Volume 03, Chapter 12 | October 2016

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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

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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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Volume 03, Chapter 10 | August 2016

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Image by Megan Archer

Dear writers, readers and friends,

This month we present a glorious, bright, pop-tastic collage by Berlin-based New Zealand artist Megan Archer (http://www.meganjarcher.com/) . This is a very special image because we have no idea how you will all respond. With most Visual Verse images we can roughly predict the kinds of themes that might emerge, and the mood the issue may take, but in this case we just don’t know where your writing will lead us. For that reason we are particularly excited to see the August issue take shape as you submit your writing.

We are thrilled to kick off with a lead piece by Sampurna Chattarji (http://sampurnachattarji.wordpress.com/) a poet, novelist, translator and children’s author. Her fourteen books include the novels Rupture and Land of the Well (both from HarperCollins); the poetry collection Absent Muses (Poetrywala, 2010); and a book of short stories about Bombay/Mumbai, Dirty Love (Penguin 2013). Sampurna also edited Sweeping the Front Yard, an anthology of poetry and prose by women writing in English, Malayalam, Telugu and Urdu and she has read at festivals all over India and the UK, including Hay-on-Wye and Ledbury Poetry Festival.

Next up, new writing from Laila Sumpton, a London-based poet who regularly performs her work at arts venues across the country and facilitates poetry workshops at museums, galleries, hospitals, schools and charities. She is a member of the Keats House Poets and co-directs refugee and migrant poetry collective Bards Without Borders. Laila is working on her first collection and her poetry often explores human rights issues and family memories.

And our third lead piece is from Colin Herd (http://www.colinherd.com) , a poet and Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. Books include too ok (BlazeVOX, 2011), Glovebox (Knives, Forks and Spoons, 2013) and Oberwilding with SJ Fowler (Austrian Cultural Forum, 2015). He is part of the team that runs Outside-in / Inside-out (http://outsidepoetryfestival.wordpress.com) , a new poetry festival launching in Glasgow in October 2016.

So writers, what will you make of Megan’s brilliant image? What will you find ebbing above and below that bluest ocean?

Away you go…

Preti and Kristen

PS. For those in Berlin, you can see more of Megan’s work at Fellini Gallery (Mittenwalder Str. 6
10961 Berlin, Germany) until 28th September, 2016.

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Volume 03, Chapter 09 | July 2016

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Image by Oscar Keys

Hello dear Readers,

What a month. A real-life House of Cards is playing out in British politics while that wild Trump-a-thon rages on across the seas. Our hearts are heavy for the lives lost in the Orlando bombings and now, in Turkey, we mourn the 42 people who lost their lives in the Ataturk airport bombing. It is hard not to feel helpless but, as Michele Hanson, writing in the Guardian, reminds us: In a world of fear and loathing, we need art more than ever (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jun/27/art-education-creativity-transforming-lives) . We have our words, dear writers, and now is the time to use them.

For the July issue we give you a beautiful image by photographer Oscar Keys. We came across this image some months ago (thank you to the Twitter friend who recommended this one, we can’t find the Tweet but you know who you are) and it has stuck with us ever since. Now seems like the right time to deliver an image that is both soft and ambient, and ominous and threatening. We expect some dark responses, but we also hope some of you will find a playfulness in this image too.

Each month we strive to bring you a wide range of lead writers who represent the freshest voices out there, and this month is no exception. First up is Irenosen Okojie, writer and Arts Project Manager. Her debut novel Butterfly Fish has just won a Betty Trask Award, given to young writers of “outstanding literary merit”, according to the prize, and she is now hard at work on a new collection of short stories called Speak Gigantular, which will be published later this year. Her piece will hopefully tide us over until then! You can also read more from her on the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/profile/irenosen-okojie ) website.

