Image by Namroud Gorguis
Guest Editor: Richard Georges

Dear writers, readers and friends,

We do get around. Words circle and come back. Lives and geographies and time fold and touch. We talk and we talk and we talk. Back in May, our editor was delighted to take part in a panel for Bare Lit (http://barelitfestival.com/) , the UK’s literary festival featuring writers of colour working in every genre you can think of. Over chats about mythology and monsters, Preti met poet Richard Georges, who is from the British Virgin Islands. They got talking about colonial territories, and Preti invited him to curate Visual Verse for July. Richard is the author of the poetry collections Make Us All Islands (Shearsman Books) and Giant (Platypus Press). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prelude, Smartish Pace, The Poetry Review, wildness, Wasafiri, decomP, The Rusty Toque, Reservoir, L’Ephemere, The White Review and elsewhere.

About his Visual Verse selection, Richard says, ‘I am delighted to compile work for Visual Verse solicited exclusively from some of the most spellbinding poets I know who also happen to be citizens of colonial spaces. Ana Portnoy Brimmer from Puerto Rico (an unincorporated territory of the United States), Arturo Desimone from Aruba (a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands), and Chris Astwood from Bermuda, Erika Jeffers from Montserrat, and myself from the British Virgin Islands (all British Overseas Territories).’ We are delighted to have Richard’s own work in our lead spot, followed by this brilliant selection.

Ana Portnoy Brimmer is a Puerto Rican poet whose work has been published or is forthcoming in Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature, Puerto Rico en mi Corazón, Kweli Journal, Poets Reading The News, Project Censored, Centro Journal, Moko, and elsewhere. For more on her work, visit her website (http://anaportnoybrimmer.com/ ) .

Arturo Desimone (http://arturoblogito.wordpress.com) is an Arubian-Argentinian writer and visual artist. His articles, poetry, and short fiction have previously appeared in CounterPunch, Círculo de Poesía, Moko, Drunken Boat, Acentos Review, and New Orleans Review. His translations have appeared in Blue Lyra Review and Adirondack Review.

Chris Astwood (http://www.chrisastwood.com/) is a Bermudian poet currently residing in the UK and completing a PhD in creative and critical writing at the University of East Anglia. His writing has recently appeared in sx Salon and Caribbean Quarterly. A pamphlet of linked poems entitled JANE DOE is forthcoming from Gatehouse Press.

And finally, Erika Jeffers (https://www.erikajeffers.com/) – a poet and book reviewer whose writing has appeared in Kweli, Callaloo, sx salon, Wasafiri, Adrienne, and Moko; she’s also a reader for Frontier Poetry. Currently based in Brooklyn, she’s at work on her first full-length poetry collection.

All of them have responded to an image so full of stories, potential, surveillance, entropy and nostalgia – captured by Namroud Gorguis via Unsplash. And so to the long month of July, with all of its potential. Let’s make these worlds of words speak to each other. Looking forward to your submissions dear writers – the image is the starting point, the text is up to you. _x005F _x005F

Richard Georges (Guest Editor)
with Preti, Lucie and Kristen