Volume 06, Chapter 01 | Writing Competition Results

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Image by Hannah Coulson

Dear writers, readers and friends,

This month, we switched things up and asked you to submit a piece of writing in just 24 hours for a chance to be selected as one of our lead writers. We received over 100 submissions and from these we could pick just three. It was intense, to say the least! With the help of our stellar judges – Bernardine Evaristo, Sam Jordison, Andrew Motion, Eloise Millar and Philippa Sitters – we managed to get 100 down to a longlist of eight, then pick the final three. We would like to thank all of those who submitted such a spectacular array of work and congratulate both the winners and the long- and shortlisted writers:

Winners
Christopher John Eggett – It was decided to fold up my town
Renee Fisher – Twisted Bridges
Suzanne Ushie – Envy

Shortlist
Rishi Dastidar – Spectacle
Emmanuella Dekonor – In the Pink Wash of British Accra
Sharon Jones – Rememberings
Frank McHugh – Elculo
Andrew Strickland – F-Words

Longlist
Valerie Bence – Shades of Pink and a Lighthouse
Alexandra Davis – Is This a Diaorama?
Pat Edwards – Cut Out
Elizabeth Gibson – Leaving Manchester
Motl Lazarus – Misdirections
Hiromi Suzuki – The Quintet of the Holiday Inn Cafe
Jordan Trethewey – Collage Town
Carole Webster – I Opened You Gently Like Paper and Your Skin Made Sense to Me

About the Winners
Our headliner, Renee Fisher, grew up in New Zealand and the UK, studied English Literature and Visual Arts (ideal combo for Visual Verse) and has spent the last few years living in Moscow and Riga, teaching English to children and adults. She now lives in Prague with her partner and baby daughter. Of her writing, Renee said, ‘It has mostly been confined to diaries – a furtive and relentlessly private pursuit – and it’s only recently that I’ve begun to shape it into stories and poems, though they still borrow heavily from my diary habit. I’ll forever be in thrall to first person narratives; journals, travelogues, letters, notes scribbled on scraps of paper, confessions and dreams.’ We are thrilled that the judges have chosen writing from someone who is only just starting to put her work into the world.

Our page two lead is Christopher John Eggett, a writer and poet from Cambridgeshire. He will send you poetry every Friday in his literary newsletter Etch To Their Own (https://medium.com/etch-to-their-own) , where he scratches away at literature’s subtext. Chris is working on a full length collection of poetic essays including Essay on Falling {insert poem here} (https://softcartel.com/2018/08/06/essay-on-falling-insert-poem-here-what-we-can-see-from-here-by-christopher-john-eggett/) , and occasionally writes short stories about accidentally having a lobster for a boyfriend (https://burninghousepress.com/2018/03/30/the-boyfriend-pinch-by-christopher-john-eggett/) . His work has appeared in Euonia Review (https://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/2018/07/07/you-are-good-for-poetry/) , The City Quill (https://medium.com/cjeggett/poetry-featured-in-the-city-quill-455ab0a7c688) and Furtive Dalliance and can be found upcoming in Bone & Ink and Human Repair Kit. He tweets as @CJEggett
(https://twitter.com/CjEggett) and you can read more about him on his website https://cjeggett.co.uk/

And on page three we are delighted to publish Suzanne Ushie, who was born and raised in Calabar, Nigeria. In 2012, she was awarded an international scholarship to undertake the MA in Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia, where she made Distinction. Her work has appeared in OZY, Saraba, Fiction Fix, Conte Online, Lunch Ticket, Brittle Paper, Gambit: Newer African Writing and elsewhere. She has received support from Hedgebrook, Writers Omi at Ledig House, Ox-Bow School of Arts and The Whiting Foundation. She lives in Lagos, Nigeria.

About the Judging
The long-longlist was made from a day of reading through over 100 submissions, getting that down to a longlist, and then a shortlist of eight. The shortlist went to our judges over the weekend, and we made sure they were judged blind, without bylines. When we got the results in, most of the judges had overlaps in what they chose, with slight variation. With a very scientific points system, we tallied up the winners. And if we had published four pieces, or five, our two very close runners up would have been in there – In the Pink Wash of British Accra by Emmanuella Dekonor and F-Words by Andrew Strickland – you can read them on the site now.