Shaista Tayabali, who we publish on page 2, is one of our Twitter finds who we came across while scouring the internet for interesting takes on life and living. Coincidentally, she lives in Cambridge, is a poet and writer and since graduating with an MA in Creative Writing from Anglia Ruskin University, she has been working to complete her first book, a memoir. Shaista has been blogging for several years (http://www.lupusinflight.com) and contributes frequently to the world of ethics and humanities in medicine; her work has appeared in Hektoen International, IJUDH, a journal of global healthcare, and various poetry magazines online. She brings us a deeply moving poem for Jo Cox, the amazing British MP who was tragically murdered in London last month.

Our Page 3 we are excited to publish a wonderful piece by Theodoros Chiotis, who writes poetry and code poetry in Greek and English. Theo is the editor and translator of the anthology Futures: Poetry of the Greek Crisis (Penned in the Margins, 2015). His work has appeared in print and online magazines and anthologies in Greece, UK, Australia, Germany, Croatia amongst others. He lives and works in Athens.

As Visual Verse makes its way through the chaos via Cambridge (UK) and Berlin (Germany) we are proud to publish your submissions from all over the world. If nothing else, we can stand together and celebrate our collective achievement in creating an anthology that is a beacon of hope for international collaboration, diversity, inclusion, humanity, art and so much more.

Write on, dear friends, write on.

Preti and Kristen

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Volume 03, Chapter 08 | June 2016

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Image by Jean Cooke

Dear Writers,

As you know we love a collaboration at Visual Verse and this month, via our brilliant designer Mr Pete Lewis (http://www.mrpetelewis.com/) and Back to Front studio (http://backtofront.london/) , we are connecting with Camden Art Collection in London to bring you your new writing prompt. In June, Camden Council will launch a new portal bringing their phenomenal collection to a public audience. We are thrilled to be able to share an image from this collection exclusively with you.

This painting is by Jean Cooke, an artist we love, who once said: “Everything that happens when I open my eyes [each morning] is a surprise. It’s like dying and coming alive again every day.” You’ll be able to view this image, along with other works from Camden’s extensive collection, at Swiss Cottage Library over the coming month. Keep an eye on our Twitter feed for info about the exhibition.

Giving voice to this beautiful piece is Mike McCormack (http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/solar-bones-by-mike-mccormack-review-portrait-of-a-universe-in-dereliction-1.2637871) , an award-winning novelist and short story writer from Mayo. His new novel, Solar Bones (his first for a decade) was published last month by Tramp Press (http://www.tramppress.com/) and has already garnered exceptional reviews. The Literary Review called it “hauntingly sad, but also frequently very funny – Proust reconfigured by Flann O’Brien”. His previous work includes Notes from a Coma (2005), which was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award, and Forensic Songs (2012). In 1996, he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and in 2007 he was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. He’s been called “the Iain Banks of Ireland” but we think he’s unique in himself!

Our page 2 spot is for Caleb Parkin (https://couldbethemoon.co.uk/where/) , a poet, performer, facilitator and educator, based in Bristol and working with organisations across broad sectors. Having worked for some time in media production, science publishing and education, he now holds a Post-Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes and is Membership Secretary of Lapidus: The Writing for Wellbeing Organisation. He often writes about animals, machines and technology (among many other things) – and has been published online and in print.

And on page 3, we are absolutely thrilled to publish M. NourbeSe Philip (http://www.nourbese.com/) , an unembedded poet, essayist, novelist, playwright and former lawyer who lives in the space-time of the City of Toronto. Her lyrical, politically charged writing (and tweets!) are a revelation in what language can do. Philip is a Guggenheim Fellow (USA) and the recipient of many awards including the Casa de las Americas prize (Cuba). Among her best known published works are: She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks, Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence, and Harriet’s Daughter, a young adult novel. Philip’s most recent work is Zong!, a genre-breaking poem, which engages with ideas of the law, history and memory as they relate to the transatlantic slave trade.

So dear writers, what will you make of the June image and the intensity of this particular female gaze? The image is the starting point, the rest is up to you.

Enjoy!

