Volume 08, Chapter 09 | July 2021

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Image by María Victoria Rodriguez

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Dear writers, readers and friends,

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are able to socialise again. The sun is shining and the air is a-buzz with energy. It is particularly enlivening to feel a sense of community once more and to be part of a place. Culture, food and the spirit of people can give us so much. That’s why this month’s image felt just right.

María Victoria Rodriguez (https://victoriarodriguez.com.ar/) , an Argentinian artist and animator living in Berlin, created this artwork for a small artisan food business in Shropshire, UK, called Pueblo. They sell handmade foods from South America and bring a taste for empanadas to their local British community. It’s these small, independent initiatives that bind us and keep the spirit alive.

A small side note before we announce our three lead writers. We have opened up our internships again and are looking for two or three new team members, to help us edit and publish pieces each month. We invite applications from anyone, anywhere, with any level of experience. We welcome entry level applicants and those who are looking for a career change or just some “behind the scenes” publishing experience. You can apply here (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfjCuLjjso6W0MU6fQvvv8MpA2YZ91vWotga7tt59EUNjDDcg/viewform) until 9th July.

Now, to our lead writers for the July issue of Visual Verse. These three have been on our radar for some time, as each of them has contributed some excellent writing to our publication.

Our first piece is by Carl Burkitt (https://carltellstales.com/) , who likes to tell tales. He tells long tales, short tales, silly tales and sad tales. He likes to tell them online, behind a mic, in books, in schools or on the sofa with his young family in Manchester. His debut collection What Does A Baby Think It Is? And Other Questions (https://carlburkitt.bigcartel.com/product/what-does-a-baby-think-it-is) was published in 2020 by Enthusiastic Press.

Page two features Megha Sood (https://meghasworldsite.wordpress.com/) , an award-winning poet, editor, author and blogger from New Jersey, USA. She is the recipient of the 2021 Poet Fellowship from MVICW (Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creating Writing) and a National Level Winner for the 2020 Spring Mahogany Prize. Sood is an Associate Poetry Editor for literary journals Mookychick (UK) and Life and Legends (USA), and is Literary Partner with Life in Quarantine, Stanford University. She has authored a chapbook My Body is Not an Apology (Finishing Line Press, 2021) and a full-length work My Body Lives Like a Threat (FlowerSongPress, 2021).

Our third piece comes from New York City resident Kerfe Roig, who enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina) and kblog.blog/. You can read more of her work on her website (http://kerferoig.com/) .

And so, dear writers, the blank page of possibility awaits you. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.
Kristen
with the VV team, Preti, Lucie and Isabel

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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

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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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