Volume 09, Chapter 05 | March 2022

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Image by Susan Fenimore Cooper
Dear writers, readers and friends,

I had planned a special issue for March to celebrate International Women’s Day (8th March). Then, Russia invaded Ukraine*. All plans went out the window but, guess what?! The women rose up. Four brilliant women came to my rescue and helped me to assemble a glorious, unique issue featuring our very first musical response to a Visual Verse prompt. I am so proud and grateful to our talented quartet of leads this month.

Our March visual prompt is from Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813-1894) who was a writer, artist, naturalist and humanitarian. Cooper was the first woman to be recognised for nature writing. I love this image as it is clearly the work of an expert while being labelled with the declaration “By a Lady”. I like to think this was a small act of feminism on Cooper’s part – ensuring no man took credit for her work – but that may be an optimistic reading of herstory.

Back in the present day, I’m overjoyed to debut a brand new song penned by acclaimed Irish musician Nina Hynes (https://www.ninahynesmusic.com/) especially for this issue. Nina Hynes is an artist down to her bones and her creative output is mindblowing (follow her on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/artist/6K6HRAFT5XBbrfATR1vnQh?si=91VPDLe3RtixRiWCTcWOkQ) and Bandcamp (https://ninahynes.bandcamp.com/) ). I gave Nina the challenge of writing a song within the usual constraints (50-500 words within one hour) and she returned the lyrics to me within four minutes of receiving the prompt. The next day a fully formed tune arrived in my inbox:
https://ninahynes.bandcamp.com/track/hummingbird

This is our very first musical response to a VV prompt – pure magic. You can listen and download the track from Nina’s Bandcamp. She is donating 100% of proceeds to the campaign to support African and Caribbean students leaving Ukraine, who have been facing discrimination and racism as they try to cross to safety.

Next up we feature Ioanna Mavrou (https://www.ioannamavrou.com/) , a writer from Nicosia, Cyprus. Her short stories have appeared in Electric Literature, The Rumpus, HAD, Wasafiri, The Letters Page, and elsewhere. She runs a tiny publishing house called Book Ex Machina and is the editor of Matchbook Stories: a literary magazine in matchbook form. You can read her previous Visual Verse pieces here (https://visualverse.org/writers/ioanna-mavrou/) and follow her on Twitter (http://twitter.com/@ioannaonline) .

In what seems like a bitter UK winter, Lizzie Ballagher has certainly longed for spring and perhaps that is reflected in her piece on page 3. The final stanza lifts us up like the first spring buds. Having lived in W New York for a decade, Lizzie unashamedly plundered old memories for images of those much harsher winters near the Genesee River. You can follow her work over on her blog (https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/) .

And on page 4 we are long overdue in featuring the work of Ceinwen Haydon (https://twitter.com/CeinwenHaydon) . Ceinwen holds an MA in Creative Writing from Newcastle University. She lives near Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (also home to our co-founder Preti Taneja) and writes short stories and poetry. She is widely published in online magazines and in print anthologies and has written many brilliant pieces for Visual Verse (https://visualverse.org/writers/ceinwen-e-c-haydon/) too. She is developing her practice as a participatory arts facilitator and believes everyone’s voice counts.

We at Visual Verse would like to wish all the women of the world a Happy International Women’s day. On March 8th we will raise a toast to the creativity and inner power of all women, including and especially women of colour, non-binary and trans women. Thank you all for your contributions to Visual Verse over the years.

*The situation in Ukraine remains volatile and we will continue tracking ways to support those most affected – especially minority groups and marginalised communities who face many extra challenges. You can support by signing up for Stuart McPherson’s online Poetry for Ukraine fundraiser (https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poetry-for-ukraine-an-international-poetry-reading-fundraiser-tickets-279387795417) which is raising funds for the Red Cross Ukraine and the UN refugee council. There is also the GoFundMe that Nina is supporting, to help African and Caribbean students in Ukraine (https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-afrocaribbean-students-leaving-ukraine?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_campaign=m_pd+share-sheet) (20% of Ukraine’s international students are from African countries) and OutRight Action International (https://outrightinternational.org/ukraine?form=Ukraine&fbclid=IwAR151D6CdyNweItycZ7QHGj2ix62VLo8K0liysu5fYtQ1z3M2u6Spm65cN0) is raising funds to support Ukraine’s
LGBTQ+ community.

