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 06, Chapter 10 | August 2019

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Image by Jakob Owens

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Welcome to August. In a time of great weirdness – in the climate, in politics and all of the rest – this is the month to stretch beyond the borders of language and reality towards some other future. And here it is – we bestow upon you this little piggy, along with a bumper summer selection of writing from the finest poets, fictionists and translators we could gather.

Our wonderful, surreal image prompt is brought to you by photographer and filmmaker Jakob Owens, who you can follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/jakobowens/?hl=en) .

This month’s writing lifts off with a wonderful piece by Michael Donkor (https://twitter.com/MichaelDonkor) , who studied English at Wadham College, Oxford, undertook a Masters in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway and now teaches English Literature to secondary school students. The Observer named him as one of 2018’s best debut authors for his first novel Hold (4th Estate) and this year he was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize.

On page 2 we feature Lucie McKnight Hardy (https://twitter.com/LMcKnightHardy) who grew up in West Wales and is a Welsh speaker. Her work has featured, or is forthcoming, in various places online and in print, including The Lonely Crowd, The Shadow Booth, Best British Short Stories 2019, and as a limited edition chapbook from Nightjar Press. Her debut novel, Water Shall Refuse Them, was shortlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition 2017 and longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award 2018 and is published this July by Dead Ink Books (https://deadinkbooks.com/) .

Next up, we are delighted to bring you Jess Thayil (https://twitter.com/JessThayil) , whose poems have featured in Magma Poetry, The Stinging Fly, Ink Sweat And Tears, Black Bough Poetry, AbstractMagazineTV, Potomac Review and Whale Road Review. She’s also engaged in self-taught abstract and mixed media art practice.

On page 4, we’re thrilled to welcome writer and translator Lucy Jones, who is British born and has lived in Berlin since 1998. Lucy studied German, film and applied linguistics and did several jobs before becoming a translator, including freelance fashion photography. Returning to her roots in literature, in 2008 she founded Transfiction (http://www.transfiction.eu/about-us/) , a collective of translators in Berlin. She also hosts a reading event called The Fiction Canteen (https://fictioncanteen.blog/) for writers and translators in Berlin.

And finally we have Durre Shawar (http://durreshahwar.com) , a writer, editor, and co-founder of ‘Where I’m Coming From’, an open mic event that platforms underrepresented writers in Wales (next event is on August 13 (https://www.facebook.com/whereimcomingfrom/) ). Durre has been published in various magazines and anthologies including Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class (Dead Ink Books), We Shall Fight Until We Win (404 Ink), Cheval 10 – Terry Hetherington Young Writers Award (Parthian Books). Her work explores themes of identity, intersectionality and mental health. Durre has worked and written for National Theatre Wales, British Council, Metro, National Museum Cardiff and Wales Arts Review. She is a regular speaker and performer at events and festivals and was part of the Hay Festival Writers at Work scheme, as well as BBC Writersroom Wales.

So, dear readers if you’re feeling political, personal, hungry or like swimming in a sandy-bottomed sea, we hope you enjoy our amazing lead selection. May it inspire you to get writing now. You know the rules: 50-500 words, one hour. Subs close on 15 August.

The image is the starting point, the text is up to you…

Preti, Kristen, Lucie and Luke

@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse)
@MichaelDonkor (https://twitter.com/MichaelDonkor)
@LMcKnightHardy (https://twitter.com/LMcKnightHardy)
@BacktoJones (https://twitter.com/BacktoJones)
@JessThayil (https://twitter.com/JessThayil)
@Durre_Shahwar (https://twitter.com/Durre_Shahwar)

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Volume 06, Chapter 07 | May 2019

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Image by R. Coad/New Zealand Archive

Dear writers, readers and friends,

May Day, Labour Day, Workers’ Day: in many countries around the world today is a public holiday. It is also a day of both rest and unrest. Here in Berlin, where Visual Verse was born, protesters are marching the streets for fairness. Their voices rally against a fast-moving gentrification that Berlin has long resisted and while the chants are for a better future, there is also something nostalgic about it. It feels as though a memory, longing for home and ‘a more simple time’ never seem to leave us no matter who or where we are. The future speaks with the voices of the past.

For this new issue it therefore felt right to bring you a prompt from the past. Our image is curated by The Curved House’s very own Alice Connew, also a photographer (https://www.aliceconnew.com/) , who unearthed this vignette by R. Coad from the New Zealand Archives. The image is accompanied by three magnificent pieces of writing – some of the best we have featured. Read these, and then read everything they have written.

Our first lead is by Rebecca Tamás, a poet currently based in York, where she works as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at York St John University. Rebecca is the winner of the 2016 Manchester Poetry Prize, and is a Fenton Arts Trust Emerging Writer awardee. She is the editor, with Sarah Shin, of Spells: Occult Poetry for the 21st Century, published by Ignota Books. Her first collection of poetry, ‘WITCH’ (http://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/index.php/2019/01/witch/) , a Poetry Book Society Spring Recommendation and a Paris Review Staff Pick, came out from Penned in the Margins this year.

