Volume 09, Chapter 02 | December 2021

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Image by Monica Silva
Dear writers, readers and friends,

Welcome to our final newsletter of 2021!

December marks the festive season for many people, and a time to reflect on the year that has passed. It’s been another year of wide-spread uncertainty, anxiety and social isolation – themes that have run through many of the submissions we’ve received. And as the pandemic flexes its muscles again, the opening of Amanda Gorman’s poem The Hill We Climb seems apt, ‘where can we find light in this never-ending shade?’

We hope you will find some light here, dear writers.

When we offer our prompt on the first of each month, we hope to receive exciting new pieces that grab our attention and lodge themselves in our hearts. And we hope that, by publishing those pieces, we help share your voice with the world. But what we also aim to offer is a reason for you to carve out an hour for yourself, connect with your creativity and experience flow. Because that’s where joy, healing and self-actualisation can surface.

So, here’s our December gift to you, not a flying reindeer but a floating horse’s head. This image, entitled Horse with a Name, is the creation of Italian-based Brazilian photographer Monica Silva (https://www.msilva.photography/) , whose work explores the impact that existential and cultural daily life has on our psyches.

Opening our December issue is a piece by Anna Jacobson (http://www.annajacobson.com.au) that speaks of this impact too. Anna is a writer and artist from Brisbane, Australia. Amnesia Findings (https://www.uqp.com.au/books/amnesia-findings) (UQP, 2019), her first full-length poetry collection, won the 2018 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. In 2020, Anna won the Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing (Open Creative Nonfiction), was awarded a Queensland Writers Fellowship, and was shortlisted in the Spark Prize.

Page 2 offers a powerfully visceral poem by Hannah Bent (http://www.hannahbent.com) . Born and raised in Hong Kong, Hannah completed her Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art and Film from Central Saint Martins School of Art in London. She undertook further study in both directing and screenwriting at the Australian Film Television and Radio School and has a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Technology, Sydney. She won the 2013 Ray Koppe Young Writers Award for her debut novel as a work in progress. Her debut novel When Things Are Alive They Hum (https://www.ultimopress.com.au/hum) was published this year and has been described by Trent Dalton as a ‘gift’ that has ‘changed the way I’ve been going about my days.’ The Australian reviewed her novel as ‘a wise, wondrous celebration of life.’

Our third piece, penned by Alastair Hesp (http://www.alastairhesp.co.uk) , explores what isn’t on view. Alastair is currently completing a Poetry MA at The Manchester Writing School. His work has been featured in anthologies and journals such as The Verve Poetry Press, Acid Bath Publishing, The French Literary Review and Broken Sleep Books. As a poet with bipolar disorder, he uses poetry to go beyond the language of condition. In addition to formal publications, his work includes interdisciplinary projects in live/improvised performances. He is currently in production on a poetic art installation and a dance performance in Copenhagen around a sequence poem, in collaboration with Kant Fabrik (https://www.instagram.com/kantfabrik/) .

Before you venture off on your own creative paths, take a dawn walk with Shehnaz Suterwalla (https://www.rca.ac.uk/more/staff/dr-shehnaz-suterwalla/) on page 4. Shehnaz is a writer, critic and curator who teaches at the Royal College of Art, London. Her forthcoming book, Two Friends (And Other Stories) is a double memoir that speculates into the future, co-authored with Michelle Jana Chan (https://linktr.ee/michellejanachan) , who was a lead in our November issue.

Remember, dear writers, if you need to gift yourself with more pockets of writing-induced joy, you can submit a micro-piece in response to our daily visual prompt (https://www.instagram.com/visualverseanthology/) on Instagram. But for now, we hope this noble steed will inspire you to craft 50-500 words, written within an hour. Submissions close midnight (UK time) on December 15th.

Wishing you all a safe and happy December.

The image is the starting point, the rest is up to you.

Lucie
with the VV team: Kristen, Preti, Isabel, Tam, Nahda, Jordan, Aimee and Anna.
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Volume 09, Chapter 01 | November 2021

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Image by Frederick Cayley Robinson

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Dear writers, readers and friends,

November has arrived and that means something extra special to us – it’s our birthday!

