Volume 09, Chapter 03 | January 2022

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Image by Dee Mulrooney
Dear writers, readers and friends,

We made it! Another year over, a new one begins, and to celebrate we present our first issue of Visual Verse for 2022. This one comes with a large dose of gratitude. After another challenging year we are ever more grateful to you, our community of readers and writers, for continuing to deliver exciting, challenging work. This past November were were especially floored by your responses to our inaugural writing competition. Thank you for helping us build our unique publication, woven together with your voices and ideas.

We have been thinking and talking about the vocabulary around beauty and joy. Our editorial team recently had an illuminating discussion about how much easier it is to access vocabulary around pain and suffering than vocabulary around beauty and hope. A common misconception is that a poem needs to mine the darkness to be truly moving. But joy can move us just as powerfully. We need to work a little harder to find the words but the words are there. So, how about this: for your January submission, challenge yourself to explore the vocabulary around beauty, joy, hope and/or optimism. Help us create an issue full of words that will lift us up and carry us into 2022 with a skip in our step.

To inspire you, some of our team have shared the writing that bring them joy:

Lucie Stevens, our Sydney-based Deputy Editor, recommends Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’, specifically section 46: https://poets.org/poem/song-myself-46. She says “It’s an oldie, but a goodie, and one I return to often.”

Isabel Brooks, our UK-based Deputy Editor, has four joyful poems to share:
“Hope” is the Thing with Feathers (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314) by Emily Dickinson
My Heart (https://poetrysociety.org/poetry-in-motion/my-heart) by Frank O’Hara
Still I Rise (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46446/still-i-rise) by Maya Angelou
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58762/catalog-of-unabashed-gratitude) by Ross Gay

And Jordan Fleming, our NYC-based editorial assistant, recommends some longer reads: Resignation by Nikki Giovanni, Walking Our Boundaries by Audre Lorde, The Perfect Ease of Grain by Toni Morrison and Le sporting-club de Monte Carlo (For Lena Horne) by James Baldwin.

So now, without further ado: this issue invites you to respond to a magnificent, layered image by Berlin-based Irish artist Dee Mulrooney (http://deirdre-mulrooney.com/) . Dee’s work is peppered with little whispers of ancestors, folklore and femininity. Take your time with it as there is much to see.

Launching us into the new year is a reflection on friendship by Allie Coker (https://www.facebook.com/alliecokerauthor) . Allie holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Queens University of Charlotte. She has taught creative writing courses and also worked as an editor. Her second book, a novella titled The Last Resort (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-last-resort-allie-coker/1138584134) , was published in January 2021. She was selected for a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts residency, as well as a Wildacres residency. She is a member of the North Carolina Writers Network and shares a home with her two rescued hairballs, Bob and Queen, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

On page 2, Yen Ooi (https://www.yenooi.com/) invites you to relax. Yen is a writer-editor-researcher who explores East and Southeast Asian culture, identity and values. Her projects aim to cultivate cultural engagement in our modern, technology-driven lives. She is a PhD candidate at Royal Holloway, University of London looking at the development of Chinese science fiction by diaspora writers and writers from Chinese-speaking nations. Yen is narrative director and writer on Road to Guangdong (https://shop.excalibur-games.com/products/road-to-guangdong) , a narrative-style driving game. She is author of Sun: Queens of Earth (novel) and A Suspicious Collection of Short Stories and Poetry (collection). She is also co-editor of Ab Terra, Brain Mill Press’s science fiction imprint. When she’s not got her head in a book, she lectures, mentors and plays the viola. Her latest book, Rén: The Ancient Chinese Art of Finding Peace and Fulfilment
(https://uk.bookshop.org/books/ren-the-ancient-chinese-art-of-finding-fulfilment-through-the-world-around-you/9781787398221?aid=7145) will be available in February 2022.

Page 3 offers a thought-provoking piece by Simon Costello (https://twitter.com/simoncostello13 ) . Simon’s poems have appeared in bath magg, The Stinging Fly, The Rialto, Magma and The Irish Times. In 2021, he won The Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Competition and was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. He lives in Co. Offaly, Ireland.

And now, dear writers, it’s over to you. We look forward to seeing what our January image and bonus writing challenge inspire.

Just a reminder to both long-term contributors and new members of the fold: write 50-500 words in one hour, responding to the image. Please only submit one piece per month. Due to the volume of submissions we receive, we will only review your first submissions each month. All subsequent submissions are removed from our system, so make sure the piece you submit is the one you want us to consider.
And don’t forget to submit by the closing date and time. Submissions close midnight (UK time) on January 15th. You can find our full submission guidelines here (https://visualverse.org/submission-guidelines/) . Good luck and happy writing!