Our judges were extremely impressed by the quality of the writing. Philippa Sitters from DGA literary agency said:

“These submissions were so accomplished, I find it hard to believe they were turned around within an hour. They’re a display of genuine talent and it was incredibly fun to read such an array of pieces inspired by the single visual. Congratulations to all those who entered.”

Sam Jordison from Galley Beggar Press said:

“I was impressed by these submissions. More than that, I enjoyed them. There are serious ideas and intentions behind them all, but the thing that most struck me was how good it is to see writers having fun with the language and ideas. There are creative sparks flying around their words… The three Galley Beggar choices exemplified that spirit of adventure. They felt fresh and exploratory. They were also written with wit and humour and grace – and because of that the emotional punches they packed were all the stronger.”

All of your writing this month is in response to a wonderful, quirky collage by London-based Scottish artist Hannah Coulson (https://www.hannahcoulson.co.uk/) , an illustrator who loves experimenting with shapes and colours. When she’s not busily illustrating, Hannah teaches at the Royal College of Art in London. She made this work without any intention and we love that it has come full circle on Visual Verse, where we ask you to respond without any intention.

So, dear writers, with so much excellence still to publish, we’re so glad to be five and thank you very much for being part of the amazing community that is Visual Verse.

Happy Birthday! The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Kristen, Preti, Lucie
(And welcome to our newest team member, volunteer Editorial Assistant, Luke!)

Volume 06, Chapter 01 | November 2018

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Image by Hannah Coulson

Today, we turn 5.

Visual Verse was launched in 2013 by Kristen Harrison, Pete Lewis and Preti Taneja – three friends with modest plans. We hoped only to provide an online space where writers and artists could collaborate freely. Thanks to the passion and enthusiasm of writers around the world, Visual Verse has far exceeded all expectations.

Over the past 5 years we have published 60 issues in 5 volumes. We have received almost 8,000 submissions and published 5,500 pieces by 1716 individual writers. And, according to Google Analytics, we have been read by people in every part of the globe except the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. What are those Norwegians doing?

None of this would have been possible without you – our writers and artists – who have made this publication the beautiful, positive, diverse, boundary-pushing celebration of creative collaboration that it is.

And none of this would be possible without the support of those working behind the scenes. Thank you to our Deputy Editor Lucie Stevens whose tireless work keeps Visual Verse running month to month; thank you to our special guest curators and co-editors Eley Williams, Richard Georges, Carmen Marcus and So Mayer who have injected fresh creativity and brought amazing new writers; and finally, a huge thank you to our patrons Bernardine Evaristo, Cathy Galvin, Mark Garry, Andrew Motion, Marc Schlossman and Ali Smith for their ongoing support.

Today we have a very special surprise for you to celebrate our 5th birthday edition. Instead of publishing a new issue with one image and a selection of lead pieces, we are instead giving you – our amazing community of talented and dedicated writers – the opportunity to be one of our three lead writers this month.

All submissions received before 12pm GMT tomorrow (2nd November) will be longlisted for one of our lead spots. A shortlist of eight pieces will be chosen and from these, our judging panel will select the top three.

The Judges

Bernardine Evaristo
Award-winning writer of novels, verse and criticism and founder of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize.

Sam Jordison and Eloise Millar
From the superlative independent publisher, Galley Beggar Press.

Andrew Motion
Poet Laureate 2000-2010, Homewood Professor of the Arts at Johns’ Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA.

Philippa Sitters
Literary agent at leading agency DGA.

The image is the starting point, the text is up to you. Go forth.

Your faithful founders: Kristen Harrison, Pete Lewis and Preti Taneja.

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Volume 04, Chapter 10 | August 2017

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Image by Kassiël Gerrits/CODA Museum

George Spender is currently guest editor for Visual Verse. George is the senior editor of Oberon Books (https://www.oberonbooks.com/) , an independent publisher in London specialising in theatre and performance. This issue is introduced by Visual Verse curator and co-founder, Kristen Harrison.

