Image by Omid Armin
Dear writers, readers and friends,
At last, your February prompt is here. What a ride 2020 has been already. Bushfires, deadly viruses and Brexit (among other things) have welcomed us to this new decade. Still, we soldier on with our art and pens.
As you will have noticed, we are a day late because the Visual Verse team have been very busy bees. Preti is researching and writing her way around Sri Lanka, Kristen is in Australia on family business and Lucie is honing her novel at a writing residency, also in Australia. One lone literary soldier has kept Visual Verse going: our editorial assistant, Luke. Thank you, Luke. If it weren’t for you, nothing would have been published in January. Writers, if you submitted last month and have not been published there is still a chance. We have managed to get 67 wonderful pieces published and will continue with more when the whole team are back on deck. Thank you for your patience.
Meanwhile, it’s time for a new challenge.
Our image for February is brought to you by Iranian photographer Omid Armin. It’s simple and reflective, literally and figuratively.
We are so proud to highlight the talents of one of our regular Visual Verse contributors on page one this month. Ursula Brunetti (https://twitter.com/ursulabrunetti?lang=en) is the winner of the Royal Society Of Literature’s V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize 2019 and is a graduate of the Faber Academy. Her work has been shortlisted for the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition 2019 and has been published by Popshot, Prospect, Fairlight Books and The Willesden Herald. Ursula has written for Visual Verse since our earliest issues and she continues to produce inventive, beautifully crafted pieces. Read some of her previous submissions on her Visual Verse author page (https://visualverse.org/writers/ursula-brunetti/) .
On page two is the indomitable Christian-Wingrove Rogers (http://www.christian-rogers.com/) , storyteller extraordinaire. He tells us that, at an early age, he suffered from an acute form of institutions allergy. Being born in Britain, an institution, he was doomed. So, 35 years ago, in the interests of all concerned, he left Britain to become a traditional travelling storyteller who also happens to be a juggler and a writer. His spoken words are amazing and we are excited to see the evolution of his written words.
Our page three is occupied by London-based student Dani Owens. As some of you know, the Visual Verse team work with students in many contexts – from early years/primary classrooms to higher education and beyond. We often use visual prompts to inspire new thinking and creativity and one of our favourite exercises to use with images is automatic writing. Also known as “stream of consciousness” or “morning pages”, this involves writing continuously, without hesitation, for an allocated amount of time. The image is the starting point, of course, and sometimes we invite students to review their automatic writing and pull out the most meaningful phrase or theme from which to write a more coherent piece. Dani’s piece was written in an hour, with no writing background, and we thought it was deserving of a wider readership.
Finally, on page four we have a petite poem by Leonard Harrison (https://www.wehi.edu.au/people/leonard-c-harrison) , a medical scientist, sculptor and occasional poet. For the past 30 years, Leonard shared his life with fellow scientist and artist Margo Honeyman who taught him to appreciate the intimate relationship between art and science. Now, with Margo’s passing, Leonard is returning to poetry to make sense of things.
So, dear friends, you know the score. The image is the starting point, the text is
up to you. We are excited to see what you come up with for our February issue. Preti, Kristen, Lucie and Luke
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