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

With love and new year wishes from the VV team.

Kristen, Lucie, Preti, Isabel, Tam, Nahda, Jordan, Aimee and Anna.
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Volume 09, Chapter 01 | November 2021

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Image by Frederick Cayley Robinson

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Dear writers, readers and friends,

November has arrived and that means something extra special to us – it’s our birthday!

Happy eighth birthday to every member of the Visual Verse community! Whether you’ve been part of our tribe for some time now, or have just recently entered the fold, we want to thank each one of you for making VV what it is: dynamic, diverse, celebratory and inspirational. Together, this is what we’ve achieved:
* We’ve published 96 issues since 2013 – this month’s issue will be our 97^th.
* Almost 9000 pieces have been published to date – that’s somewhere between 450,000 and 4,500,000 words – the equivalent of around 50 novels!
* These pieces have been written by more than 350 lead writers and 3500 contributors. We’re proud to have created a space that fosters the development of fledging writers, while promoting the work of seasoned scribes and supporting everyone in-between.

All these figures bring one word to mind – collaboration. VV wouldn’t be possible without the artists whose work sparks our imaginations each month; the leads whose pieces open the channels of inspiration; the team of publishers, editors and curators working behind the scenes; and you, our beloved writing community. Even after all these years, your work still excites us, makes us reflect, shares with us a new point of view. We’re grateful for every piece of work we receive and the window it offers us into your hearts and minds. In return, we hope that each month, we foster your creativity and provide you with connection and community.

In the spirit of collaboration, all our November leads work closely with a creative partner, to develop innovative new work and support craft development in others. Our fabulous quintet of leads was inspired by an autumnally hued image by English painter, illustrator and decorator Frederick Cayley Robinson (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/frederick-cayley-robinson-1857) . We love the sense of narrative it evokes, as though it’s a still-shot from an unfolding moment.

Opening this issue is a piece exploring what we choose to hear – and ignore – by Emily Cataneo (http://www.emilycataneo.com/) . Emily is a writer and journalist from New England. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as Indiana Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Lightspeed, and her nonfiction in venues The Guardian, the Boston Globe, Slate, NPR, Atlas Obscura, and more. She is co-founder of the Redbud Writing Project (https://www.redbudwriting.org/) with fellow North Carolina State University MFA graduate, Arshia Simkin. Redbud is a creative writing organisation that teaches workshops across many genres, both online and in community spaces in North Carolina’s Triangle.

Our second and third pieces contrast with each other beautifully, in style and tone. These pieces have been penned by Onjuli Datta and Mikaella Clements – co-authors of The View Was Exhausting (https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/mikaella-clements/the-view-was-exhausting/9781472271730/) , a modern love story about power, fame and privilege. This creative duo is married and live together in Berlin. You can find them both on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/mikandonj/) , or Mikaella on Twitter (https://twitter.com/mikclements) .

Page 4’s piece is the perfect accompaniment to your bucketful of Halloween sweets. Its author is Redbud Writing Project (https://www.redbudwriting.org/) co-founder, Arshia Simkin (https://www.arshiasimkin.com/) . Arshia was born in Pakistan and spent the first six years of her life there. She grew up in Arlington, Virginia and currently lives in Raleigh with her husband. A former lawyer, Arshia’s writing has appeared in Crazyhorse. She was one of three winners of the 2020 CRAFT Flash Fiction contest, and received honourable mention in NC State’s James Hurt Prize for fiction.

Our final lead piece for November is a beautiful reflection on shifting relationships with shadow, written by Michelle Jana Chan (http://www.michellejanachan.com/) . Michelle is travel editor of Vanity Fair; her TEDx (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2ZnosgO8XA) is “Hitchhiking, galaxies, and why travel is not bad for the planet”. Her debut novel Song (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Song-Michelle-Jana-Chan/dp/1783525479/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) (Unbound) was described by Bernardine Evaristo as ‘a wonderfully lush and atmospheric odyssey of survival against all odds’; Elif Shafak called it: ‘Precise, heartfelt, breathtaking’. Her upcoming book, Two Friends (And Other Stories) is a double memoir which speculates into the future, co-authored with Shehnaz Suterwalla. She is launching a literary/travel podcast The Wandering Book Collector in December.

And so, dear writers, now it’s over to you. We can’t wait to receive your electronic birthday parcels, filled with fresh, innovative, experimental writing between 50-500 words, in response to this image and written within an hour. Challenge yourself. Push your boundaries. Go beyond the literal. Surprise us and, most of all, surprise yourself. Submissions close midnight (UK time) on November 15th.

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

Lucie
with the VV team: Kristen, Preti, Isabel, Tam, Nahda, Jordan, Aimee and Anna.
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