Dear writers, readers and friends,

This month, I (Kristen) have staged my own little Shakespearean coup. I have overthrown both our guest editor George and our supreme editor-in-chief, Preti Taneja (http://www.preti-taneja.co.uk/) , to commission our lead writer myself. Fear not, for my reasons are pure and good. Our very own Preti has been posited on page one as our lead writer for August at my behest, and after much persuading! August sees the publication of Preti’s first full-length novel, We That Are Young (https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/paperback-shop/we-that-are-young) , a remarkable retelling of King Lear set against the rise of nationalism in contemporary India. Her publisher, Galley Beggar Press, call it “superb” while Andrew Motion has said the book is “Utterly engrossing, very smart, very moving… Subtle, ambitious and highly original”. Last month it was tipped by Justine Jordan, literary editor of the Guardian, as one of her Booker longlist predictions for 2017
(https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/jul/26/the-man-booker-prize-2017-longlist-who-should-be-on-it) . Preti has given a huge amount to Visual Verse since we launched, publishing literally thousands of submissions month-by-month, and developing a vibrant, talented community of writers. We would be nothing without her so to force her hand from editor to writer was a no-brainer. This is the only way for us, her Visual Verse family, to celebrate her debut. You can read the first chapter (https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/extract-we-that-are-young-taneja) of We That Are Young on the lovely Galley Beggar website and you can also order one of 500 limited edition copies (https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/shop-1/ehisxs910lbr9bpmdvl044yhkaofz7) , otherwise keep an eye out for it in all good bookshops from August 10.

So, here we unveil your glorious visual prompt by Dutch artist Kassiël Gerrits (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassi%C3%ABl_Gerrits) . It has two of my favourite aesthetic characteristics: the texture of a hand-printed work and perfect symmetry. Bliss. Preti kicks us off with a beautifully formed Three Lessons and she is followed by an exciting trio of writers commissioned by George.

On page 2 we present Livia Franchini (http://www.unitedagents.co.uk/livia-franchini) , a bilingual writer and literary translator from Tuscany, Italy. Her work has been featured, or is forthcoming, in Hotel, La Errante, The Quietus, 3AM: Magazine, LESTE and The White Review, among others. Her new English translation of Natalia Ginzburg’s The Road to the City is supported by the Italian Cultural Institute and is forthcoming with Twins Editions in 2017. Her Italian translations of Eileen Gunn and James Tiptree Jr. are forthcoming with Nero Edizioni in 2017. In 2016 she co-founded CORDA, a journal about friendship in the time of new borders. She is one of the writers-in-residence for the European project CELA, which will see her work translated into six different languages. Livia lives in London, and is currently working on her first novel. She is represented by Zoe Ross at United Agents. Find Livia on Twitter @livfranchini (https://twitter.com/@livfranchini) .

Next up we have Phil Porter (https://twitter.com/philipporter) , an award-winning playwright whose works include Blink (Soho Theatre), Vice Versa (Royal Shakespeare Company), The Man With The Hammer (Plymouth Theatre Royal) and The Christmas Truce (RSC). His play The Cracks In My Skin, for Manchester Royal Exchange, won the Bruntwood Award and Stealing Sweets And Punching People was produced by Theatre 503/Off-Broadway. In addition to his own works, Porter has edited and adapted a number of plays including Molière’s The Miser, Thomas Middleton’s A Mad World, My Masters (RSC, with Sean Foley), Shakespeare’s The Tempest (RSC/Little Angel) and Janos Hay’s The Stonewatcher (National Theatre). Phil Tweets at @PhilipPorter (https://twitter.com/@PhilipPorter) .

