Bloom and Bones

Bloom & Bones is a collaboration between Swansea poets Rae Howells and Jean James with colour at its heart. In words rather than paint, the poets capture the shades of very different stories. From Georgia O'Keeffe to a murderer on the run, from a lonely woman in an insane asylum to goldfinches visiting an expectant mother, and from a plague of ladybirds to a meteoroid tracking through space, these poems take the reader on a rainbow journey through time and place.

The pamphlet is inspired by the bestselling book The Secret Lives of Colour, and works through the ten family colours set out in its pages, beginning with white, through yellow, orange, pink, red, purple, blue, green, and brown, concluding with a dark full stop at black.

Rae Howells is a poet, journalist, media academic and lavender farmer. She has colour-grapheme synaesthesia, which means she perceives words and numbers in colour, an effect that often influences her poetry. She has won both the Rialto and Welsh International poetry competitions and her work has featured in a wide range of journals, including Magma, Poetry Wales, The Rialto, New Welsh Review, Acumen, Envoi, Poetry Ireland, Black Bough, Marble and The Cardiff Review, as well as in the Poetry Business anthology, The Result is What You See Today. She can be heard reading her work at www.iambapoet.com/rae-howells and you can read more of her poetry and journalism at raehowells.co.uk. She lives in Swansea with her husband and two daughters.

Jean James was born in Portadown, Northern Ireland, but now lives in Swansea. Having retired from full-time teaching, she undertook a Creative Writing MA at Swansea University, with a particular focus on nature writing and poetry. Jean has been published in both Abridged and the Welsh Arts Review. She won The British Haiku Society haibun competition in 2013 and came first and runner-up in the BHS tanka competition in 2015. She came third in the Welsh Poetry Competition in 2018. A selection of her short poems was published by Snapshot Press in the form of an echapbook in 2019.