So, my friends, as always I hope you enjoy these offerings and feel inspired to write your own. Things are heavy but creativity brings the light.

The image is the starting point, the text us up to you.
Kristen (She/Her)
and the VV Team

Follow us on Twitter

@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse)
@NinaHynes (https://twitter.com/ninahynes?lang=en)
@ioannaonline (https://twitter.com/ioannaonline)
@CeinwenHaydon (https://twitter.com/CeinwenHaydon)

Volume 07, Chapter 11 | September 2020

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Image by Helen Marten

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Dear writers, readers and friends,

It’s always important that we break new ground on our site and this month is no different. For the first time we are very proud to bring you an image and a lead piece by the same person: 2016 Turner Prize winning artist Helen Marten (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Marten) , whose debut novel The Boiled in Between is out this month from Prototype (https://prototypepublishing.co.uk/) .

Helen studied at the University of Oxford and Central St. Martins, London. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery, London; Fridericianum, Kassel; CCS Bard, Hessel Museum, New York; Kunsthalle Zürich and Palais de Tokyo, Paris, among others. She was included in the 55th and 56th International Venice Biennales and in 2016 won both the Turner Prize and the inaugural Hepworth Prize for Sculpture. Her work can be found in public collections including Tate Collection, London; Guggenheim Museum, New York and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. She has forthcoming solo exhibitions at Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria; and Sadie Coles HQ, London – and we loved The Boiled in Between (https://prototypepublishing.co.uk/product/the-boiled-in-between/) .

On page two we delightedly bring you the work of April Yee (https://twitter.com/aprilyee) . April writes about colonialism, climate change, and other effects of power. Her work is in The Boston Globe, has been longlisted by Live Canon, and is a winner of the Ware Sonnet Prize. She translates from French and Spanish and has reported in more than a dozen countries before moving to London.

And our final lead writer this month is Yasmine Seale (https://twitter.com/yasmineseale) , a writer and translator living in Istanbul. Her essays, poetry, visual art, and translations from Arabic and French have appeared widely. She is currently working on a new translation of The Thousand and One Nights for W. W. Norton.

So, dear writers and readers, at the turn of this most extreme and extraordinary year of 2020, we hope you’ll take heart with us this September. Remember: the image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Preti, Kristen, Lucie and Luke

PS. Follow us on Instagram @visualverseanthology (https://www.instagram.com/visualverseanthology/) for a mini daily writing challenge.

Tweet Us
@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse?lang=en)
@yasmineseale (https://twitter.com/yasmineseale)
@aprilyee (https://twitter.com/aprilyee)
@prototypepubs (https://twitter.com/prototypepubs)
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 07, Chapter 09 | July 2020

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Image by Khadija Saye
courtesy of the artist’s estate

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Dear writers, readers and friends,

In solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and to mark the third anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire which in 2017 claimed the lives of 72 people in London, most of them from Black, Asian and ethnic minority families, Visual Verse brings you an image and lead words by five extraordinary creators.

Our issue this month resonates with the idea of inspiration (from the Latin, spirare, “to breathe”). Inspiration – as breath, as life, as hope – and as a human right. Our world resounds with the phrase ‘I can’t breathe’, uttered by Black people who have suffered institutional brutality, including, in the UK, Jimmy Mubenga in 2014 (his head held down by G4S security guards whilst on a plane) and by Sheku Bayoh in 2015 (who suffered positional asphyxiation by the police: they sprayed CS gas in his face and held him down). ‘I can’t breathe’ were the words of Eric Garner in New York in 2014 as he died from a police chokehold, and George Floyd in Minnesota on May 25, 2020 who died with a police knee in his neck. The phrase also resonates terribly with the reality of the Grenfell Tower fire. ‘We can’t breathe’ were among the last words of nursery teacher Nadia Choucair as she called emergency services from her 22nd floor flat that night. The survivors of Grenfell are still awaiting justic
e, while the official inquiry refuses to recognise the systemic racism of social inequality and institutional response as contributing to the disaster. The death of George Floyd and the anniversary of the fire fell during the lockdown for a pandemic that affects our breathing, our lungs, and is most disproportionately taking the lives of the poorest from Black and Bangladeshi minority communities (in the UK).

