View source for Ada Verdun Howell

{{Inline citations|date=September 2024}}{{Short description|Australian poet}}
{{Use Australian English|date=May 2015}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2024}}

{{Infobox person
| name               = Ada Verdun Howell
| image              = AdaVerdunHowell.jpg
| birth_date         = 19 July 1902
| birth_place        = [[Beaufort, Victoria]], Australia
| death_date         = 1981
| death_place        = [[New York City|New York]], United States
| occupation         = Writer
| relatives          = [[Valma Howell]] (sister)
}}

'''Ada Verdun Howell''' (19 July 1902 &ndash; 1981) was an Australian writer and poet. She was born in [[Beaufort, Victoria]], on her father's sheep property. Her sister was the artist [[Valma Howell]]. She lived in New York in the latter part of her life where she wrote most of her most famous works. She is best known for her later writing, much praised for its great formal and feminine qualities, as an early [[sound poetry|sound poet]].{{citation needed|date=August 2023}}

Her most influential works include the strangely disquieting ''Monmot'' and the later ''Exit Strategies''.

The last part of her life was apparently spent in much economic hardship and she died virtually unknown in her own country.

==New York life==
By the time she was in her late thirties Ada had abandoned [[Melbourne]], where she was surrounded by what she felt were stuffy and provincial relations, for New York and the bohemian life, where she was soon surrounded by an artistic life and freedom she was unable to experience in Australia. Her first husband, Adrian Morten, an undistinguished writer and critic, by whom she had her two children, does not appear to have been very supportive. The marriage, like most of Ada's later relationships, floated on a tide of [[alcoholism|drink]] and was marked by spectacular rows. After Morten's sudden death she consoled herself with many lovers; "once I got Mr Morten out of my life I felt like a new woman," she told a close friend [[Harold Norse]]. In her forties she stumbled into her métier, modern poetry.

In the early 1940s she was taken under the wing of [[Peggy Guggenheim]] who was to provide both financial and intellectual encouragement.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Morton |first1=Camilla |title=A Year in High Heels |date=2011 |publisher=Hodder & Stoughton |location=London |isbn=9781444717099 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3JfffnyB6x4C |access-date=11 June 2023}}</ref> In the decades that followed she became a close friend to poet and [[Beat generation|beat]] [[Harold Norse]]. Her last years were a slow decline due to alcoholism. Little is known of her last years and she died of unknown causes in 1981.

==Juvenilia==
Her earliest work ''Poems'' is not considered to be of much literary value, however it does display an affection for the sound of words and an awareness of other languages other than English. An example is the poem ''A single body of water'':
:In the dim light of the crescent moon,
:I strode the high hills of Ercildoune.
:Through the lakes and the waters' song
:Soft words they whispered 'Buninyong'

==Early work==
Her professional career begins with ''Anamorphosis'' where she goes beyond the exterior world of landscape and the body and she begins to explore the interior universe of love and selfhood.

The poem {{lang|fr|Unlanguid longueurs}} exhibits a new awareness of the world around her:
:All the same, my desire had taught me
:An object lesson.
:He was a sceptic, I was an enthusiast.
:He analysed, I synthesized.
:He dealt with proofs, I with questions of faith.
:He was, in short,
:An historian.
:I couldn't help being
:A pilgrim;
:But I knew now I must be
:As dispassionate pilgrim
:As possible.

==Concrete poetry==
Her best known work is the controversial ''Exit Strategies''. This prose/poem cycle was praised by [[E. E. Cummings]] as "poetry as pure energy...just in time for atomic age", but similarly condemned by others for the same qualities.

The famous 400 stanza, ''Eanie Meanie'' poem:

:Eanie Meanie Minie Meanie
:Mo Mo Moonie Minie
:Eanie Moonie Moonie Meanie 
:Oonie Eanie Moonie Me
:....

has few antecedents in the English language: language was to her pure sound, its meaning lost in our collective past

==Bibliography==
*''Poems''. by A.V. Howell; Melbourne : Massina, 1931.
*''Anamorphosis''. by A.V. Howell; Melbourne : Massina, 1937
*[https://archive.org/details/howell_monmot ''Monmot''.] by A.Verdun Howell; Mooramong Press 1938, Ballarat.
*''Exit Strategies''. by A.Verdun Howell; A.V.Howell, New York City 1950
*''A Dialogue on Our Obscurity''. by A.Verdun Howell in ''Avalanche'' 2 (Winter) 1970

== References ==
{{reflist}}

==Sources==
*''Of Sheep and Men: a History of Skipton''. by Notman, G.Claude. Skipton, Victoria Claude Notman, 1981
*''Modern poets on modern poetry'': edited by James Scully.  London : Fontana/Collins, 1966. 
*''Tyers and text:an analysis of the early poetry of A.Verdon Howell and the journals of Charles Tyers''. by Murray S.Gavin Victorian Historical Journal 1985 54(2):p34-41
*''Memoirs of a bastard angel''. by Harold Norse. New York : Morrow, 1989.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Howell, Ada Verdun}}
[[Category:1902 births]]
[[Category:1981 deaths]]
[[Category:Sound poets]]
[[Category:Writers from Melbourne]]
[[Category:20th-century Australian poets]]
[[Category:Australian women poets]]