Happy eighth birthday to every member of the Visual Verse community! Whether you’ve been part of our tribe for some time now, or have just recently entered the fold, we want to thank each one of you for making VV what it is: dynamic, diverse, celebratory and inspirational. Together, this is what we’ve achieved:
* We’ve published 96 issues since 2013 – this month’s issue will be our 97^th.
* Almost 9000 pieces have been published to date – that’s somewhere between 450,000 and 4,500,000 words – the equivalent of around 50 novels!
* These pieces have been written by more than 350 lead writers and 3500 contributors. We’re proud to have created a space that fosters the development of fledging writers, while promoting the work of seasoned scribes and supporting everyone in-between.

All these figures bring one word to mind – collaboration. VV wouldn’t be possible without the artists whose work sparks our imaginations each month; the leads whose pieces open the channels of inspiration; the team of publishers, editors and curators working behind the scenes; and you, our beloved writing community. Even after all these years, your work still excites us, makes us reflect, shares with us a new point of view. We’re grateful for every piece of work we receive and the window it offers us into your hearts and minds. In return, we hope that each month, we foster your creativity and provide you with connection and community.

In the spirit of collaboration, all our November leads work closely with a creative partner, to develop innovative new work and support craft development in others. Our fabulous quintet of leads was inspired by an autumnally hued image by English painter, illustrator and decorator Frederick Cayley Robinson (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/frederick-cayley-robinson-1857) . We love the sense of narrative it evokes, as though it’s a still-shot from an unfolding moment.

Opening this issue is a piece exploring what we choose to hear – and ignore – by Emily Cataneo (http://www.emilycataneo.com/) . Emily is a writer and journalist from New England. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as Indiana Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Lightspeed, and her nonfiction in venues The Guardian, the Boston Globe, Slate, NPR, Atlas Obscura, and more. She is co-founder of the Redbud Writing Project (https://www.redbudwriting.org/) with fellow North Carolina State University MFA graduate, Arshia Simkin. Redbud is a creative writing organisation that teaches workshops across many genres, both online and in community spaces in North Carolina’s Triangle.

Our second and third pieces contrast with each other beautifully, in style and tone. These pieces have been penned by Onjuli Datta and Mikaella Clements – co-authors of The View Was Exhausting (https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/mikaella-clements/the-view-was-exhausting/9781472271730/) , a modern love story about power, fame and privilege. This creative duo is married and live together in Berlin. You can find them both on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/mikandonj/) , or Mikaella on Twitter (https://twitter.com/mikclements) .

Page 4’s piece is the perfect accompaniment to your bucketful of Halloween sweets. Its author is Redbud Writing Project (https://www.redbudwriting.org/) co-founder, Arshia Simkin (https://www.arshiasimkin.com/) . Arshia was born in Pakistan and spent the first six years of her life there. She grew up in Arlington, Virginia and currently lives in Raleigh with her husband. A former lawyer, Arshia’s writing has appeared in Crazyhorse. She was one of three winners of the 2020 CRAFT Flash Fiction contest, and received honourable mention in NC State’s James Hurt Prize for fiction.

Our final lead piece for November is a beautiful reflection on shifting relationships with shadow, written by Michelle Jana Chan (http://www.michellejanachan.com/) . Michelle is travel editor of Vanity Fair; her TEDx (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2ZnosgO8XA) is “Hitchhiking, galaxies, and why travel is not bad for the planet”. Her debut novel Song (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Song-Michelle-Jana-Chan/dp/1783525479/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) (Unbound) was described by Bernardine Evaristo as ‘a wonderfully lush and atmospheric odyssey of survival against all odds’; Elif Shafak called it: ‘Precise, heartfelt, breathtaking’. Her upcoming book, Two Friends (And Other Stories) is a double memoir which speculates into the future, co-authored with Shehnaz Suterwalla. She is launching a literary/travel podcast The Wandering Book Collector in December.

And so, dear writers, now it’s over to you. We can’t wait to receive your electronic birthday parcels, filled with fresh, innovative, experimental writing between 50-500 words, in response to this image and written within an hour. Challenge yourself. Push your boundaries. Go beyond the literal. Surprise us and, most of all, surprise yourself. Submissions close midnight (UK time) on November 15th.

The image is the starting point, the rest is up to you.