Preti and Kristen

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Volume 03, Chapter 07 | May 2016

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Image by Alain Manesson Malett

This month we present an image will surely prompt some challenging responses. Taken from a 17th Century text, it is an illustration by French artist Alain Manesson Malett of two women in Syria. The image invites questions about identity, perception and the assumptions we make about those who are different from ourselves. And being over 400 years old, this image also reminds us that our quest to understand eachother, to accept and to be accepted is nothing new.

For our lead writers we have a truly itinerant and international line up for you this month, celebrating the fluidity of borders and the dissolving of identity. We begin with a virtuoso piece by Commonwealth Short Story Prize nominated author, Mahesh Rao (http://www.maheshrao.info/) . Mahesh will be in London for the Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival, talking about lost lives in short fiction with Preti on May 17th, and closing the festival on May 18th with a discussion of his two recent, critically-acclaimed books in conversation with Sameer Rahim, Literary Editor of Prospect magazine. As if that weren’t enough, his debut novel, ‘The Smoke Is Rising’, won the Tata First Book Award for fiction and was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Crossword Prize – and you read him here first.

Then, heading to the north of England, Jag brings us a debut piece about forbidden love. Jag is self-described as queer, genderqueer, northern, disabled and neurodiverse. Despite very little formal education, Jag is emerging as a promising young British writer. Now with an agent and with the editing of a first novel underway, we look forward to reading more.

Finally, from the UK to Australia via India and back – our third offering this month is by Ryn Cowcroft. Ryn won the John Kinsella Poetry Prize and her poems have appeared in The Best Australian Poems anthology, The Australian Review, and other publications. She is currently working on a collection and we are delighted to publish her before she gets even busier.

We invite you to look carefully at this image, inside and outside the frame, and study the detail. This is a complex visual that we hope inspires a kind of writing that you may not have thought was in you.

Over to you, dear writers – enjoy.

Kristen and Preti

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Volume 03, Chapter 06 | April 2016

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Image by Michael Salu

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Two Sunday’s ago we ventured to Galander bar in Berlin’s Kreuzberg to join The Reader Berlin (https://www.facebook.com/The-Reader-Berlin-206584212747648/) for their monthly Sunday Salon. Hosted by our favourite Berlin literary goddess, Victoria Gosling, this salon featured a very special guest – particularly for those of us who indulge in the aesthetic of books. Former Creative Director at Granta, and now multi-disciplinary artist, Michael Salu (http://www.michaelsalu.com/) presented two original readings and this beautiful image that we feature for the April issue. Lost in the layers and torn from the inside, what will you make of it, dear writers?

In response to this image, we feature three winners of The Reader’s writing competition that took place that night. We lead with The Talk by Anna Geary-Meyer. Originally from Boston, Anna is an emerging writer of poetry and creative non-fiction who now lives in Berlin. She is interested in psychology, creativity, spirituality, and philosophy. Her impressive winning piece morphs the characteristics of poetry and prose so beautifully that we hardly notice we’re eavesdropping.

First runner-up Lucy Locket delivers a perfectly formed, rhythmic poem that, for us, feels like both an unveiling and a re-veiling. Lucy is a chef at Martha’s restaurant in Berlin and curates conceptual food events under the name MASTICATE, together with her partner, interior architect Jacinta Lawani.

And finally, it’s a numbers game for the mysterious Francesco Fano, who took us to 39 and then slipped back into the Berlin night.

These three pieces truly reflect the Visual Verse agenda: to encourage and celebrate writing from instinct. These were written in just 25 minutes, at 10pm at night, in a low-lit bar, probably under the influence of delicious cocktails and in response to a single, provocative image. Perhaps we should all put down our morning pages and go noctural. It’s getting late, what better time to start?

Awaiting your words: www.visualverse.org/submit

Preti and Kristen

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Volume 03, Chapter 05 | March 2016

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Image by Zata Banks
Guest Editor: Eley Williams

Dear writers, readers and friends,_x005F
After an exceptional month in February, with over 160 submissions published, we have pushed the Visual Verse format to new limits and present to you our first piece of concrete poetry (https://visualverse.org/submissions/anosmia/) , by Zata Banks. What a thing of beauty it is, sitting alongside this strange, furry image by Alejandro Carol.

