Ada Verdun Howell

Who was Ada Verdun Howell?

Ada Verdun Howell was an Australian author and poet. Born in Beaufort, Victoria, on her father's sheep property, she was educated at Ruytons Girls' School. 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. Her early writing, which she later eschewed as adolescent, showed considerable skill utilising Indigenous Australian phonetic forms of her childhood in Western Victoria. She is best known for her later writing, much praised for its great formal and feminine qualities, as an early sound poet.

Her most influential works include the strangely disquieting Dookerimbud, Monmot and Neemini 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.