And last but by no means least, Peter Doggett (http://www.peterdoggett.org/) , a magazine journalist and editor who spent two decades interviewing hundreds of musicians, authors and other public figures before becoming a full-time author ten years ago. In 2000, Penguin Books published his pioneering history of the collision between rock and country music, Are You Ready for the Country, which was later commemorated by a double-CD set issued by Warner Music. In his 2009 book, You Never Give Me Your Money, he traced the seeds of the Beatles’ split, and then followed the desperate and ultimately vain efforts of the four ex-members to deal with the fall-out, and escape its legacy. He is also the author of You Never Give Me Your Money and F**k: An Irreverent History of the F-Word, published under his mischievous pseudonym, Rufus Lodge, for the HarperCollins imprint, The Friday Project. Peter lives in London with the artist and illustrator (and professional counsellor), Rachel
Baylis. Find him on Twitter @Peter_Doggett (https://twitter.com/@Peter_Doggett) .

So writers, where will this bold and abstract prompt take you? You know the score, the image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Enjoy,
Kristen Harrison (Curator and Overthrower)
George Spender (Guest Editor)

—

Join us on Twitter:
Visual Verse @visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse)
Oberon Books @OberonBooks (https://twitter.com/oberonbooks)

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Volume 03, Chapter 02 | December 2015

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Published in collaboration with Limehouse Books
Image by Philipp Keller

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Prepare for lift-off as we launch into December – a month when the days are darker but the lights are brighter. We have gone a little space-crazy this month as British Astronaut Tim Peake (http://principia.org.uk/) prepares to embark on a historic mission to the International Space Station. What better way to celebrate than with this incredible image of a Medaka fish on the ISS by Philipp Keller, featured by NASA in their Flickr Gallery (https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/) . What will you make of this luminous creature, dear writers?

Our lead pieces this month are in collaboration with London publisher, Limehouse Books (http://limehousebooks.co.uk/) , bringing you a selection of work from some radical voices. First up is Sophia Blackwell (https://twitter.com/@SophiaBlackwell) , performance poet and novelist. After My Own Heart is her first novel with Limehouse and her new collection The Fire Eater’s Lover will be published by Burning Eye Books next year. ‘Sophistication Incarnate’ as her website (http://www.sophiablackwell.com/) describes her – we couldn’t agree more.

On page 2 we have Sophie McCook (http://twitter.com/scriptreader) , a reformed TV and film scriptwriter, now author of Thinkless, a novel equivalent to Peep Show for women. Just what we need to brighten up the month!

Next is North Morgan (https://twitter.com/northmorgan) , who has been described by the Independent as ‘a bitterly funny satirist’ and is author of Exit Through The Wound and Highlights of My Last Regret. If you haven’t come across this writer yet start with his Tweets (https://twitter.com/northmorgan) .

Finally, huge thanks to Bobby Nayyar, writer and publisher at Limehouse Books itself. Bobby will be launching his debut poetry collection Glass Scissors in January, he says, (probably). Follow Bobby (http://www.twitter.com/bobbynayyar) on Twitter too, and enjoy the excellent Limehouse (http://limehousebooks.co.uk/) list.

So, we are feeling the love for all of you this month having just celebrated our second birthday. Thank you to those of you who could make it to Waterstone’s Piccadilly on Saturday. We celebrated with our dear friends at WordFactory (http://www.thewordfactory.tv/) , enjoying readings from John Boyne, Cathy Galvin, SJ Naudé and Kirsty Logan. For those who missed it, Preti read poems by David Rain and Andrew Motion from chapters of Visual Verse, and we toasted all of you writers, readers and followers who have made the last two years such a wild ride. One of our best birthday presents? Coralie Bickford-Smith, whose image from her new book The Fox and the Star featured in our November edition (https://visualverse.org/images/coralie-bickford-smith/) , has just been announced winner of the Waterstone’s Books of The Year 2015 (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/01/waterstones-book-of-year-coralie-bickford-smith-the-fox-and-the-star) . Impeccable taste, Waterstones, and so
well-deserved.

Wishing you a happy December, dear writers, with all that it might bring. For us, we simply wish for more great writing, more submissions and a very creative countdown to 2016.

The picture is the starting point, the text is up to you (https://visualverse.org/submit/) .

Kristen and Preti

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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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