Lucie
with the VV team: Kristen, Preti, Isabel, Tam, Nahda, Jordan, Aimee and Anna.
Follow us

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Volume 08, Chapter 05 | March 2021

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Image by Stefan Keller
Guest edited by Zoe Turner, Comma Press

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Dear writers, readers and friends,

For your March inspiration, we offer otherworldly vibes via a fantastical image by Stefan Keller. This scene, with its juxtaposition of worlds, is a nod to our core objective: bring together the worlds of artists and writers to create something spectacular. A wonderful offshoot of this aim is the way our platform also brings us together with like-minded publishers, so we are thrilled to unveil the March issue in collaboration with Comma Press (https://commapress.co.uk/) , an indie publisher whose work we have long admired. Like us, Comma Press celebrates the alchemy of collaboration with collections by new and established authors, interdisciplinary collaborations between authors and experts (e.g. writers + scientists), and translation by voices from across the world, including the first ever collection of science-fiction from Palestine, Palestine +100 (https://commapress.co.uk/books/palestine-100/) . They have twice been shortlisted for the British Book Awards for ‘Small Press of the Year’
(North of England) and in 2016 they founded the Northern Fiction Alliance (http://northernfictionalliance.com/) alongside Peepal Tree Press, Dead Ink Books and And Other Stories. The Alliance is a radical publishing collective showcasing the creativity, diversity and outward-looking agenda that sets publishers in the North of England apart. Since our co-founder Preti moved to the North-East a year ago this March, now seems a good time to celebrate that anniversary with the best of Northern England’s publishing.

We kick off with a brilliant prose piece by Gaia Holmes, a freelance writer and creative writing tutor who works with schools, universities, libraries and other community groups throughout the West Yorkshire region. She runs ‘Igniting The Spark’, a weekly writing workshop at Dean Clough, Halifax, and is the co-host of ‘MUSE-LI’, an online writing group. She has had three full length poetry collections published by Comma Press: Dr James Graham’s Celestial Bed (2006), Lifting The Piano With One Hand (2013), Where The Road Runs Out (2018) and Tales from the Tachograph, a collaborative work with Winston Plowes (Calder Valley Poetry, 2017). She also contributed to Comma’s latest horror anthology, The New Abject (https://commapress.co.uk/books/the-new-abject) , and she is currently turning her attention towards writing short stories.

Sarah Schofield (http://icallitresearch.blogspot.com/) , on page two, also contributed to Comma’s horror anthology, The New Abject (https://commapress.co.uk/books/the-new-abject) , and her stories have been published in Lemistry, Bio-Punk, Thought X, Beta Life, Spindles and Conradology (all Comma Press) Wall: Nine Stories from Edge Hill Writers, (EHUP) Best of British Short Stories 2020 (Salt) Spilling Ink Flash Fiction Anthology, Back and Beyond Arts Publication, Litfest’s The Language of Footprints, Synaesthesia Magazine, Lakeview International Journal, Woman’s Weekly and others. She has been shortlisted on the Bridport and the Guardian Travel Writing Competition and won the Orange New Voices Prize, Writer’s Inc and The Calderdale Fiction Prize. An excerpt from her story ‘The Bactogarden’ featured on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book. Sarah is an Associate Tutor of Creative Writing at Edge Hill University and runs writing courses and workshops in a variety of community settings. Her debut short
story collection is due out in 2021 with Comma Press.

On page three, we welcome Karline Smith (https://www.blacksapphirepress.com/) . Born to Jamaican parents who arrived in Britain in the 1960s, Smith was one of the first black female crime writers to deal with the subject of drug gangs in inner-city Britain. She is the author of three novels, Moss Side Massive, which was dramatised by Liverpool’s Unity Theatre, Full Crew, and Goosebumps and Butterflies are Fairy Tales (published by Black Sapphire Press). She is also the author of several short stories, variously published in The City Life Book of Manchester Short Stories (Penguin), M.O.: Crimes of Practice, and Resist (Comma). She is currently working on her fourth novel.

And on page four we feature Gregory Norminton (http://www.gregorynorminton.co.uk) , whose novels include The Ship of Fools (2002), Arts and Wonders (2004), Ghost Portrait (2005) and Serious Things (2008), all published by Sceptre. Other books include The Lost Art of Losing (2012), Thumbnails (2013) and Beacons – stories for our not so distant future (editor, 2013). His stories have appeared on BBC Radio 4, and in Prospect, Resurgence, London Magazine and The Lonely Crowd. He teaches creative writing and English at Manchester Metropolitan University.

You’ll notice a large learning toward prose this month. In our recent survey a few people mention that there’s a heavy leaning toward poetry on Visual Verse. May these prose/prose-poetry pieces signal to all writers that we accept (and, indeed, welcome) all kinds of writing, not just poetry.

