Volume 09, Chapter 07 | May 2022

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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

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Volume 09, Chapter 04 | February 2022

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Image by Yasin Aribuga
Dear writers, readers and friends,

We’re only a month in but already I have the feeling that 2022 will be a year of change for many of us. In fact, the question is not whether change will happen, but how it will happen. Will it be a transition, displacement, digression, transgression, move, evolution or a seismic shift? Will it happen by design or by surprise? This is what is on my mind and why I was drawn to this month’s image by artist Yasin Aribuga. It is aptly steeped in the ultimate symbol of metamorphosis.

We open our February issue with a summer adventure by Hannah Allies (https://twitter.com/hannahahahah?s=20) , a writer based in Brighton whose work has left an impression on us. Hannah has had poetry and flash fiction published by Reflex Fiction, Writers’ HQ and Visual Verse (https://visualverse.org/writers/hannah-allies/) . She is particularly interested in our relationship with the natural world and most of her work includes themes of environmentalism. She is currently writing her first novel.

On page 2, John Grey explores the transformative power of nature. John is an Australian poet and US resident, who has recently been published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. His latest books Leaves On Pages, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. John’s work will appear in upcoming issues of Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.

Page 3 holds a multifaceted self-portrait of a butterfly by K Hartless, a poet and fiction writer who enjoys penning fantasy, science-fiction, and horror as well as the occasional memoir. She’s been recently published in Edge of Humanity Magazine, The Last Girls Club, Paragraph Planet, Pure Haiku, and Spillwords. Her blog, Yardsale of Thoughts (https://khartless.com/) , blends fiction, poetry, music, and art to create new experiences for readers.

Sending you off to your writing desks is a whimsical poem by Stephen Kingsnorth (https://visualverse.org/writers/stephen-kingsnorth/) , a regular contributor to Visual Verse. Stephen, who retired to Wales with Parkinson’s Disease from ministry in the Methodist Church, has had pieces published by online poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies. He tells us that he eagerly anticipates the monthly Visual Verse challenges and likes asking questions of himself, and anyone else looking over his shoulder. He has been, like so many, nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net this past year. You can read his blog at poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com (https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/) .

So, now it’s over to you. Submissions close midnight (UK time) on February 15th. You can find our full submission guidelines here (https://visualverse.org/submission-guidelines/) and remember: the image is the starting point, the rest is up to you.
Enjoy!

Kristen
and the VV Team

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Volume 06, Chapter 05 | March 2019

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Image by NASA

Dear readers, writers and friends,

March arrives and with it new horizons. We are propelling you into space with this incredible image from NASA and a line-up of truly special writers.

This month’s leads transport us from space to the places many never go, inside one of the most difficult environments the UK can imagine. These never-before-published writers have devised these pieces in workshops conducted inside one of the UK’s high security prisons.

Half of the writers are students at Cambridge University, and half are men who have been incarcerated, some for many years. They are all participants in Writing Together, part of a programme called Learning Together (https://www.cctl.cam.ac.uk/tlif/learning-together/details) , which is run by the Institute of Criminology in Cambridge.

The group has been working together for a while, learning the basics of fiction, poetry and script writing; but this was the first time they had written to an image, within a set amount of time and word limit, and asked to hand that work in. It was typed up on the outside and now, here it is.

These writers are published anonymously but each is celebrated for their individual creativity and unique response to this image.

So writers – with stars in your eyes; with the memory of your childhood wish to walk on the moon; with a sense of connection or of isolation; with a yearning for freedom or missing a loved one – go forth. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Preti, Kristen, Lucie, Rithika and Luke
@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse)

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Volume 04, Chapter 03 | January 2017

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Image by Manon Bellet

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Welcome to 2017. This past year has been another wonderful one for Visual Verse. Thanks to you, our writers, we’ve grown in submissions and followers and the inbox is bursting every week. It is such a pleasure to see you continue to return each month and deliver new words. And it is such a pleasure to have a platform from which we can shine a spotlight on fantastic writers, published and unpublished. In 2016 we’ve been proud to feature a Goldsmith’s Prize winner, a Booker longlistee, debut writers and those who have collections forthcoming next year. Some of you have taken work inspired by Visual Verse to the next level – it’s found its way into poetry collections and into live performances as well as onto your own websites. We are thrilled by all of this and can’t wait to see what next year will bring.

One thing you may not realise, too, is how much your writing inspires the artists we feature here on Visual Verse. It is a unique experience for them to see how so many people, with wildly diverse perspectives and styles, respond to their work. This dialogue between artist and writer is the seed from which Visual Verse was grown and it is one of the things that makes us most proud.

So without further ado, we are delighted to bestow upon you our first visual prompt for 2017. This magnificent image comes from Manon Bellet (http://www.manonbellet.com/) , a French artist currently based in New Orleans, US. Bellet’s work looks at the intersections of nature conservation and art preservation, an unconventional pairing, and tries to challenge our perceptions of our environment. This image is from her series Sous Surface and is one of those images that presents something different each time you view it. What will you make of this one?

Our lead writers for January 2017 are a celebration of our connections beyond the geographical. We begin with the elegiac, romantic Emmanuelle Pagano translated from the French by Jennifer Higgins and Sophie Lewis. Pagano’s fragmentary musings on love and desire, Trysting (http://www.andotherstories.org/author/emmanuelle-pagano/) was published in 2016 by & Other Stories. She lives and works on the Ardèche plateau. She has written more than a dozen works of fiction, has won the EU Prize for Literature and her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She regularly collaborates with artists working in other disciplines such as dance, cinema, photography, illustration, fine art and music. A perfect start to our year. Translator Sophie Lewis (https://twitter.com/sophietimes) is a freelance editor and translator from French and Portuguese. Among the writers she has translated into English are Stendhal, Jules Verne, Violette Leduc, Emmanuelle Pagano, Marcel
Aymé, Andrée Maalouf, João Gilberto Noll, Pierre Gripari and Emilie de Turckheim. Jennifer Higgins (https://twitter.com/JennyTranslates) is an editor and translator from French and Italian. She has translated several works of fiction, including Emmanuelle Pagano’s Trysting, and has written a book about English translations of French poetry.

Our second lead is poet Rachel Plummer (http://www.rachelplummer.co.uk) who lives in Edinburgh with her partner and two young children. She has had poems in magazines including Mslexia, The Stinging Fly and Agenda. She is a recipient of the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award for poetry. She has had poems placed in numerous competitions, including the Flambard Prize, Penfro, and the Troubadour Prize.

For our third lead we bring you the robust writings of Agri Ismaïl, who is based in Sweden and Iraq. His work has appeared in The White Review, Guernica, Litro and 3:AM Magazine amongst other places, traversing and transcending all kinds of borders.

And last but not least, our up and coming spot goes to Cage Williams, a poet, writer and musician based in London. He studied literature at Goldsmiths College and he writes on subjects ranging from jazz and the New York School poets to Shakespeare. Find more writing by Cage Williams here (http://literateur.com/four-poems-by-cage-williams/) .

So we go on… boats against the current… pulling into the future. Let us create another year’s worth of beautiful art and words. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Preti and Kristen

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