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Dear writers, readers and friends,

Last month we launched our #dailyvisual project on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/visualverseanthology/) . We offer a new image every day and invite you to write 5-50 words in response (see below for a selection). It is a short, impulsive exercise designed to both cleanse the mind and entice new ideas.

The act of doing a daily call-and-response made us realise that Visual Verse is very much a pulse-taker. It is a record of events that have affected us all over the past seven years, and a collection of words that absorb our shared experiences. In that sense, we have created, together with you, a unique literary and historical artefact. It is our goal over the coming years to ensure that this publication is preserved, whether it be in print or catalogued digitally with the British Library. There is considerable work and cost involved and if you have any ideas that can help please contact our curator and Publisher, Kristen Harrison: (kristen@thecurvedhouse.com).

In the meantime, we continue to experience isolation with varying degrees of acceptance and anxiety. Whether you are trying to write, trying to read, finding it hard or easy, one thing is certain: you are not alone. Our glorious image this month is a mummy portrait (http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/8213/unknown-maker-mummy-portrait-of-a-youth-romano-egyptian-ad-150-200/) dated 150-200 AD, from Getty’s open content program. Since translation is what we are all doing these days, metaphorically speaking, we are very proud to bring you three of the world’s best literary translators, and thinkers about translation; all critically acclaimed writers in their own right.

Our first page is for Kate Briggs, a writer and translator based in Rotterdam, NL, where she teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute. She is the author of the extraordinary This Little Art (https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/this-little-art ) (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017), a long essay on the practice of literary translation informed by her own experiences of translating Roland Barthe’s last lecture courses. We love this book. It was a finalist for a Believer Book Award, and a book of the year in the Times Literary Supplement, The White Review and The Paris Review: it is now being translated into five languages. She is working on a new book, an essayistic novel titled The Long Form, forthcoming with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

On page two, we are very excited to publish Jennifer Croft, author of the moving Homesick (https://www.unnamedpress.com/books/book?title=Homesick) and Serpientes y escaleras and the co-winner, with Nobel Laureate Olga Tokarczuk, of The International Booker Prize for Flights.

Our page three features Marilyn Booth who lived in Egypt for a number of years, and by coincidence, these portraits have long-fascinated her. She has translated many works of fiction from the Arabic, most recently Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies (https://www.sandstonepress.com/books/celestial-bodies ) , for which she and Alharthi jointly won the 2019 Man Booker International Prize, and The Penguin’s Song and No Road to Paradise, by Lebanese novelist Hassan Daoud. She is currently translating Hoda Barakat’s Voices of the Lost, winner of the 2019 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and Jokha al-Harthi’s most recent novel, Narinjah: Bitter Orange. Marilyn tells us that many years ago she wrote a Dphil dissertation at St Antony’s College, Oxford, on a young Alexandrian poet exiled from Egypt in 1919. Now, she holds the Khalid bin Abdallah Al Saud Chair for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World, Oriental Institute and Magdalen College, University of Oxford. Her scholarly interests
include gender history, Arabophone intellectual and literary history, historical translation studies, and vernacular writing. Recent scholarly books are Classes of Ladies of Cloistered Spaces: Writing Feminist History in fin-de-siècle Egypt and (as editor and contributor) Migrating Texts: Circulating Translations around the Ottoman Mediterranean. Soon to be completed is Feminist thinking in fin-de-siècle Egypt: The Career and Communities of Zaynab Fawwaz.

So, dear readers, May is the month of speaking as if from centuries in the future. Words that might last thousands of years…

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

Kristen, Preti, Lucie and Luke

P.S. If you love this series, check out our archive (https://visualverse.org/images/) where we have work from more leading writer/translators including Maureen Freely, Haider Shabaz, Sohini Basak, Jen Calleja and more…

Connect with us
@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse?lang=en)
@jenniferlcroft (https://twitter.com/jenniferlcroft)
@FitzcarraldoEds (https://twitter.com/FitzcarraldoEds)
@sandstonepress (https://twitter.com/sandstonepress)
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/)

** #DailyVisual
————————————————————
Join us every day on Instagram for a 15-minute, 5-50 word writing challenge.
Here is a selection of submissions from the past month.

Washed and refilled
the birdbath today.

Chaffinch arrived.
Took a drink.
Bathed.
Left behind
a rose-coloured feather.

Then crows.
Three of them.
Fighting.
Water level
dropped by half.

Then a pigeon.
Wings lifted for airing.
A tidal splash flooding
the tulips and
emptied the birdbath.
Another day unravelling.

by @miskybr (https://www.instagram.com/miskybr/)

The late afternoon is holding onto the day’s heat. The air smells like rosemary. They share an orange, cold from the fridge, fat segments of sunshine.

by @rach_is_reading (https://www.instagram.com/rach_is_reading/)

Today I opened my eyes, I saw the words I wanted to say shouting in my head, I set them free.

by @hazelmason4544 (https://www.instagram.com/hazelmason4544/)

It’s always the horse that dies
in wars
A noble death
for a noble beast
The men she served
share mournful
meaningful looks
and ride her spotted back one final time
from thundering craters and bloodied wire
to faraway fields and gentle hills
the memory of a sheltering roof
Home.

by @ (https://www.instagram.com/hazelmason4544/) bennybombdrop (https://www.instagram.com/bennybombdrop/)

We may applaud the cooperation; we may rebuke the crime; we often fail to understand the situation.

by @ (https://www.instagram.com/rach_is_reading/) georginaburtenshaw (https://www.instagram.com/georginaburtenshaw/)

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