Volume 10, Chapter 01 | November 2022

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Image by Kitty Harrison
Today we celebrate nine years of innovative, diverse, brave and wonderful writing.
Happy birthday to all writers, readers and friends of Visual Verse.
Visual Verse is nine years old today! Kristen and I, with designer Pete Lewis, launched the site on 1st November 2013 and since then (through country moves, career changes, successes, knock-backs, crises, euphoria, births, deaths, and trips to London, Newcastle, and Berlin) we have rolled with a team of guest editors and star volunteers to bring you our monthly anthology of art and words. We have not missed a single issue in nine years and have published over 10,000 pieces – an incredible achievement. Visual Verse is not for profit, run by volunteers and our contributors do it for love of the process; to inspire you, delight you and to keep the love going of wild adventures in writing. Over nine years, the worldwide Visual Verse community has grown from around 50 submissions a month to 200, with a newsletter subscription list that runs into thousands from every continent in the world.

Thank you, readers, writers, volunteers and all our supporters: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Not many of you might know this, but co-founder Kristen “Kitty” Harrison (https://twitter.com/CurvedHouse/) is herself an artist, as well as being a writer, publisher and producer at The Curved House (https://thecurvedhouse.com) , an independent publisher working at the intersection of books, art and education. I am thrilled to debut her work on Visual Verse this month, with a piece called ‘Letter Home’. Kristen recently relocated back from Berlin to be nearer to her family in Australia and that’s what has inspired this month’s birthday image. It’s the first time she’s sharing her art with us, and we love to see it.

I stepped back from regularly curating the site about a year ago, as it’s been a big year for me. Over the last two years I’ve been busy writing my second book, Aftermath and it was published in early 2022; just last month I was astonished to find it had won the UK’s Gordon Burn Prize (https://newwritingnorth.com/gordon-burn-prize/ ) . I am thrilled to return to curate our birthday issue and very proud to welcome back the profoundly important words of Sandeep Parmar (https://twitter.com/SandeepKParmar/) to lead. Sandeep first wrote for Visual Verse as lead in Vol.1 Issue 2 (December 2013): that early poem now appears in her latest collection F (https://www.shearsman.com/store/Sandeep-Parmar-Faust-p470007726) aust (https://www.shearsman.com/store/Sandeep-Parmar-Faust-p470007726) , published by Shearsman this month.

Sandeep is Professor of English Literature at Liverpool University. Her research is primarily in modernist women’s writing and contemporary poetry and race. Her groundbreaking article ‘Still Not a British Subject: Race and UK Poetry (https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/not-a-british-subject-race-and-poetry-in-the-uk/) ’ was published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, and other essays and reviews have appeared in the Guardian, The New Statesman, the Financial Times and the Times Literary Supplement. In 2017, she co-founded the Ledbury Poetry Critics (https://twitter.com/LedburyCritics/) scheme for poetry reviewers of colour. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Sandeep’s books include Reading Mina Loy’s Autobiographies: Myth of the Modern Woman, scholarly editions for Carcanet Press of the Collected Poems of Hope Mirrlees and The Collected Poems of Nancy Cunard, and Threads with Bhanu Kapil and Nisha Ramayya, as well as three books
of her own poetry: The Marble Orchard, Eidolon, winner of the Ledbury Forte Prize for Best Second Collection, and Faust (Shearsman, 2022).

We are also really excited this month to collaborate with the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize (https://www.wasafiri.org/new-writing-prize/) , which I co-judged this year. The Prize, run by Wasafiri (https://www.wasafiri.org/) magazine, supports writers who have not yet published a book-length work, with no limits on age, gender, nationality, or background, and rewards work in three categories: Poetry, Fiction and Life Writing. The three winners join us this month…

Hasti Crowther (https://twitter.com/youarehasti/) is a poet and writer living in South East London. A member of the Southbank New Poets Collective and the Ledbury Poetry Critics, they are the recipient of the 2022 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize for Poetry, and have recently published poems in bathmagg, zindabad, and The Willowherb Review. They have also co-written short sci-fi film Digging (https://www.channel4.com/programmes/film4-foresight-shorts/on-demand/70987-001) , produced by Film4. Hasti has created shows for Montez Press Radio and also hosts monthly open mic and poetry night Fresh Lip.