So, what will you write? As always, the image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Kristen, Preti, Lucie, Isabel and Luke
with huge thanks to our guest editor Zoe Turner and Comma Press

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Volume 05, Chapter 01 | November 2017

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Image by Alicia Bock courtesy of Stocksy (https://www.stocksy.com/ALICIABOCK)

Curated in collaboration with Creative Review’s Storytelling issue (https://www.creativereview.co.uk/the-storytelling-issue-oct-nov-2017/)

Dear writers, readers and friends,

HAPPY FOURTH BIRTHDAY.
Welcome to the very special fourth birthday edition of Visual Verse. We, your loyal publishers, are so very proud. We cannot believe that this project, begun on a creative whim in 2013, has flourished to become the avant-garde online citadel of your ongoing construction. It has survived our day jobs for four years and sometimes we think we have survived because of Visual Verse. Thank you all.

Over the past four years we have commissioned big names and supported emerging ones, we’ve published over 4000 pieces while you’ve been writing your own collections, stories and novels – and getting published and winning prizes yourselves. We’ve celebrated it all with our weird and wonderful tweets (over 4000 of those, a fitting number for our fourth year) and with various events, workshops and partnerships that have seen Visual Verse come alive in gallery spaces, within artists’ projects, as part of performance pieces, and now… in print.

We are so excited to celebrate our birthday issue with a collaboration with Creative Review (https://www.creativereview.co.uk/) , a magazine that regularly inspires us with features about the best of the best in the book design world, as well as the best of the best across the whole spectrum of art and design. Thanks to their lovely Deputy Editor, Mark Sinclair, we have been able to play a small role in helping their latest issue come together. Their October/November issue is a storytelling special in which they ask: could a picture be a starting point? What kind of responses might a single image evoke? They asked their readers to select an image to be featured on the cover and reader Stuart McFerrers suggested the image you see above, by artist Alicia Bock (http://www.aliciabock.com/) via the Stocksy photo library (https://www.stocksy.com/ALICIABOCK) . We helped commission writers to respond to the image by asking a handful of VV contributors whose work always makes us
smile – for reasons of style, substance and sheer visual verve – to respond. They are published in the print issue of Creative Review magazine, and as our supporting leads on Visual Verse. In no particular order they are Susanna Crossman, Drew Milne, Rishi Dastidar, Hazel Mason, Clare Archibald, Elizabeth Gibson and Angela Young. Grab hold of a copy of Creative Review to support us, the writers and the power of creative collaboration.

https://www.creativereview.co.uk/the-storytelling-issue-oct-nov-2017/

As you know we also support small presses, and often publish lead writers who come from the UK’s leading independent publishers including Fitzcarraldo, Comma, Peepal Tree, And Other Stories and Galley Beggar Press. So it’s only right our lead piece this month is written by the ultimate small press champion Neil Griffiths. Not only is he the author of two previous novels – Betrayal in Naples (Penguin), winner of the Authors’ Club Best First Novel, and Saving Caravaggio (Penguin), shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year with a new novel – he also has a new book out by Dodo Ink, As a God Might Be, published last month. Neil also co-founded the Republic of Consciousness Prize (http://www.republicofconsciousness.com/) for Small Presses and is an all-round wonder and gift. Follow him at @neilgriffiths (http://www.twitter.com/neilgriffiths) .

We couldn’t do what we do without our patrons, one of whom – Cathy Galvin – is co-founder of The Word Factory. She’s also the brains behind the wonderful C (http://www.thewordfactory.tv/site/events/) itizens: The New Story (http://www.thewordfactory.tv/site/citizen-festival/) festival taking place in London from 10-12 November and featuring an amazing line up (including more than a few VV-ers) – so get down there, and get into it.

As the new Visual Verse year begins, here are our birthday wishes: that you keep writing, keep submitting, keep reading, keep tweeting – help us make it to five. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Birthday love,
Preti and Kristen

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Volume 03, Chapter 01 | November 2015

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Celebrating our 2nd birthday.
Image by Coralie Bickford-Smith

Dear Writers,

Welcome to our 2nd birthday edition, and the beginning of our third volume. How far we have come! In April 2013 we came up with a mad plan to celebrate the inter-collaborative process of writing and art. We wanted to create a contemporary digital platform for cross-pollinating visual arts and literature and we had two rules: 1) there would be set generative constraints, and 2) the site had to be elegant, reflecting traditional book design. Kristen is a publisher of beautiful books (http://www.thecurvedhouse.com/) , Preti is a writer (http://www.preti-taneja.co.uk) , Pete Lewis is a designer (http://www.mrpetelewis.com/) of the highest order… and so in November 2013, Visual Verse was born.