What is the role of art and curation here? As memorial, as reckoning. As inspiration.

Our image is from the self-portrait series, Dwelling: in this space we breathe by Khadija Mohammadou Saye with the kind permission of her estate (https://www.estateofkhadijasaye.com/) . Also known as Ya-Haddy Sisi Saye, she was a Gambian-British photographer whose work was exhibited in the Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017. She died aged 24, in Grenfell Tower.

The British Library’s exhibition, Khadija Saye: in this space we breathe was due to take place in Spring 2020. It was postponed, and new dates will be announced in due course.

And so to our lead writers, with respect and gratitude for their responses to this most important work…

Kadija Sesay (https://twitter.com/kadijattug) , FRSA, is a literary activist. She is the founder/publisher of SABLE litmag, SABLE litfest, and co-founder of The Mboka Festival of Arts, Culture and Sport in The Gambia. She is the editor of several anthologies of work by writers of African and Asian descent and the Publications Manager for the Inscribe Programme for Peepal Tree Press. She has also mentored several writers and judged several writing competitions. Her poetry collection, Irki (https://www.peepaltreepress.com/books/irki) (which means ‘Homeland’ in the Nubian language) (Peepal Tree Press, 2013) was shortlisted for the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry in 2014. She received an Arts Council grant for Research and Development for her second collection, The Modern Pan Africanist’s Journey which includes a poetry and Pan-Africanism app. Kadija has received several awards for her work in the Creative Arts. She is a Fellow of the Kennedy Arts Centre of Performance Arts Management
and a Kluge Fellow. She currently has an AHRC scholarship to research Black British Publishing and Pan-Africanism at University of Brighton. She is a cousin of Sheku Bayoh.

Maame Blue (https://maamebluewrites.com) is a Ghanaian-Londoner splitting her time between Melbourne and London. She is part of Jacaranda’s #Twentyin2020 initiative. (https://www.jacarandabooksartmusic.co.uk/blogs/news/twentyin2020-is-announced-and-its-quite-the-moment) Her debut novel Bad Love (https://www.jacarandabooksartmusic.co.uk/products/bad-love) is available to buy online (https://www.jacarandabooksartmusic.co.uk/products/bad-love) , at Foyles (https://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fiction-poetry/bad-love,maame-blue-9781913090180) and all good Indie bookshops, and as an Audible audiobook (https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Bad-Love-Audiobook/B084HLGCZY) . Her short stories and creative non-fiction pieces have appeared in Black Ballad, AFREADA, Litro Magazine and The Good Journal. She also has pieces forthcoming in the Royal Literary Fund Magazine and New Australian Fiction 2020, and co-hosts Headscarves and Carry-ons – a podcast about black girls living abroad.

Karthika Naïr (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/150393/remaindering-habits) is the author of several books, including the award-winning Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata (https://www.brooklinebooksmith-shop.com/book/9781939810366) , and principal scriptwriter of Akram Khan’s DESH, Chotto Desh and Until the Lions, a partial adaptation of her own book. Also a dance enabler, Naïr’s closest association has been with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet as executive producer of their works like Babel (Words), Puz/zle and Les Médusés, and as co-founder of Cherkaoui’s company, Eastman. She lives in Paris.

