Volume 07, Chapter 05 | March 2020

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Image by Ryan McGuire

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Dear writers, readers and friends,

Spring has officially sprung and we are so excited about our March offering – a wonderful, whimsical image prompt and a tie-up with the acclaimed Galley Beggar Press (https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/) Short Story Prize, 2020.

This is the fifth year of the prize, judged by Guardian theatre critic Arifa Akbar, writers Todd Ewen and Toby Litt and Sam Jordison and Eloise Millar, co-directors of Galley Beggar Press. From over 1000 entries, just three were shortlisted and we are very proud to present them here this month, writing new work especially for Visual Verse.

Feeling the spring vibes, we proffer some lightness via this quirky little image by photographer Ryan McGuire. Our lead writers have not disappointed in their responses.

First up, enjoy the work of the winner of the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize 2020, Isha Karki (https://twitter.com/IshaKarki11) , who lives and writes in London. Isha is a 2019 Clarion West graduate and a London Writers Awardee. Her work has appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, The Good Journal, 3 of Cups Press, and has placed in the Brick Lane Book Shop Short Story Prize and London Short Story Prize.

On page two, we present Vijay Khurana (http://www.vijaykhurana.com) , whose stories have been shortlisted for the 2019 Bath Short Story Award, the 2019 I’ll Show You Mine sex-writing prize and, of course, this year’s Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize for which he was also longlisted the last year. His creative-critical project A Little Death, featuring parodies of James Joyce and others, is available at beyondcriticism.net (https://beyondcriticism.net/) . In 2014, his children’s chapter book, Regal Beagle, was published in Australia by Random House. He has an MFA from the University of East Anglia and currently lives in Berlin.

And on page 3, we have Susanna Gendall, a New Zealand writer currently based in Paris. Her work has appeared in Sport, JAAM, Takahē, The Spinoff, Landfall, Geometry and Ambit. She has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and her début collection is due to be published next year by Victoria University Press.

Congratulations to these three wonderful writers and to Galley Beggar Press for another successful year unearthing the best talent and celebrating the craft of short-form writing.

So, dear writers, over to you. Remember, we need your 50-500 words in response to the image, written in the space of one hour, submitted via the website (https://visualverse.org/submit/) by 15 March. We publish up to 100 of the best.

The image is the starting point, the text is up to you…
Preti, Kristen, Lucie and Luke

Connect with us
@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse?lang=en)
@GalleyBeggars (https://twitter.com/galleybeggars)
@IshaKarki11 (https://twitter.com/IshaKarki11)
@vijaykhurana (https://twitter.com/vijaykhurana)

Find out more about the prize and read all the Galley Beggar Press 2020 Prize stories (https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/short-story-prize-tc) .
Start Timer (https://vclock.com/timer/#countdown=01:00:00&enabled=0&seconds=3600&title=Visual+Verse%3A+One+image.+One+Hour.+50-500+Words.+)
Submit (https://visualverse.org/submit/)

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Volume 07, Chapter 02 | December 2019

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Image by Mae Mu

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Dear writers, readers and friends,

Welcome to the last issue of 2019 – a year in which so much has happened upon our planet. Never far from our minds is the reality of our changing climate and the questions around it, and our future. It has been an inspiration to watch, over the course of this year, as young people rise up and confront an issue that has long been denied, silenced and ignored. As a small homage to this mighty movement, we are proud to provide a platform from which you – our amazing, global writing community – can use your art to have your say.

This month’s image is an antidote to the winter setting in for us Northern hemisphere folk. It comes to us via Mae Mu who specialises in food photography and still life.

On page 1, we have New Zealand writer Paul Ewen (https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/paul-ewen) whose books include London Pub Reviews (Shoes With Rockets) and Francis Plug: How To Be A Public Author (Galley Beggar Press) which was listed for awards including the UK Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize. His second novel Francis Plug: Writer in Residence (Galley Beggar Press) was shortlisted for the 2019 Bollinger Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. Paul’s writing has featured in the NZ Listener, Dazed & Confused, Five Dials, and until recently, he was Writer-in-Residence at the University of Greenwich, London.

Next is Shobha Rao (https://twitter.com/@ShobhaRaoWrites) , author of the short story collection An Unrestored Woman and the novel, Girls Burn Brighter. She is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, and her story “Kavitha and Mustafa” was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2015. Girls Burn Brighter has been longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award. She lives in San Francisco.

On page 3, we present Rosamund Taylor (http://www.rosamundtaylor.com/) , who won the Mairtín Crawford Award for poetry at the Belfast Book Festival in 2017. In 2019, she was a recipient of a Words Ireland mentorship and placed third for the Ginkgo Prize for Eco Poetry. Her work has recently appeared in Agenda, Banshee, Channel, Magma, Poetry Ireland Review, and on LambdaLiterary.Org.