When we first launched we were publishing about 30 submissions a month. A watershed moment came in March 2014, when Denise Nestor (http://www.denisenestorillustration.com/) ’s pencil drawing of birds alongside Adam Marek’s The Factory Explosion (https://visualverse.org/submissions/factory-explosion/) in the lead caught your imaginations. Overnight submissions exploded and we had 80 wonderful pieces on the site. In October this year, for the first time, we published over 100 amazing pieces.

Every day that we publish you, we feel delighted and honoured. As the site grows we are refreshed by your commitment, your imagination and your energy. A look at our writers reveals familiar names such as Stella Duffy, Adam Foulds and Nikesh Shukla; and names who we published as they were becoming ‘names’: Eley Williams, Nisha Ramayya, Sandeep Parmar, Sophie Mayer, Declan Ryan, Hedley Twiddle – the list goes on. We have contributors from across Africa, the USA, UK, Indonesia and more… Visual Verse is now a chorus of global voices.

We couldn’t have got this far without our patrons: writers Andrew Motion, Ali Smith, Cathy Galvin and Bernardine Evaristo, and photographers Mark Garry and Marc Schlossman. Thanks go to them.

Now, to meet the party and begin our third year. As a nod to our love of, and respect for, beautiful book design we feature an image by one of the UK’s leading designers, Coralie-Bickford Smith (http://cb-smith.com/) . Coralie is responsible for many of the stunning Penguin series that grace our shelves including the Great Foods series, the clothbound classics and the exquisite F. Scott Fitzgerald series. This month, Penguin imprint Particular Books have published The Fox and the Star – written, illustrated and designed by Coralie herself. This magical book embodies all that Visual Verse stands for – that moment went words and images wrap themselves around eachother so perfectly that you could never imagine them being apart.

We are absolutely thrilled to be celebrating and leading this month with a piece by Ivan Vladislavić. Born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1957, he now lives in Johannesburg. His acclaimed fiction includes Double Negative, The Restless Supermarket and 101 Detectives. His work has won many awards, including Yale University’s prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize in 2015, for which writers receive an unrestricted grant of $150,000 to support their writing. His classic novel The Folly (http://www.andotherstories.org/book/the-folly/) , a sophisticated yet funny book about the power of suggestion and castles in the sky, is published by And Other Stories on 11 sNovember 2015. You read it here first!

Our second lead is the poet Helen Mort, whose first collection ‘Division Street’ was published in 2013 and won the Fenton Aldeburgh prize. She is a Douglas Caster Cultural Fellow at The University of Leeds.
And to celebrate properly, we have commissioned three pieces from longstanding contributors to the site, whose work we admire every month. Rishi Dastidar is a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. A runner-up in the 2011 Cardiff International Poetry Competition and the 2014 Troubadour International Poetry Competition, his work has featured in the 2012 anthologies Adventures in Form (Penned in the Margins) and Lung Jazz (Cinnamon Press / Eyewear Publishing), and most recently in 2014’s Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe). He tweets @BetaRish.

Myrto Petsota was born in Athens, Europe. Places of residence during her formative years include countries that no longer exist, countries that are about to disappear and others that are yet to be, namely Czechoslovakia, Italy, Greece and Scotland. She now writes from Paris, where she also teaches, practices literary criticism and exile. She is immensely fond of the quarterly French literary review L’Atelier du Roman, where she publishes some of her critical pieces of writing.

And last but not least, Hazel Mason, who describes herself thus: ‘Proud to have been a sister in the NHS, now a happy opsimath in Norwich who has stumbled on the panacea of poetry, postal critiquing and vibrant literary group discussion, wallowing in words.’ She tweets @hazelmason10.

So dear writers, we hope you’ll be inspired to keep submitting, keep tweeting us, keep reading each other and talking about what you like about each others’ work. And we hope to see you all at our second birthday party, in conjunction with The Word Factory and the VS Pritchett short story prize, at Waterstone’s Picadilly on Saturday 28^th November, 6-8pm. Book here: http://www.thewordfactory.tv/site/events/ – we hope to see you there!

In the meantime, amidst all the celebrations, don’t forget what it’s really all about… the image is the starting point: the text is up to you.

Happy 2^nd Birthday Visual Verse!

Preti and Kristen

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