Photo credit: Kashif Haque
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 produces events for the Poetry Translation Centre.
Rachel: Say something so I can test that the audio is working!
Helen: I’m Helen and I have a cinnamon bun I need to eat before it goes stale.
R: The audio is working! It is very important to eat the cinnamon bun. If it’s time sensitive and you need to eat it during this call, please go ahead.
H: I am good, thank you.
R: So, could you tell our readers a bit about you as a poet and creative? How did you get into poetry?
H: An introduction to Helen! OK. I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a novelist at first but I was a Foyle Young Poet which meant I turned my attention as a teenager more towards poetry than novels. Then I’ve just been writing ever since. After doing my degree, I worked at The Poetry Society for six years as their Education Coordinator / Officer, running Young Poets Network and Poets in Schools. Through that I met lots of people. It was very good for networking. I found out about lots of programmes that I also applied for myself.
Now I work at the Poetry Translation Centre. I’m a freelance events producer with them, running their 20th Birthday programme of events.
I have published one pamphlet with Bad Betty Press, The Barman. It tells the story of a relationship between two unnamed people, the speaker and the Barman, backwards through time. The guiding question through the whole pamphlet is - how do you have a relationship with another human being in the context of everything going on in the world, like racism, misogyny, homophobia, climate change, politics? How do we navigate the personal in the face of the political?
R: You’re currently a freelancer. I am very keen to ask you about one of your projects - Bi+lines. Would you tell our readers a bit about it?
H: Bi+ lines is a project for poets who identify under the bi+ umbrella. That includes people who consider themselves bisexual, pansexual, queer or in any other way attracted to more than one gender. I came up with it because I wasn’t able to see many other poets who fitted that category, whereas I could think of lesbian or gay or trans or non-binary poets. And I did see poetry communities around those identities, but nothing for bi+ poets. Â
R: How did you decide that you wanted to work on a project around Bi+ identity and community?
H: I am a glutton for a project. I love to come up with an idea and do it, even if it’s crazy. Everything gets jumbled when you remember things, but the story I’m telling myself is that I read an anthology called ‘Non-Binary Lives: an anthology of intersecting identities’. In the anthology, so many of the things people were talking about felt similar to the bi+ experience - feeling in between, or being told you don’t exist, or having to choose a side. But there wasn’t anything like that book for bi+ poets so I was like, I guess I have to make it.
I tweeted asking if people would be interested and people were very interested! I got dozens of DMs within an hour. I made a google form and 100 people filled it out immediately answering extensive questions about what they’d like me to do and sending me their bios. So then I had to do it.
R: How did you decide exactly what the project would include?
H: I did start off wanting a book. That’s what inspired it and what I wanted to have at the end of it. I also knew what the Arts Council would fund and I wasn’t doing it without funding. The Arts Council are interested in workshops, community-building, and support for marginalised groups. They like participation and audience numbers so that helped to shape the project. It became a project in three parts - eight workshops we did in 2023 in different locations and online, then an open submissions call and publishing an anthology called Bi+ Lines, and the final part which is lots of launches around the UK. I  had applied to the Arts Council previously for funding for another project (the Dead [Women] Poets Society) and I was asking for a large amount of funding, which I knew the Arts Council does offer, so that helped decide where I would apply for funding.
R: What partners did you involve and how did you get them on board?
H: Having partners on your project if you’re going for Arts Council funding is very important. It helps to strengthen your application and make the Arts Council feel you are well connected and accountable and that you know what you’re doing. If the partners trust you, that gives reason for the Arts Council to trust you too.
I contacted some organisations who I’d done development programmes with myself. This included Spread the Word and the Writing Squad. The workshops and launches focus around four cities - Manchester, Glasgow, London and Norwich - so I needed a partner in the north, and The Writing Squad are based in the north so that worked out. There was also Common Word in Manchester, Gay’s the Word in London and Out on the Page. And fourteen poems published the anthology.
R: How have you found the experience of running the project?
H: It’s been really great because people are so interested in it. It’s felt so valued and valuable throughout the whole process which makes everything feel worthwhile.
My least favourite thing in running projects is doing extensive marketing where you’re struggling to get bums on seats. This project hasn’t felt like that at all which is incredible. Because I did the original tweet as well, I already had a list of 200 people who were happy to be contacted more about it when I started off.
R: Is there anything else you did that you think helped make it successful?
H: I’m really glad that fourteen poems reached out to me and offered to publish it. They’ve been such a good partner. It’s great to be fitting into an existing publishing process because I don’t know anything about designing or publishing books, and it’s been great to have their editorial support as well.
R: How did you find going through all the submissions?
H: There were so many of them! 2,800 poems from 800 poets from 40 countries. I had expected about 200 people to submit so that was four times more than I’d anticipated. I didn’t give myself very long in the timeline to turn it all around. It was a privilege to read these poems from the hearts of so many bi+ people, but it was also a lot of work.
R: What were you hoping the project would do or change or achieve when it started out?
H: The main thing I wanted was the book. I wanted people to be able to go to a bookshop or a library and think - this is me, this is 45 people who identify in the same way as me. It was also about building a sense of community, whether that’s bringing people together who maybe go on to work together or hang out, or even just creating a sense of there being other people like me out there. And the feedback that I’m getting is that people are feeling like it has been really valuable, like they’re feeling seen and empowered.
R: What comes next?
H: The problem with Arts Council grants or any one-off grant is that it funds the project you’ve applied for but there’s no funding for legacy built in. My hope is that I will still be sharing opportunities and news for bi+ poets from the instagram and twitter accounts I’ve set up and that will give a sense of what’s going on. But it would take festivals or people with existing budgets to bring me in. This is also the same as my other project, the Dead [Women] Poets Society. Currently we don’t have any funding so we’re on standby until someone with a budget asks us to do something.
R: Has the process of running the project had any impact on you as a writer?
H: I’ve got to read a load of good poems! That is always good for your writing. I don’t know about as a writer beyond that… As a person, though, I’ve had so many identity crises while running this. I’ve felt imposter syndrome and the classic bi+ feeling of, am I actually gay? Should I be doing this at all? I think that is constantly changing. Right now I feel happy with, or OK with, being in an uncertain space and accepting that uncertainty as being part of the bi+ experience. If I am wavering or confused, that is part of the bi+ experience. In a way this was the theme of the whole project.
R: Not everyone who writes poems loves a project. Why is running projects meaningful to you?
H: Writing is a lot of false starts and staring at the blank page and hours spent working over something you’re going to throw away. Running events and projects is a tangible thing I can do. It has an obvious and visible impact on other people and the world, and I’m hopefully helping other people do that poem writing business. Personally I find admin or Excel spreadsheets or emails easier sometimes. Some days I wake up too tired to be creative, I just want to send emails, even though that’s not more fulfilling. Writing is more fulfilling but sometimes I can’t do it.
R: So for you as a freelancer, it sounds like you value being able to do both?
H: Yes, especially as I can organise my time completely now. I can have days where I feel very creative and I’ll take the morning off and do some writing. It’s nice to have variety.  And when I was at The Poetry Society full time, I would sometimes have quiet periods at The Poetry Society where I wasn't doing anything very urgent during working hours, but knowing I had loads to do on my other freelance projects as soon as it turned 6pm. So it’s good to be able to flip between my projects now day to day.
R: And finally, what is one way that someone reading this newsletter can support your work?
H: Buy the bi+ book! Also, people may know that Gboyega Odubanjo was a poet and an editor who died unexpectedly last year. He edited my pamphlet The Barman and if you buy it direct through me, I'll be donating all profits to the foundation to support emerging Black poets that is being set up in his name.