Volume 09, Chapter 07 | May 2022

Image by Miikka Luotio

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Today we take flight with a new issue of Visual Verse and we take flight to a new home for Visual Verse. After almost a decade in Berlin, The Curved House is moving to Melbourne, Australia. We will continue to run Visual Verse as a global publication, with half the editorial team in Australia and half in Europe, and we will continue to publish diverse and innovative writers from all around the world.

As a farewell to Berlin, I wanted to find a way to honour the city that gave our unique publication life. In 2013, a chance introduction to Berlin-based designer Pete Lewis (https://uk.linkedin.com/in/mr-pete-lewis-51468049) led to the first designs for the Visual Verse website. Shortly after, Preti Taneja (https://www.preti-taneja.co.uk/) visited Berlin and manifested a whole editorial vision for the publication. She became the founding Commissioning Editor and we launched on 1st November, 2013. A few years in, Berlin gave us another gift in the form of Lucie Stevens. Lucie is now back in Sydney but continues as co-editor. Visual Verse is the kind of dream project that Berlin is renowned for and the city has continued to nurture it, and us, for almost 9 years.

In the spirit of seed-sowing and collaboration, I have chosen an image depicting a special little Berlin scene, by Miikka Luotio. Alongside the image are three writers whose work has had an impact on me, or Visual Verse, helping to shape and evolve us.

We open with Paul Scraton (https://twitter.com/underagreysky) , a writer and editor based in Berlin. Shortly after moving to Friedrichshain, a district in the east of Berlin, I picked up a copy of Paul’s book The Idea of a River, published by Readux. This unassuming little gem is a lesson in linking ourselves and our environment. After reading it I set out to walk the river Spree, through Treptower park, with a consciousness I hadn’t tapped into for a long time. I saw Berlin differently and I’m very grateful to this little book for opening my eyes wider. Paul is the author of a number of other books including the novel Built on Sand (Influx Press, 2019) and the recent novella of the forest, In the Pines (Influx Press, 2021). You can find him atwww.underagreysky.com (http://www.underagreysky.com/) .

Divya Ghelani (https://twitter.com/DivyaGhelani) came my way via Visual Verse patron Cathy Galvin who runs the UK’s leading literary salon, the Word Factory (https://thewordfactory.tv/) . Last year she co-curated the August issue (https://visualverse.org/images/veronica-lissandrini/) of Visual Verse, bringing fresh new voices to the fold, some of whom are Berlin-based. This was a moment when I was personally struggling to keep things moving amid the pressures of the pandemic and other commitments, and Divya came forth with her characteristic ease and grace to re-ignite things. Divya is a writer herself and holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and an MPhil in Literary Studies from the University of Hong Kong. She has published widely, and is now working on a novel. Divya hosts a yearly New Fiction By Women & Non-Binary BIPOC Author Reading Series for The Reader Berlin and co-hosts a short story club for the Word Factory.

It is unusual that we would commission a lead writer twice, but I could not do a Berlin issue without the inimitable Victoria Gosling (https://www.instagram.com/victoriagosling) . Victoria is the founder of The Reader Berlin (https://www.thereaderberlin.com/) and The Berlin Writing Prize (https://www.thereaderberlin.com/2022-berlin-writing-prize/) . She has been the backbone of our Berlin literary life and a great champion of writers, readers and book businesses in Berlin. Some of my favourite memories of Berlin have been facilitated by Victoria – one year she took over an entire old Fort and hosted a magical weekend literary festival. Beyond this generosity, she is a hugely talented writer. Her brilliant debut novel Before the Ruins was published in 2021 by Serpent’s Tail (UK) and Henry Holt (US) revealing a gift for storytelling and masterful character development. I’m indebted to Victoria for her friendship, gentle influence and unending support.

What these three writers have in common is a willingness to create opportunities for others while also remaining dedicated to their own craft. That’s a lot of work, and perhaps what’s most beautiful about Berlin is that it gives people the time and space to give and grow.

The Berlin magic is forever in our DNA.

So now it’s over to you, dear writers, to see where this image leads. Of course, there is no need for you to write about Berlin. The image is simply the starting point, the rest is up to you.

Enjoy and thank you for all of your support and continued participation in this magnificent project.

Kristen
and the VV team

Follow us on Twitter

@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse)
@underagreysky (https://twitter.com/underagreysky)
@d (https://twitter.com/kenkeyandfish) ivyaghelani (https://twitter.com/DivyaGhelani)
@VictoriaGosling (https://twitter.com/VictoriaGosling)

Volume 06, Chapter 01 | November 2018

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 05, Chapter 01 | November 2017

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 02 | December 2015

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

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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