And finally, Tom Denbigh (https://twitter.com/@tom_denbigh) , resident of Bristol and owner of “an obscene number of books”. Tom is the first Bristol Pride Poet Laureate and a BBC 1 Extra Emerging Artist winner. He has a PhD on plant roots and crumbling soil and works on climate change policy. In his debut collection “…and then she ate him” Denbigh holds up a distorted mirror to the world to portray the bizarre and brilliant in the everyday. The book is out now with Burning Eye Books (https://burningeye.bigcartel.com/product/and-then-she-ate-him-by-tom-denbigh) and in all good bookshops.

So, dear writers, here is your last chance for the year – get your writing boots on and wade through the fake snow in your mind. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you…

Happy December, wherever in this crazy world you are.

Preti, Kristen, Lucie and Luke

Connect with us
@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse?lang=en)
@ShobhaRaoWrites (https://twitter.com/@ShobhaRaoWrites)
@tom_denbigh (https://twitter.com/@tom_denbigh)
@RosamundTaylor (https://twitter.com/@RosamundTaylor)
Start Timer (https://vclock.com/timer/#countdown=01:00:00&enabled=0&seconds=3600&title=Visual+Verse%3A+One+image.+One+Hour.+50-500+Words.+)
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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 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 04, Chapter 12 | October 2017

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Image by Leio McLaren

Dear Readers,

October: the month of transition. Memories of summer will be lingering for some, while for others it is about to arrive. For us, October marks the twelfth and final issue in Volume 4 of Visual Verse, so we are both reflecting and looking forward at the same time. Thinking about this, we are pleased to bring you a brand new visual prompt from Leio McLaren, a photographer based in Sydney, Australia who has a beautiful way of capturing new horizons.

In response, we are thrilled to bring you the writing of Cynan Jones who was born in 1975 near Aberaeron, Wales where he now lives and works. He is the author of five short novels, The Long Dry (Parthian, 2006), Everything I Found on the Beach (Parthian, 2011), Bird, Blood, Snow (Seren, 2012), The Dig (Granta, 2014), and most recently Cove (Granta, 2016). He has been longlisted and shortlisted for numerous prizes and won a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award 2007, a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize 2014 and the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize 2015. He is shortlisted for the National Short Story Award, 2017 for his story, The Edge of the Shoal, which judges called a “lyrically, poetically written account, lit with poignancy.” You can
listen to it on the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05gy8f1 ) . The winner will be announced on Tuesday 3^rd October. Goodluck Cynan!

Next up is newcomer Gonzalo C. Garcia who was born in Santiago and spent his first years in Chile’s Colchagua Valley region, before moving to Switzerland and eventually to the University of Kent, where he studied for a PhD under Scarlett Thomas. His debut novel We Are The End, comes out October 19^th from Galley Beggar Press, and is nominated for this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival’s First Book Award, which is up for public vote (https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/first-book-award) here (https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/first-book-award) , should you wish to cast yours. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Warwick.

Sending you off is Dolores Walshe a poet, playwright and fiction writer who comes to us garlanded in awards. Most recently, Dolores won the highly competitive
Berlin Writing Prize (http://thereaderberlin.com/home/competition/) which is organised by our friends at The Reader Berlin in partnership with the Circus Hotel and SAND Journal (http://sandjournal.com/) . Part of the prize is a one month writing residency in Berlin in Jan/Feb 2018. This year she was also shortlisted for the RTE Francis MacManus Short Story Award 2017 which she has won second place in twice (2015, 2009), and shortlisted and commended in the Anthony Cronin International Poetry Award 2017. Her stories have been broadcast by RTE Radio One (that’s in Ireland for our international readers) – and the list goes on – you can read more about her and her brilliant work, here (https://www.munsterlit.ie/Southword/Issues/29/walshe_dolores.html) .

So – whether you feel like the tide is rising or you’re feeling washed up, we are here to inspire you. Writing is survival. The image is the starting point, dear writers – the text is up to you.

Preti and Kristen

—

Join us on Twitter:
Visual Verse
@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse)
Oberon Books @OberonBooks (https://twitter.com/oberonbooks)
Cynan Jones @cynan1975 (https://twitter.com/cynan1975)
Gonzalo C. Garcia @Gonzo_Garcia (https://twitter.com/mj_sprackland)

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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)

—

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Volume 04, Chapter 06 | April 2017

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Image by Oliver Burston (aka Spooky Pooka)
Overall winner of the 2017 Wellcome Image Awards.