Sylee Gore (https://twitter.com/BerlinReified) is an Indian American writer based between Berlin and Oxford. She received the 2022 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Fiction (UK), the 2022 Bird in Your Hands Prize (US), and a 2021 VG Wort Neustart Kultur fellowship (DE). In 2022/23, she co-heads a literary partnership between Kelly Writers House, Philadelphia, and Rothermere American Institute, Oxford.

Nadine Monem (she/her) works in hybrid forms of non-fiction, memoir and theory. Her work has been supported by the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Catapult Books memoir workshop for writers of colour. She is the winner of the 2022 Wasafiri New Writing Prize for life writing, and runner-up for the 2022 Sewanee Review (https://thesewaneereview.com/) Nonfiction Contest. Nadine teaches writing and critical theory at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

Hasti, Sylee and Nadine’s prize-winning pieces will be published in Wasafiri 113, published Spring 2023, and accompanied by an illustration by Aude Nasr (https://cargocollective.com/audenasr) .

As we head into our 10th year of publishing we hope you enjoy this month, and look back over our archive (https://visualverse.org/images/) to read the work of the last decade’s most exciting new and established voices practicing across continents and themes.

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

Preti Taneja
with Kristen, Lucie and Isabel

Special thanks and welcome to Zaynab Bobi (Nigeria), Ashish Kumar Singh (India) and Wes White (UK) who join the Visual Verse team this month as volunteer editorial assistants.

Follow us on Twitter
Visual Verse Preti Taneja Kristen Harri (https://twitter.com/pretitaneja/) son/The Curved House (https://twitter.com/curvedhouse/)
Sandeep Parmar (https://twitter.com/SandeepKParmar/)
Hasti Crowther (https://twitter.com/youarehasti/)
Sylee Gore (https://twitter.com/BerlinReified)
Nadine Monem (https://twitter.com/nadinemonem/)

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

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Volume 06, Chapter 12 | October 2019

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Image by Valérie Mannaerts/M Museum Leuven/Alexandra Colmenares.

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Dear writers, readers and friends,

Never have our bodies, minds and countries felt so under pressure and fragmented. Yet strangely, art that serves to reflect on that can be strangely healing, and indeed, community building. At Visual Verse we are all about community. So this month we bring you our very special edition of ‘recommend a writer’, where we have asked some of our dear lead contributors to call on a fellow writer they think we should publish. Our co-founders, Preti and Kristen, have put two forward as well.

Our community of wordsmiths is enriched by the creators of our visual prompts. This issue of Visual Verse is published in collaboration with M-Museum Leuven (https://www.mleuven.be/nl/content/home) in Belgium, who are hosting the 51st conference of the International Visual Literacy Association later this month. They have provided the arresting image for October – a work by Valérie Mannaerts (https://www.maniera.be/creators/12/valerie-mannaerts) , photographed by Alexandra Colmenares.

Our writer responses kick off with Sabeena Akhtar (https://twitter.com/pocobookreader?lang=en) , who Preti believes is ‘a writer and activist of rare talent and commitment.’ Sabeena is the editor of the anthology, Cut From The Same Cloth (https://unbound.com/books/cut-from-the-same-cloth/) , forthcoming from Unbound, a contributor to the 404 Ink title, We Shall Fight Until We Win (https://www.404ink.com/store/we-shall-fight-until-we-win) and the Saqi Books title, Smashing It (https://saqibooks.com/books/the-westbourne-press/smashing-it/) . She is the Festival Coordinator of Bare Lit (http://barelitfestival.com/) , and a co-founder of the Primadonna (https://www.primadonnafestival.com/) festival and Bare Lit Kids. She is co-writing a forthcoming children’s book on Islamophobia published by Hachette, and working on her debut novel.

Our page 2 writer – poet Holly Singlehurst (https://twitter.com/HJSinglehurst?lang=en) – was recommended by critically acclaimed poet Rishi Dastidar, one of our longest and most regular contributors. Rishi says: ‘Holly is a poet you might not have heard of yet – but you will. She tells us what it is like to be alive in the world right now, in ways that startle and reveal’. Holly graduated from Birmingham University with a Master’s in Creative Writing in 2016. She was shortlisted for the 2017 Bridport Prize, and was commended in the 2016 National Poetry Competition for her poem ‘Hiroshima, 1961’. Her poetry has appeared on And Other Poems (https://andotherpoems.com/) and her short fiction has been published in Banshee Magazine.

