Image by Oscar Keys
Hello dear Readers,
What a month. A real-life House of Cards is playing out in British politics while that wild Trump-a-thon rages on across the seas. Our hearts are heavy for the lives lost in the Orlando bombings and now, in Turkey, we mourn the 42 people who lost their lives in the Ataturk airport bombing. It is hard not to feel helpless but, as Michele Hanson, writing in the Guardian, reminds us: In a world of fear and loathing, we need art more than ever (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jun/27/art-education-creativity-transforming-lives) . We have our words, dear writers, and now is the time to use them.
For the July issue we give you a beautiful image by photographer Oscar Keys. We came across this image some months ago (thank you to the Twitter friend who recommended this one, we can’t find the Tweet but you know who you are) and it has stuck with us ever since. Now seems like the right time to deliver an image that is both soft and ambient, and ominous and threatening. We expect some dark responses, but we also hope some of you will find a playfulness in this image too.
Each month we strive to bring you a wide range of lead writers who represent the freshest voices out there, and this month is no exception. First up is Irenosen Okojie, writer and Arts Project Manager. Her debut novel Butterfly Fish has just won a Betty Trask Award, given to young writers of “outstanding literary merit”, according to the prize, and she is now hard at work on a new collection of short stories called Speak Gigantular, which will be published later this year. Her piece will hopefully tide us over until then! You can also read more from her on the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/profile/irenosen-okojie ) website.
Shaista Tayabali, who we publish on page 2, is one of our Twitter finds who we came across while scouring the internet for interesting takes on life and living. Coincidentally, she lives in Cambridge, is a poet and writer and since graduating with an MA in Creative Writing from Anglia Ruskin University, she has been working to complete her first book, a memoir. Shaista has been blogging for several years (http://www.lupusinflight.com) and contributes frequently to the world of ethics and humanities in medicine; her work has appeared in Hektoen International, IJUDH, a journal of global healthcare, and various poetry magazines online. She brings us a deeply moving poem for Jo Cox, the amazing British MP who was tragically murdered in London last month.
Our Page 3 we are excited to publish a wonderful piece by Theodoros Chiotis, who writes poetry and code poetry in Greek and English. Theo is the editor and translator of the anthology Futures: Poetry of the Greek Crisis (Penned in the Margins, 2015). His work has appeared in print and online magazines and anthologies in Greece, UK, Australia, Germany, Croatia amongst others. He lives and works in Athens.
As Visual Verse makes its way through the chaos via Cambridge (UK) and Berlin (Germany) we are proud to publish your submissions from all over the world. If nothing else, we can stand together and celebrate our collective achievement in creating an anthology that is a beacon of hope for international collaboration, diversity, inclusion, humanity, art and so much more.
Write on, dear friends, write on.
Preti and Kristen
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