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 04, Chapter 01 | November 2016

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Image by Hernan Bas

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Happy Birthday! Visual Verse is three years old this month and we are thrilled to continue to grow this very special publication. We now have well over 1000 writers and readers getting this newsletter each month and we receive up to 150 submissions with each new issue. Over the last three years we have published writers from around the world – New Zealand to Scotland and Argentina to Japan. Some have been nominees (and even winners) of Bookers, Goldsmiths and Polari prizes. Some have gone on to publish debut novels and short story collections. We have championed big names and up-and-coming ones, from small presses and none – and every month we find our inbox stuffed full of the best, the freshest, the most exciting and radical writing from around the world. Today we celebrate Visual Verse as a platform for new writing, no matter where it comes from, and we celebrate you. Our writers who have made Visual Verse what it is.

A birthday for Visual Verse means the start of a brand new volume. Volume 04, Chapter 01 features Miami-born artist Hernan Bas (http://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/hernan-bas) , the candle on our cake. His work is often inspired by stories, full of literary intrigue and tinged with nihilistic romanticism and old world imagery; he says his influences include Oscar Wilde and Joris-Karl Huysman. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around the world, including at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and at the 53rd Venice Biennale. His work is part of the permanent collections of New York’s Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art among others.

Hernan’s works are stories that unfold and Visual Verse is nothing if not an act of translation: the world and all its art transformed into words. This month we decided to go even more meta and lead with some fantastic writers who are also actual translators. For where would literature be without these multilingual multi-talents?

The icing our cake is a lead piece by Maureen Freely, the author of three works of non fiction and seven novels, including, most recently, Sailing through Byzantium, an elegy to the art of thinking in many languages. She is also the translator of five books by the Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, and a number of memoirs, biographies, rising stars and 20th century classics. Her translation with Alexander Dawe of The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, was awarded the Modern Languages Association Lois Roth Award for a Translation of a Literary Work in 2014. She has been a regular contributor to the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent and the Sunday Times for three decades, writing on feminism, family and social policy, Turkish culture and politics, and contemporary writing. As President of English PEN, she champions free expression worldwide. As the former chair of the Translators Association, she also works with campaigns aiming to promote world
literature in English translation. It’s wonderful to celebrate Visual Verse with her.

Our cake’s first layer comes from Cecilia Rossi, originally from Buenos Aires, who holds an MA in Creative Writing from Cardiff University and a PhD in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia, where she now works as a Lecturer in Literature and Translation and convenes the MA in Literary Translation. Her original poetry has appeared in several journals including Poetry Wales and New Welsh Review. In 2010, her translations of Alejandra Pizarnik’s Selected Poems were published by Waterloo Press. In 2013 she won a British Academy Small Grant to undertake research into the Pizarnik Papers at Princeton University Library. Her latest translations of Pizarnik’s prose texts and excerpts from her journals appeared in Music and Literature No. 6.

The ganache is by Saskia Vogel (http://www.saskiavogel.com) , who has written on the themes of gender, power, and sexuality for publications such as Granta, The White Review, The Offing, Sight & Sound, and The Quietus. Her translations include work by leading female authors, such as Katrine Marcal, Karolina Ramqvist and the modernist eroticist Rut Hillarp.

And the final layer is by Jeffrey M. Angles, who has spent his life traveling back and forth between Japan, where he lived for many years, and the US, where he is a professor of Japanese literature and translation at Western Michigan University. He is the award-winning translator of dozens of Japan’s most important modern Japanese authors and poets. He believes strongly in the role of translators as social activists, and much of his career has focused on the translation of socially engaged, feminist, or queer writers into English. He writes poetry in both English and Japanese, and his collection of Japanese-language poetry Watashi no hizuke henkō sen (My International Date Line) was published by Shichōsha in 2016.

As an extra slice, if you want to hear more about the art of translating fiction, tune in to BBC Radio 3 on 24th November at 10pm when Preti will be picking some of the latest brilliant new books recently translated into English, and discussing them live.

Enjoy the flavours, dear writers, then get inspired, and send us presents we can share.

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

Kristen and Preti

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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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Volume 03, Chapter 10 | August 2016

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Image by Megan Archer

Dear writers, readers and friends,

This month we present a glorious, bright, pop-tastic collage by Berlin-based New Zealand artist Megan Archer (http://www.meganjarcher.com/) . This is a very special image because we have no idea how you will all respond. With most Visual Verse images we can roughly predict the kinds of themes that might emerge, and the mood the issue may take, but in this case we just don’t know where your writing will lead us. For that reason we are particularly excited to see the August issue take shape as you submit your writing.

We are thrilled to kick off with a lead piece by Sampurna Chattarji (http://sampurnachattarji.wordpress.com/) a poet, novelist, translator and children’s author. Her fourteen books include the novels Rupture and Land of the Well (both from HarperCollins); the poetry collection Absent Muses (Poetrywala, 2010); and a book of short stories about Bombay/Mumbai, Dirty Love (Penguin 2013). Sampurna also edited Sweeping the Front Yard, an anthology of poetry and prose by women writing in English, Malayalam, Telugu and Urdu and she has read at festivals all over India and the UK, including Hay-on-Wye and Ledbury Poetry Festival.

Next up, new writing from Laila Sumpton, a London-based poet who regularly performs her work at arts venues across the country and facilitates poetry workshops at museums, galleries, hospitals, schools and charities. She is a member of the Keats House Poets and co-directs refugee and migrant poetry collective Bards Without Borders. Laila is working on her first collection and her poetry often explores human rights issues and family memories.

And our third lead piece is from Colin Herd (http://www.colinherd.com) , a poet and Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. Books include too ok (BlazeVOX, 2011), Glovebox (Knives, Forks and Spoons, 2013) and Oberwilding with SJ Fowler (Austrian Cultural Forum, 2015). He is part of the team that runs Outside-in / Inside-out (http://outsidepoetryfestival.wordpress.com) , a new poetry festival launching in Glasgow in October 2016.

So writers, what will you make of Megan’s brilliant image? What will you find ebbing above and below that bluest ocean?

Away you go…

Preti and Kristen

PS. For those in Berlin, you can see more of Megan’s work at Fellini Gallery (Mittenwalder Str. 6
10961 Berlin, Germany) until 28th September, 2016.

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