Dear writers, readers and friends,

It is April, and it is around this time each year that the Visual Verse team come together to hatch new plans. We drink, we eat and we talk about how much your writing inspires us to keep going, and to do more. This year our chats are focussed on how we will create the first printed anthology of Visual Verse and what shape it will take. And, of course, how we will fund it properly to ensure it’s the best it can be. We hope to announce these plans before the summer so stay tuned.

In the meantime, we are thrilled to have our first collaboration with the Wellcome Trust, whose work we so admire. This month we present the winner of the annual Wellcome Image Awards as your writing prompt. These awards showcase science imaging in the form of photography, illustration, data visualization and any other visual media. The technologies and ideas used to visualize organisms, disease, bacteria and scientific data are becoming more sophisticated each day, and are having a huge impact on how we understand our world. And, in the case of the winning image, how we understand individual experience of illness. Illustrator Oliver Burston (aka Spooky Pooka) (http://www.spookypooka.com/) has won the award with this haunting image embodying the physical and emotional impact of Crohn’s disease, a condition he lives with. Visit the Wellcome Image website (http://www.wellcomeimageawards.org/) to find out more.

In response to this image, our first two pieces this month are rather special. They were written as a series by friends Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney, who co-run the website SomethingRhymed.com, which celebrates female literary friendship. They are also the authors of A Secret Sisterhood: The Hidden Friendships of Austen, Brontё, Eliot and Woolf, which will be published, with a foreword by Margaret Atwood, in June 2017. Emma’s novel Owl Song at Dawn was recently named BookHugger Book of the Year, Emily is a winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and they both teach at New York University, London. So much amazingness.

Our third lead is by Amanthi Harris (http://www.amanthiharris.com) , a writer and artist who studied at Central St Martins and Bristol University. She won the Gatehouse Press New Fictions Prize 2016 with her novella Lantern Evening which is published by Gatehouse Press. Her short stories have been published by Serpent’s Tail and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as Afternoon Readings. She is part of the V22 Artist Collective and works in 3D and drawing. She runs StoryHug (http://www.storyhug.com) an Arts Council England funded art and storytelling project.

And, to cast you off, we present new words by James Clammer (https://twitter.com/JamesClammer) , a writer based in Sussex, England. His novel for young adults, Why I Went Back, has been longlisted for the Branford Boase Award, and his short stories have been published by Galley Beggar Press. He writes, nightly, in a winterproofed shed at the foot of a cliff.

So there, dear writers, is your spring selection (for those in the northern hemisphere) or autumn inspiration (for those south of the equator). Before we let you go we also want to thank Lucie Stevens (http://www.luciestevens.com/) , our guest editor, who does such an immense job of helping us to bring your work to the site each month (while also writing her own novels). Thank you Lucie.

Enjoy, be inspired and don’t forget: the image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Love, Kristen and Preti

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Volume 04, Chapter 02 | December 2016

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Image by Julien Menier

Dear writers, readers and friends,

What a month it has been for this precious world. It is easy to feel helpless, but we have work to do. As writers and publishers it is our job to create the stories that will help to make sense of it all. It is our job to create the poetry that gives us meaning when meaning isn’t clear.

This month’s image came to us almost by accident and feels perfect for this confusing time. It seems to say: what is real, and what is not? Is it a fictional scene from a mystical film, or is it a very real moment between man and nature? The image is by Belgian photographer, Julien Menier (aka Lost Wanderer (http://julienmenier.photoshelter.com/index) ), who roams the world with little more than a bicycle, camera and tent, making photos that only a solitary wanderer can make. His work is full of empathy and that, dear friends, is just what we need right now.

Our headliner this month is Paris-based Adam Biles (https://twitter.com/adambiles) , author of Feeding Time (Galley Beggar Press) which was published in October this year. We’ve read this book and we can report that it’s a hilarious romp through… an old people’s home. A rare view into a space fiction doesn’t usually go. Here the inmates live in the past and the staff is trying to escape in any way they can. And with its Boys Own Adventure style, time slips and graphic (novel) insertions, there isn’t much else like this in bookshops now. Reviews have been outrageous and ecstatic, with the Guardian noting its ‘core of sadness’ and ‘glorious comic verve’, and praising Adam as a ‘megawatt talent.’ ‘Hurrah,’ as Dot, the lead character of Feeding Time might say.

We’re continuing the theme of empathy and social justice with work from Louisa Adjoa Parker (https://twitter.com/LouisaAdjoa) , a British writer of Ghanaian and English heritage who has lived in the rural West Country since she was thirteen. Louisa started writing to talk about the racism and domestic violence she experienced as a child and young woman. Her first poetry collection, Salt-sweat and Tears was published by Cinnamon Press in 2007. Cinnamon also published her poetry pamphlet Blinking in the Light in 2015. Louisa’s work has appeared in a range of publications, including The Forward Prize collection 2008, Envoi, Wasafiri and many more. She has also written articles for Gal-dem magazine. Louisa has been shortlisted by the Bridport Prize and Live Canon Competition, highly commended by the Forward Prize, and longlisted by the Mslexia Novel Competition. She is currently working on a first short story collection, novel and second full-length poetry collection, with
mentors Jan Fortune and Jacob Ross.