Ruby Cowling (https://rubyorruth.wordpress.com/) grew up in Bradford and lives in London. Her short fiction has won awards including The White Review Short Story Prize and the London Short Story Prize, and her publication credits include Lighthouse, The Lonely Crowd, Wasafiri online, the Galley Beggar Press Singles Club, and numerous print anthologies. Her collection This Paradise (Boiler House Press) was longlisted for the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

Visual Verse is a free, shared space for writers across the world collaborating in art and words. We believe that curating art and writing is an ongoing statement of who we are. We are committed to the work that making genuine, lasting equality for Black lives asks of all of us, not only as allies but as active accomplices (with thanks to The White Pube for this term).

And now dear writers, we hope you are inspired. Give yourself an hour, and 50-500 words. Make work, share it with us by 15 July.

Now, more than ever, the image is the starting point, the rest is up to you.

Kristen, Preti, Lucie and Luke

Connect with us
@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse?lang=en)
@kadijattug (https://twitter.com/kadijattug) / @sablelitmag (https://twitter.com/sablelitmag)
@maamebluewrites (https://twitter.com/maamebluewrites) / @JacarandaBooks (https://twitter.com/JacarandaBooks)
@rubycowling (https://twitter.com/rubycowling) / @bhousepress (https://twitter.com/bhousepress)

Resources
Justice for Grenfell (https://justice4grenfell.org/)

The Grenfell Inquiry and racism Khadija Saye IntoArts Programme (https://intouniversity.org/content/khadija-saye-intoarts-programme)

The White Pube: art statements on Black Lives Matter (https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/blm)

Black Lives Matter USA (https://blacklivesmatter.com/ )

Black Lives Matter in arts, academia, culture, research, education (UK) (https://beinghumanfestival.org/blm-resources-for-the-humanities/)

Donations and fundraisers

Justice for Sheku Bayoh (https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/justiceforsheku/?utm_source=backer_social&utm_campaign=justiceforsheku&utm_reference=339c027a16d4d9fa1d367a92c36f3228&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_content=post_pledge_page_flat_v1&fbclid=IwAR2hfGzu5RcTD1dnOlTFfBa_EbGAL-9VY5-PHQd65PlMwFJ_BEnBtfGb5oA) : Five years after Sheku Bayoh’s death at the hands of Scottish police, not one officer has been disciplined let alone charged with his murder. This campaign is raising funds to support legal costs for Sheku’s family as they continue to fight for justice.

United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC) (https://uffcampaign.org) : All funds donated here go towards all family campaigns for those families who are members of UFFC, which is open to all family and friends whose loved ones have been violated and died at the hands of the state.

Injustice – UV (https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/injustice—uv-1) : Injustice was named “The most important British documentary of my professional lifetime” by Peter Bradshaw, Guardian Film Critic. Director, Ken Fero was one of the founders of UFFC. This is a crowdfunder for the second Injustice film, it follows the struggles for justice of families in the UK whose loved ones have been killed by the police.
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
————————————————————
Don’t forget you can join us every day on Instagram for a 15-minute, 5-50 word writing challenge.
Visit Visual Verse Anthology on Instagram now… (https://www.instagram.com/visualverseanthology/)

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Volume 07, Chapter 1 | November 2019

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Image by RUDE London.

Dear writers, readers and friends,

VISUAL VERSE IS SIX!

Yes we have made it through our teething and toddler years and now we are in big school. Our labour of love project has reached the grand old age of SIX and we are proud, humble, grateful and downright amazed. We couldn’t have made it without all our readers, writers, leads, supporters and some very special guest curators who took over and brought new voices to us.

THANK YOU!

And we must also thank our amazing team, based in the UK, Germany, USA, and sometimes Australia, who work around babies, books, dogs, higher education courses, day jobs and night jobs to bring the site to you each month and publish and tweet your work. We are proud to be a free resource for writers and readers all over the world.

For our sixth birthday edition, we’re bringing you a piece of graphic art by the tenacious, insanely talented duo that is RUDE London (https://www.thisisrude.com/) . Their work is big and loud and bold, setting the tone for this auspicious birthday issue. In response, we open with a line-up of some of the most exciting, avant-garde writers working today – all equally brilliant, equally unique.

