Volume 08, Chapter 04 | February 2021

Posted on by

Image by Tom or Judy Moore

Home

Dear writers, readers and friends,

We’ve had an amazing response to the feedback form (https://forms.gle/NaiKLaM37AffoxkH6) , thank you. If you haven’t filled it out, please take a moment to have your say. We will digest and report in good time but it has already been so helpful to see your ideas and understand the needs and wishes of our writing community.

And now, February! Allow us to unveil these tech-savvy little pigs courtesy of Tom or Judy Moore (https://www.instagram.com/ignatzhoch/) , a multifunctional artist and busy little bee based in Berlin. They’ve exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, ICA London, and Whose Museum. They sing and teach drawing in Berlin, co-curate the Visual Verse Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/visualverseanthology/) and create the comic Everything is Somewhat Repaired, a phenomenal body of work and continual source of inspiration, humour and humanity for us this past year. Read it on Insta (https://www.instagram.com/everythingrepaired/) or, if you subscribe to their Patreon (http://patreon.com/tomorjudy) you can get it and other exclusive content straight to your inbox and you’ll be supporting a talented trans artist.

We are thrilled to launch with a brilliant line-up of LGBTQ+ writers as LGBTQ+ history month gets underway. With these four wonderful lead pieces, and our fabulous image prompt, we honour the historical struggles of LGBTQ+ people. And we also wish to celebrate the full capacity of human love and be reminded to keep our hearts and minds open to those who are most vulnerable in contemporary society.

First up, we welcome Elizabeth Chakrabarty, an interdisciplinary writer exploring themes of race and sexuality. Her debut novel Lessons in Love and Other Crimes will be published by The Indigo Press in April 2021, and is on pre-order here (https://www.theindigopress.com/lessons-in-love) . Her poems have been published here at Visual Verse (https://visualverse.org/writers/elizabeth-chakrabarty/) , and she co-wrote ‘The Fiction of the Essay: of Abstraction, Texts, Communication and Loss’, published in Imagined Spaces (https://uk.bookshop.org/books/imagined-spaces/9780995512344) . Under her full name, Namita Elizabeth Chakrabarty, she has been published in the area of Critical Race Theory (https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Race-Theory-in-England/Chakrabarty-Roberts-Preston/p/book/9780415713078) , her story Eurovision was short-listed for the Asian Writer Short Story Prize, and published in Dividing Lines (http://dahlia-books.kong365.com/en-gb/products/dividing-lines) , and recently her poems
were chosen for the new anthology The Kali Project: Invoking the Goddess Within/Indian Women’s Voices (https://www.bookdepository.com/Kali-Project-Candice-Louisa-Daquin/9781951724061?ref=grid-view&qid=1611168944417&sr=1-1&fbclid=IwAR1EasUA6Y5UOwiZ0767VbKsTEWhHFNsAzKEQZsHRbXLpr-WXpWSyzY1_5M) .

On page 2 we feature Sy Brand, a queer non-binary poet living in Edinburgh, Scotland. They write through the haze of cat-/child-induced sleep deprivation to try and make sense of gender, relationships, and ADHD. Their work has been published in Popshot Quarterly, Capsule Stories, and ZARF Poetry, among others, and you can find some of their ekphrastic writing in the Visual Verse archives (https://visualverse.org/writers/sy-brand/) . You can find them on Twitter @TartanLlama (https://twitter.com/TartanLlama) and their publications at https://sybrand.ink (https://sybrand.ink/) .

Page 3 welcomes Siobhán Carroll to Visual Verse. Siobhán is a writer and performer based in Edinburgh. They live in Leith with 2 cats and a growing number of books. They write poetry, prose and personal essays. You can follow them on Twitter at @siobhanclaude_ (https://twitter.com/siobhanclaude_) or visit their website (https://www.siobhanclaudevandamme.co.uk) .

Eleanor Capaldi (https://emcletters.wordpress.com/) is a writer, director and researcher based in Scotland. Her work has been published by Gutter Magazine, The Interpreter’s House, Mechanics’ Institute Review, the Skinned Knee Collective, and in anthologies, The Edwin Morgan Centenary Collection (Speculative Books), Reel to Rattling Reel (Cranachan Press), and Queering the Map of Glasgow (Knight Errant Press). Short film Glue screened in competition at SQIFF, Roze FilmDagen and QueerVision Film Festival, where it was nominated in the category ‘Best of British’.