Niven Govinden, author of the 2019 Gordon Burn Prize shortlisted This Brutal House, recommended ‘the genius Stuart Evers (https://twitter.com/StuartEvers?lang=en) ,’ whose debut, Ten Stories About Smoking, won the London Book Award in 2011, and his highly acclaimed novel, If This is Home (https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/stuart-evers/if-this-is-home/9781447207634) , followed in 2012. Your Father Sends His Love (https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/stuart-evers/your-father-sends-his-love/9781447280583) was shortlisted for the 2016 Edge Hill Short Story Prize and a new novel will be published in 2020. In 2017, Evers won the Eccles British Library Writer’s Award – one of Europe’s richest prizes for a work in progress.

Finally, Kristen spotted the ‘fiercely imaginative and quirky’ work of Eileen McNulty-Holmes (https://twitter.com/eileenamholmes?lang=en) at a recent visual writing workshop, and immediately wanted to published them at Visual Verse. Eileen is an award-winning writer, award-nominated editor, an aspiring witch and a (semi-) professional plant person. They have been writing for money, attention, and “exposure” for the past 10 years. Their work has appeared in the likes of Femsplain (https://femsplain.com/) , DADDY Magazine (http://daddy.land/) , For Every Year and IRIS, as well as in multidisciplinary shows at galleries including Lage Egal and Mindscape Universe. Their stories often take place at the fringes of reality, in enclosed spaces or in the midst of terrible life decisions.

So as you sharpen your pencils, why not follow our lead and recommend us to a writer/friend? The image is the starting point, the text is up to you…

Kristen, Preti, Lucie and Luke

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@pocobookreader (https://twitter.com/pocobookreader)
@HJSinglehurst (https://twitter.com/HJSinglehurst)
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Volume 03, Chapter 11 | September 2016

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Image by Bruce Connew

A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

So cries Richard III in Shakespeare’s play. This month, then, we bring you a horse, and expect a kingdom of writing in return. Our image is taken from Body of Work (http://www.bruceconnew.com/projects/body-of-work) , an incredible series (and limited edition book (http://www.bruceconnew.com/books/body-of-work) ) by New Zealand photographer Bruce Connew. The series stirs many questions and anxieties about how we humans interfere with, and manipulate, nature. This particular image is both vulnerable and defiant. We are on tenterhooks as we await your own interpretations, dear writers.

Our first piece this month comes from a writer who has known battle. Harry Parker (http://twitter.com/harrybparker) grew up in Wiltshire. He was educated at Falmouth College of Art and University College London. He joined the British Army when he was 23 and served in Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2009 as a Captain. He is now a writer and artist and lives in London. His debut novel, Anatomy of a Soldier was published by Faber and Faber in 2016 and is on the shortlist of this year’s Gordon Burn Prize (http://gordonburnprize.com/shortlist/harry-parker/) .

Next we have work by the brilliant Erik Kennedy, whose poems have appeared in (or are forthcoming in) places like 3:AM Magazine, The Literateur, and Oxford Poetry in the UK, Ladowich, Prelude, and PUBLIC POOL in the US, and Landfall and Sport in New Zealand. He is the poetry editor for Queen Mob’s Teahouse. He lives in Christchurch, New Zealand, but you can find him on twitter @thetearooms (http://www.twitter.com/thetearooms) . He’s gone one further than the usual, and incorporated our rules into his own. The poem we’re publishing is now also one of a series called Factitions. Each poem must 1) involve a statistic or figure, 2) mention a proper-noun place, and 3) reflect on mortality in some way. Meta!

On page three we bring new writing by Rachel Long (http://www.writesrachell.com) who was shortlisted for Young Poet Laureate for London in 2014. Her poems have featured in Magma, The Honest Ulsterman, and The London Magazine. She is alumni of the Jerwood/Arvon Mentorship scheme 2015-16, where she was mentored for one year by Caroline Bird. She is Assistant Tutor on the Barbican Young Poets_x005F programme, and leads Octavia, poetry collective of Women of Colour at Southbank Centre._x005F _x005F Find her on Twitter at @rachelnalong (https://twitter.com/rachelnalong) .

Last, but no means least, artist and writer Fiona Mason (http://www.twitter.com/fi_mason) . Fiona writes poetry and prose and is currently working on a memoir that explores memory and grief through an account of a last day. She divides her time between the mountains of Andalusia and the wide open spaces of North Essex.

So dear writers, as summer in the Northern Hemisphere gives way to Autumn and the reverse happens the South, we ask you to look, read, enjoy, and then submit your own writing. Don’t forget, we ask for 50-500 words – anything shorter or longer will not be considered.

Charge forth: the image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Kristen and Preti

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