Our page one piece comes from Chika Unigwe (https://twitter.com/chikaunigwe) , a Nigerian writer whose work is trend breaking. Her novels include Night Dancer and On Black Sisters Streets. She has written about climate change for the Guardian, feminism for the White Review and was shortlisted for the Caine Prize in African writing. Her latest book is a collection of short stories, Better Never Than Late (https://cassavarepublic.biz/product/cassava-shorts/?v=3a52f3c22ed6) , out now from Cassava Republic.

Our second page is live from Linda Mannheim (https://www.lindamannheim.com/) , the author of three books of fiction: Risk, Above Sugar Hill and This Way to Departures, just out from Influx Press. Her work has appeared in magazines in the US, UK, South Africa, and Canada including Granta, 3:AM Magazine and Catapult Story. Eimear McBride said that Linda’s stories ‘provoke and abide like a slap’. Originally from New York, Linda divides her time between London and Berlin and is working on Barbed Wire Fever, a literary project that explores what it means to seek and provide refuge.

On page three, we bring you work from Glen James Brown (https://twitter.com/glen_j_brown?lang=en) , whose debut novel Ironopolis (https://www.parthianbooks.com/products/ironopolis) – about the collapse of industry and social housing in Teesside, and its impact on community, culture and folklore – was called ‘nothing short of a triumph’ by the Guardian. It was also shortlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize for political fiction, as well as longlisted for the Portico Prize. He comes from County Durham, but lives and writes in sunny Manchester.

And to really jump off the deep end, we complete our launch with a piece by Yara Rodrigues Fowler (https://yararodriguesfowler.com/) , a British Brazilian novelist from South London. Her first novel, Stubborn Archivist, was published in 2019 in the UK and USA. Yara was named one of The Observer’s nine hottest-tipped debut novelists of 2019 and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. She is also a trustee of Latin American Women’s Aid, an organisation that runs the only two refuges in Europe, for and by Latin American women. She’s writing her second novel now, for which she received the John C Lawrence Award from the Society of Authors towards research in Brazil.

So, dear writers and readers, it’s time for some birthday indulgence – treat yourself with some high-quality reading and then sharpen your pencils… the image is the starting point, the rest is up to you,

Love,
Preti, Kristen, Lucie and Luke

Connect with us
@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse?lang=en)
@chikaunigwe (https://twitter.com/chikaunigwe?lang=en)
@lindamannheim (https://twitter.com/LindaMannheim)
@Glen_J_Brown (https://twitter.com/glen_j_brown?lang=en)
@yazzarf (https://twitter.com/yazzarf)

Volume 06, Chapter 02 | December 2018

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Image by Dong Chensheng

Dear writers, readers and friends,

The end is nigh … for 2018 at least.

To wrap the year, we bring you this curious character in red by Chinese artist Dong Chensheng and lead pieces by the founders and contributors of BLYNKT Magazine (http://www.blynkt.com/) . BLYNKT is an online publication which explores one theme deeply each issue through a range of creative non-fiction, essays, art, interviews, prose and poetry. Issue 4 “New Beginnings” will be available in early 2019 and BLYNKT is accepting submissions (http://www.blynkt.com/submissions.html) until December 15th, 2018. Stay in the loop with BLYNKT via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/BLYNKT/) , Twitter (https://twitter.com/blynkt) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/blynkt/) .

Our first lead piece, which explores the value of family legacy, is by Carly Dee, a writer from London who is the co-founder and co-editor of BLYNKT Magazine. Carly writes prose, poetry and creative non-fiction which has been featured in Corner Club Press, Firewords Quarterly and The Avalon Literary Review, among others. She is currently working on a film-script in Berlin with her BLYNKT partner and co-founder Q. Lei, as well as a non-fiction and spoken word project which will be available in 2019.

