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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