You know the drill now writers, it’s over to you. What will you make of our two little pigs? As always, you have until the 15th to write 50-500 words, in one hour. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Kristen, Preti, Lucie, Luke and Isabel.

Instagram
Follow us @visualverseanthology (https://www.instagram.com/visualverseanthology/) for a daily visual writing prompt.

Tweet Us
@visual_verse @DrNChakrabarty (https://twitter.com/@DrNChakrabarty)
@TartanLama (https://twitter.com/TartanLlama)
@siobhanclaude_ (https://twitter.com/siobhanclaude_)
@emcletters (https://twitter.com/emcletters)
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/)

Volume 03, Chapter 12 | October 2016

Posted on by

Image by Werner Stürenburg

Dear Writers,

Lately, we’ve been thinking a lot about personas and the power they have to liberate. Sometimes personas mask a terrifying reality (Donald Trump, Jimmy Saville etc) but sometimes they unmask amazing talent. For artists and writers an alter-ego, or a nom d’plume, can be the single most effective way to draw out new ideas, new thinking and new potential. This month’s image prompt is by the German painter, Werner Stürenburg, who signed his paintings with “Joe”, his nickname. Stürenburg trained as a mathematician and says he never intended to be an artist, but he couldn’t help it: “I didn’t like that. But I had to realize that there is no escape from myself.” We can’t help but wonder how many talented Joes are hiding away inside ordinary people. If you know someone who’s hiding a Joe, ask them to try their hand at writing for us this month – pen names welcome.

Speaking of talented Joes: we are beyond thrilled to lead with a piece from Wyl Menmuir (https://twitter.com/wylmenmuir) , whose bestselling debut novel, The Many (Salt Publishing) was long-listed for this year’s Man Booker Prize. We had our money on him! Wyl has also been published in A Space to Write, a book exploring authors’ creative writing practices, in nature and academic journals, and he writes regularly for a range of national magazines and blogs. He lives in Cornwall, lectures in creative writing and is also currently writer in residence at Richard Lander School in Truro.

Phoebe Tsang (http://www.TarotbyPhoebe.com) is a British-Canadian poet, librettist, short story writer and violinist. The author of Contents of a Mermaid’s Purse (Tightrope Books), Phoebe’s poetry and fiction has been published internationally in numerous journals and anthologies such as the Literary Review of Canada, Asia Literary Review and Room Magazine, and anthologies including Desde Hong Kong (Chameleon Press, Hong Kong), I Found It At The Movies (Guernica Editions), MESS: The Hospital Anthology (Tightrope Books). Her multidisciplinary performance practice integrates composed and improvised music with original poetry. A professional Tarot Consultant, Tsang employs the ancient, divinatory system of the Marseille Tarot to structure her performances, much as John Cage employed the I Ching. The resulting work is a product of chance – each performance differs in form and content, depending on the cards drawn. A former member of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, she lives in
Toronto, Canada.

Another writer we are delighted to bring you is Cat Woodward (https://twitter.com/CatherineWoodw2) , a feminist lyric poet studying for a PhD at UEA. Her poetry has been published in Lighthouse, Brittle Star, The Interpreter’s House and Ink, Sweat & Tears, and her PhD thesis explores robot voices and the robot as lyric poetics. We think her work is out of this world.

Finally, check out this wonderful piece from R.A Villaneuva (https://twitter.com/caesura) whose debut collection, Reliquaria (U. Nebraska Press, 2014), won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. New writing appears in Poetry, Guernica, Prac Crit and The Forward Book of Poetry 2017, The American Poetry Review, and widely elsewhere. A founding editor of Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art (http://tonguejournal.org) , he lives in Brooklyn and London.

So writers, it’s over to you and/or your alter-egos. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Enjoy!

Preti and Kristen

Home


mailto:visualverse@thecurvedhouse.com
https://www.facebook.com/visualverseanthology