Q. Lei has penned for us a short story that will make you nosocomephobic if you aren’t already. Lei received her PhD in East Asian Studies in the discipline of Philosophy of Science from Princeton University. She is currently working as an independent filmmaker and writer between Shenzhen and Berlin. She has conducted various research projects on the topic of science and society at the University of Tokyo, Freie Universität and Princeton University. Her creative writing has been published in Litro Magazine, the Centum Press Anthologies and The Speaker, among others. She is currently working on her second documentary on the history and development of Shenzhen – the “Silicon Valley of China”. You can find her latest updates and adventures on her blog (https://www.inbetweenalbum.com/) and on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/qleifilm/) .

Next up, we have a piece about elements, eyes and ‘i’s by Malik Ameer Crumpler (http://malikameer.com/) . Malik Ameer is a poet, rapper, music producer and editor who’s released several albums, glitch art films, five poetry books and one book of raps. He was guest-editor of Paris Lit Up (http://parislitup.com/paris-lit-up-4-magazine/) issues 4 and 5. He’s editor-at-large of The Opiate (https://theopiatemagazine.com/) , co-founder of Those That This (https://thosethatthis.com/) and Visceral Brooklyn. Malik has an MFA in Creative Writing from LIU, Brooklyn. He co-hosted Transatlantic Poetry 2017-2018 (https://www.transatlanticpoetry.com/) , curates/hosts Poets Live (https://poetslive.org/) and The Wordists. He is the M.C. for Hip Hop group Madison Washington (http://defpresse.com/artists/madison-washington/) on Def Pressé and a non-fiction staff writer for Itchysilk (http://www.itchysilk.com/) . Beneath The Underground: Collected Raps 2000- 2018
(http://www.lulu.com/shop/http://www.lulu.com/shop/malik-crumpler/beneath-the-underground-collected-raps-2000-2018/paperback/product-23879473.html) is Malik’s new book and ((((FACTS))))) (https://defpresse.bandcamp.com/album/facts) is Madison Washington’s new album.

Our fourth piece is a tender love letter written in paint by Lavinia Abbott (https://twitter.com/laviniasabbott) . Lavinia is a London-based independent filmmaker with over fifteen years’ experience in theatre and film. After graduating from Nottingham University with a degree in German and Politics, she attended drama school in Paris and New York and appeared in several plays before she turned to writing and directing for film and theatre. Her first short film What Happened to Manfred (shot in Berlin) recently won the Award for Best Student Film at the Around Films International Film Festival in Berlin. She has since written and directed three more short films in West Africa and in the UK. Lavinia is passionate about social and political issues and will typically make these the focal point of her work.

Wrapping up our lead pieces for the year is a poignant and reflective poem by Benjamin Lawrance Miller. Benjamin teaches composition and creative writing at Queensborough Community College (CUNY). He grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia, and he has an MFA in Writing from the School of Critical Studies at CalArts.

Finally, thank you to all of you who submitted to our birthday issue last month. We had an overwhelming response
– over 100 submissions arrived in just two days and they kept on coming! Luckily, our editorial assistants – Luke and Rithika – were on hand to help us publish these wonderful birthday presents.

And so, beloved members of the VV community, we wish you all the best for the final chapter of the year and look forward to seeing what 2019 brings. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Kristen, Preti, Lucie, Luke and Rithika
(Welcome to the team, Rithika!)

Volume 05, Chapter 06 | April 2018

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Image by Anthony Intraversato

Dear writers, readers and friends,

April is a month often associated with beginnings. Now that equinox has past, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are looking forward to a new season – one of light, warmth and colour. When we emerge from our caves after a long winter, will we see the world in new ways? This month’s visual prompt by Anthony Intraversato (https://www.instagram.com/anthonyintraversato/) brings to mind the insight that differing vantage points can create.

With so much going on in the world, we thought it only right to begin April with a choice selection of work arising from diverse pathways in the literary landscape, writers who between them traverse music, translation, travel, poetry, creative non-fiction and fiction
– a celebration of the multiplicity of writing identities represented in Visual Verse and a marker of how art brings us together in all our astonishing difference of form and voice.

