.[4] In May 2023, The language of bees was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year award, with the shortlisting announced on BBC Radio Wales.[5]

Howells also regularly works in collaboration with other writers and artists. Prior to her first full collection, she published Bloom & Bones: a collaborative poetry pamphlet with fellow Swansea poet Jean James. Presented as a 'poetry conversation through colour' and inspired by The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St Clair, the pamphlet contained twenty poems responding to ten colours: white, yellow, orange, pink, red, purple, blue, green, brown and black.[6] The pamphlet was published by Hedgehog Press, and launched at The Swansea Fringe festival on 24 October 2021.[7] Later that year, Howells was selected as one of five Welsh women artists to take part in Ù Ơ: a virtual artistic residency linking artists from Wales and Vietnam.[8]