On page 2, we present Christodoulos Makris. He has published several books, pamphlets, artists’ books and other poetry objects. His 2015 book The Architecture of Chance (Wurm Press) was a poetry book of the year at RTÉ Arena and 3:AM Magazine. One of Poetry Ireland’s ‘Rising Generation’ poets, he has presented his work widely across media and borders, and is currently Writer-in-Residence at National University of Ireland Maynooth, with other recent residencies and commissions including StAnza Festival (Scotland), the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) and European Capital of Culture. He is the poetry editor at gorse journal and associated imprint gorse editions, and co-director of Dublin’s multidisciplinary performance series Phonica. His most recent book is this is no longer entertainment (https://www.dostoyevskywannabe.com/this_is_no_longer_entertainment_/Original) , a book-length documentary poem just out from Manchester’s Dostoyevsky Wannabe press April 2019.

And on page 3, one of the most brilliant short story writers working today: David Hayden. He was born in Ireland and lives in England. His writing has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Granta online, Zoetrope All-Story, The Dublin Review and PN Review, and in the Faber New Irish Writing Anthology, Being Various, edited by Lucy Caldwell. His first book was Darker with the Lights On. And here’s Egress (http://magazine.nytyrant.com/egress-david-hayden/) , an extra short story up for your delectation on NY Tyrant.

So, you know the drill. Send us your 50-500 words, written in response to our image and in the space of one hour, by the 15th of May. We will publish the 100 pieces we love the most. And tweet when we can. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you…

Kristen, Lucie, Preti, Rithika and Luke

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@RebTamas (https://twitter.com/@RebTamas)
@seventydys (https://twitter.com/@seventydys)
@c_makris (https://twitter.com/@c_makris)

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Volume 04, Chapter 03 | January 2017

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Image by Manon Bellet

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Welcome to 2017. This past year has been another wonderful one for Visual Verse. Thanks to you, our writers, we’ve grown in submissions and followers and the inbox is bursting every week. It is such a pleasure to see you continue to return each month and deliver new words. And it is such a pleasure to have a platform from which we can shine a spotlight on fantastic writers, published and unpublished. In 2016 we’ve been proud to feature a Goldsmith’s Prize winner, a Booker longlistee, debut writers and those who have collections forthcoming next year. Some of you have taken work inspired by Visual Verse to the next level – it’s found its way into poetry collections and into live performances as well as onto your own websites. We are thrilled by all of this and can’t wait to see what next year will bring.

One thing you may not realise, too, is how much your writing inspires the artists we feature here on Visual Verse. It is a unique experience for them to see how so many people, with wildly diverse perspectives and styles, respond to their work. This dialogue between artist and writer is the seed from which Visual Verse was grown and it is one of the things that makes us most proud.

So without further ado, we are delighted to bestow upon you our first visual prompt for 2017. This magnificent image comes from Manon Bellet (http://www.manonbellet.com/) , a French artist currently based in New Orleans, US. Bellet’s work looks at the intersections of nature conservation and art preservation, an unconventional pairing, and tries to challenge our perceptions of our environment. This image is from her series Sous Surface and is one of those images that presents something different each time you view it. What will you make of this one?

Our lead writers for January 2017 are a celebration of our connections beyond the geographical. We begin with the elegiac, romantic Emmanuelle Pagano translated from the French by Jennifer Higgins and Sophie Lewis. Pagano’s fragmentary musings on love and desire, Trysting (http://www.andotherstories.org/author/emmanuelle-pagano/) was published in 2016 by & Other Stories. She lives and works on the Ardèche plateau. She has written more than a dozen works of fiction, has won the EU Prize for Literature and her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She regularly collaborates with artists working in other disciplines such as dance, cinema, photography, illustration, fine art and music. A perfect start to our year. Translator Sophie Lewis (https://twitter.com/sophietimes) is a freelance editor and translator from French and Portuguese. Among the writers she has translated into English are Stendhal, Jules Verne, Violette Leduc, Emmanuelle Pagano, Marcel
Aymé, Andrée Maalouf, João Gilberto Noll, Pierre Gripari and Emilie de Turckheim. Jennifer Higgins (https://twitter.com/JennyTranslates) is an editor and translator from French and Italian. She has translated several works of fiction, including Emmanuelle Pagano’s Trysting, and has written a book about English translations of French poetry.

Our second lead is poet Rachel Plummer (http://www.rachelplummer.co.uk) who lives in Edinburgh with her partner and two young children. She has had poems in magazines including Mslexia, The Stinging Fly and Agenda. She is a recipient of the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award for poetry. She has had poems placed in numerous competitions, including the Flambard Prize, Penfro, and the Troubadour Prize.

For our third lead we bring you the robust writings of Agri Ismaïl, who is based in Sweden and Iraq. His work has appeared in The White Review, Guernica, Litro and 3:AM Magazine amongst other places, traversing and transcending all kinds of borders.

And last but not least, our up and coming spot goes to Cage Williams, a poet, writer and musician based in London. He studied literature at Goldsmiths College and he writes on subjects ranging from jazz and the New York School poets to Shakespeare. Find more writing by Cage Williams here (http://literateur.com/four-poems-by-cage-williams/) .

So we go on… boats against the current… pulling into the future. Let us create another year’s worth of beautiful art and words. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Preti and Kristen

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