Our lead writer Jeffrey Boakye (https://unseenflirtspoetry.wordpress.com/) is an author, teacher and father currently living in East London with his wife and two sons. His first book Hold Tight: Black Masculinity, Millennials, and the Meaning of Grime was published in 2017 by Influx Press. His upcoming book Black, Listed is due for publication in 2019. Jeffrey has a particular interest in education, race and popular culture. This is his first contribution to Visual Verse.

Our second lead, Abeer Y. Hoque (http://olivewitch.com/wordpress/) , is a Nigerian born Bangladeshi American writer and photographer we met in India. She likes velvet, tequila and the corpse pose. Her books include a travel photography and poetry monograph (The Long Way Home, 2013), a linked collection of stories, poems and photographs (The Lovers and the Leavers, 2015) and a memoir (Olive Witch, 2017).

Delaina Haslam (http://dhaslamtranslation.com/index.html) is a translator of French and Spanish; she is also an editor and writer and is based in Sheffield. She has worked for publications including InMadrid magazine and le cool London, and about translation for Glasgow Review of Books, the Poetry Translation Centre, and Yorkshire Translators and Interpreters. She has been the invited translator at Poetry Translation Centre workshops, had a submission accepted for Newcastle University’s Poettrios Experiment and has performed collaborative translation at Sheffield’s Wordlife open mic night. She is writing a memoir about baby loss, for which she won the Off the Shelf Festival Novel Slam in 2016.

Finally, we’d like to introduce our new Editorial Assistant, Rose Warner Miles. Rose is from the US and has a Bachelor degree in English Literature & Psychology from Williams College. She grew up in New York, where she interned at Poets House and worked at the American Museum of Natural History. She is a poet, a wanderer, an intersectional feminist and an unapologetically devoted fan of cheesy TV teen soaps. We’re thrilled to add her enthusiasm and poetic nous to the team.

And so dear writers with April arriving, it’s no joke – the image is the starting point, the rest is up to you.

Kristen, Preti, Lucie and Rose

Find us on Twitter

@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/@visual_verse)
@unseenflirt (https://twitter.com/unseenflirt?lang=en)
@olivewitch (https://twitter.com/olivewitch?lang=en)
@ (https://twitter.com/DelainaHaslam) DelainaHaslam (https://twitter.com/DelainaHaslam)

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Volume 04, Chapter 11 | September 2017

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Image by Alberto Garduño

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.

Dear writers, readers and friends,

It’s been three months since I began my guest spot with Visual Verse, and I’m keen to end on a high. I’ve had enormous fun in commissioning some of my favourite writers, and want to thank everyone who’s taken part for going outside their comfort zones and scaring their brains into writing something.

This month’s image, El sarape rojo, is by Mexican artist Alberto Garduño, probably painted around 1918. There’s a cinematic quality and a dry, piercing mischief to this image that should inspire some great responses.

Leading the September issue, we have the inimitable David Quantick. David is an Emmy-winning television writer, author, radiobroadcaster and journalist who’s written for over fifty different publications, from the Daily Telegraph to The Dandy. He and I met at the launch of a collection of absurdist writing by the gone-but-not-forgotten-and-more-people-should-know-about-him playwright N.F. Simpson, and published the marvellous writing manual How To Write Everything. He should be supreme inspiration to writers everywhere that there’s no such thing as writer’s block. As well as his off the wall contributions to Smash Hits, he’s written some of the best television of the past few decades, including Veep, The Thick Of It, Brass Eye and Harry Hill’s TV Burp.

That same night I met David, I also met Martha Sprackland (http://marthasprackland.co.uk/) , then assistant poetry editor for Faber & Faber. Twice a winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, she was also the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, and was longlisted for the inaugural Jerwood–Compton Poetry Fellowships in 2017. Her work has appeared in Poetry Review, LRB, Five Dials, New Humanist, Magma, Poetry London and many other places, and has been anthologised in the Salt Book of Younger Poets, Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam, Best Friends Forever, Vanguard, Birdbook, and the Best British Poetry series. Her debut pamphlet, Glass As Broken Glass, was published by Rack Press in January 2017, and she is currently working on a full-length collection. A non-fiction book on sharks is forthcoming with Little Toller Books in 2018.