Our next piece comes from Khairani Barokka (http://khairanibarokka.com/) a writer, poet, artist, and PhD researcher in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University, London. Before this, she was a New York University Tisch Departmental Fellow and Indonesia’s first Writer-In-Residence at Vermont Studio Center. Okka is the writer/performer/producer of Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee, Indonesia’s only Edinburgh Fringe representative in 2014; co-editor of HEAT: A Southeast Asian Urban Anthology (Buku Fixi, 2016); co-editor of Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches, 2017); writer-illustrator of Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis, 2016); and author of debut poetry collection Rope (Nine Arches, 2017). In 2014, UNFPA recognised her as an Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change for arts practice and research.

And our final gift of the season is by Amrou Al-Kadhi (http://www.amroualkadhi.com) , a writer, performer and a filmmaker. Amrou set up the musical comedy drag troupe Denim (http://www.denim-uk.com) whilst a student at Cambridge, which is now in its 6th year and touring around the country. This included a set with Florence and the Machine at Glastonbury the year that she headlined. Amrou is also a queer filmmaker, interested in using and subverting traditional film tropes to tell queer narratives in a way that is accessible. His first short Nightstand was executive produced by Stephen Fry and distributed by Peccadillo Pictures, and he currently has two features in development. Amrou is the co-writer and star of a comedy series about a second generation Egyptian drag queen in London, Nefertiti, currently in development with Big Talk Productions. Amrou is represented as a writer/performer/filmmaker by United Agents.

So dear writers, that is it for another temporal year. We wish you all seasons greetings, and looking forward to lots of early presents for you and us, an inbox full of your brilliant words. What more could we want?

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

Love,
Kristen and Preti

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Volume 03, Chapter 03 | January 2016

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Image by Ville Miettinen

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Welcome to 2016 and to a fresh new edition of Visual Verse to kick off your writing. As you all know, we are a truly global journal with contributors from many countries; nevertheless all of us dream of some kind of escape. Maybe that’s what has inspired our new image from Finnish entrepreneur and photographer Ville Miettinen (https://www.flickr.com/photos/wili/373624474/in/photolist-z1Vxh-xStbd-cQyKH-qCeGpJ-98THYY-8PPonW-7xQJ78-5Ty6yf-5PDhAg-4pzojK-4mYNSS-4jVftj-z6rF1-7AfMeH-yrbAC-xvKf6-54vHaN-qUQdwL-kG2A7h-jMgRZF-e3jN2n-e2zuWE-dWcJzU-dQEGDE-bQZXgz-biHjhK-bgt2rt-bePKQp-babBbr-aLEEMn-9d4xA3-7smgQo-7rTMEX-6WrTrV-qtuh6M-qxSGhL-brb22f-bhzxC6-anh3kj-7vMzpm-5TRBSR-5S57XJ-5S2V8C-5REaP9-5QHQzX-5QfGpm-5Qb2e9-4Hc5Yr-4CYmRb-4ozC7J) , with its evocations of strange guardians, golden sunsets and the ebullience of youth. This image is all about witnessing a moment of change.

Our lead writer Alex Pheby captures this perfectly. Alex’s most recent novel, Playthings, is available now from the legendary independent publisher Galley Beggar Press (http://galleybeggar.co.uk/store/books/playthings) . We’ve read it, we love it, and we are thrilled to have him on the site. He lives with his family in London, where he lectures (http://www2.gre.ac.uk/study/courses/ug/eng/w801) and runs the wonderful annual Greenwich Book Festival (http://greenwichbookfest.com/) .

We are also excited to bring you the work of British-American poet Robert Peake, who lives near London. He created the Transatlantic Poetry (http://www.transatlanticpoetry.com/) reading series, bringing poets together from around the world for live online readings and conversations. He also collaborates with other artists on film-poems, and his work has been widely screened in the US, UK, and Europe. His latest collection The Knowledge is now available from Nine Arches Press.

Last but not least, is Patience Kyenge, a young spoken word poet from Democratic Republic of Congo. Now living in Belgium, Patience performs at club nights and writes and sings Congolese blues with her troupe of musicians – she’s electric to watch and we are proud to say this is her first published piece.

New year’s resolutions? Who needs them. Let this one be an evolution, not a revolution. The image is the starting point: the rest is up to you.

Happy New Year!
Kristen and Preti

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