Finally, we have Dan O’Brien (http://danobrien.org/) , an internationally produced and published playwright and poet. He and I met after his extraordinary play ‘The Body of an American’ played at the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill. His many awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama and Performance Art, the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, the Horton Foote Prize for Best New American Play, the PEN Center USA Award for Drama, and, for poetry, the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. Originally from Scarsdale, New York, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

All that’s left to say is thank you, farewell, and remember – the image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

George
—

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Volume 04, Chapter 08 | June 2017

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Image courtesy of the Bodleian Libraries

Dear writers, readers and friends,

This month we seen US Comedian Kathy Griffin fired from jobs and berated across the news and social media for an image of her with a beheaded Donald Trump. It was meant to be funny and perhaps if it were less bloody she could have got away with it. But it was particularly gruesome. Kathy’s saga is an example of how no two people ever perceive a single image in the same way. Kathy’s frame of perception, her life experiences, mean she sees it as funny. For others it is a symbol of hate, inciting a murder. For those who dislike blood and guts it’s just a bit gross. While our life experiences inform how we see, we writers can step away from our life experience and see through the eyes of characters and narraters to bring alternate views, perhaps even broadening our own minds in the process. So, who is seeing who in this month’s image? This intriguing Mermaid from the collection of the Bodleian Libraries (http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/) , Oxford University, is something you can
inspect from behind glass or, perhaps, turn the gaze back upon yourself, or us.

Our lead writer for June is a talent whose work we so admire, not just for his writing but also his instinct to bring art into every living moment, inviting participation and observation. Nigerian-born Inua Ellams (http://www.inuaellams.com/) is a cross art form practitioner, a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer and founder of the Midnight Run (http://www.themnr.com/) — an international, arts-filled, night-time, playful, urban, walking experience. He is a Complete Works poet alumni and a designer at White Space Creative Agency. Across his work, Identity, Displacement & Destiny are reoccurring themes in which he also tries to mix the old with the new: traditional African storytelling with contemporary poetry, pencil with pixel, texture with vector images. His poetry is published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches and several plays by Oberon.

Kathleen Heil (http://kathleenheil.net) graces us on page 2 with a beautifully controlled and moving piece. Kathleen is a writer, dancer, and translator. Her poems, stories, essays and translations most recently appear in The New Yorker, Five Points, FENCE, The Brooklyn Rail, Beloit Poetry Journal, Two Lines, SAND, and other journals. As a dancer, Heil has worked with various artists in the U.S. and Europe and performed her own choreography in New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Madrid, and elsewhere. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Sturgis Foundation, among others, she lives in Berlin. For those in Berlin, Kathleen has two workshops coming up – one on Rhythm and Phrasing (https://www.facebook.com/events/166433013891430/) and one on Style and Translation (https://www.facebook.com/events/247453242401643/) .

On page 3 we feature new writing from Erin O’Loughlin, a writer, translator and accidental wanderer. Originally from Australia, she has lived all over the world including Japan, South Africa and Italy. When she’s not busy living all her reincarnations at once (at least, that’s what it feels like some days) she is the associate editor for The Wild Word (http://thewildword.com/) magazine.

We have spent many afternoons reading The (http://thewildword.com/) Wild Word (http://thewildword.com/) where we found Deirdre Mulrooney (https://deirdre-mulrooney.squarespace.com/) , an emerging Irish artist living and working in Berlin. Raised working class in a small nation dominated by Catholicism and men, she now lives as a teacher, a mother and an artist discovering the joy of playing with taboos and visions of female identity that would, until all too recently, have seen her locked away. Her current work is a fantastical and brazenly irreverent take on femininity, sexuality, religion and power. See it in all its glory in her forthcoming exhibition, Bloody Milk River at Gallerie Baeren (https://deirdre-mulrooney.squarespace.com/new-cover-page/) in Neukölln, Berlin, from June 23rd.

Well? Who’s seeing who this month? The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Enjoy,
Kristen and Preti

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