Banks’ piece seems to mirror the contradiction within this image – that it is both starkly obvious and full of mystery all at once. What exactly is this creature? Why are we so close to it? Is it real or fake? Is it wild or tame? Help us to understand what we are seeing, dear writers. _x005F
And, as we have pushed our own limits, we challenge you to push yours too. We challenge you to write something outside of your comfort zone or choose a style you haven’t tried before. Our lead writers this month have set the bar high with innovative writing and we are thrilled to feature them.

Zata Banks (https://twitter.com/zoltarmaga) ‘ writing has been published in numerous anthologies, magazines and featured on BBC Radio 4, while her creative work has been used for courses at institutions including The Royal College of Art, the Poetry School, and the National Film and Television School. In addition, she is the founder of PoetryFilm (http://poetryfilm.org/) , a practice-based project that aims to celebrate experimental text/image/sound-screening, and explores semiotics and meaning-making within the art form.

Kate Potts (http://www.katepotts.net/) ‘ debut pamphlet Whichever Music (tall-lighthouse, 2008) was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award. She received an Arts Council award towards her first collection Pure Hustle (Bloodaxe, 2011). Kate currently teaches for Oxford University and Royal Holloway, and is completing a PhD on the poetic radio play.

Annabel Banks (http://www.annabelbanks.com/) ’ work is published in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies including The Manchester Review, Litro, 3:AM and International Times, is forthcoming in Under the Radar, and is included in Eyewear’s Best New British and Irish Poets 2016. Recently she received three nominations for the 2016 Pushcart Prize (two for fiction and one for poetry), plus nominations for the Queen’s Ferry Press Best Short Fictions 2016, Blazvox’s 2016 Bettering American Poetry and the 2016 Derringer Awards. She is also on Twitter, @annabelwrites.

Nick Murray is a live literature producer, writer, musician and founder of Annexe Press, based in London. As a writer, Nick’s work has appeared in publications such as Lives Beyond Us (Sidekick Books), The Bohemyth and Belleville Park Pages. He is on Twitter, @terratrouve.

This is perhaps the most challenging image to date, in our opinion, so let’s see what you make of it.

Awaiting your words at www.visualverse.org/submit.

Preti, Kristen and Eley

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Volume 03, Chapter 04 | February 2016

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Image by Grant Wood
Guest Editor: Eley Williams

Dear writers, readers and friends,

This month we are preoccupied with the Trump-a-thon. Donald’s quest continues and we find ourselves wondering: how is it that one man’s strange ideas are able to form a whole belief system? How is it that such a strange system can intoxicate so many believers? And who, exactly, are these believers?

With this weighing on our minds, there was only one possible image for the February issue: Grant Wood’s ‘American Gothic’ (part of the Chicago Institute of Art (http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/6565) collection). This 1930s work of eerie wonder has become an icon of American art, not least because it is beautifully painted and fabulously creepy all at once. We bestow this image upon you, our writers, to bring forth your words.

This month we are thrilled to welcome a new guest editor, British writer Eley Williams (http://www.giantratofsumatra.com/) . Twice shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize, Eley also edits Jungftak, a journal for contemporary prose-poetry, works for independent publishers Copy Press, and was recently appointed co-editor for fiction at 3:AM magazine. She has sustained three dictionary-based injuries so far this year, but regrets nothing.

Eley will edit Visual Verse for the next few months and kicks off her commissions with a group of the UK’s most exciting poets, writers and artists:

John McCullough (http://twitter.com/JohnMcCullough_) , whose first collection of poems, The Frost Fairs, won the Polari First Book Prize in 2012. It was a Book of the Year for The Independent and The Poetry School, and a summer read for The Observer. His second collection, Spacecraft (http://www.johnmccullough.co.uk/index.php/Spacecraft) , will be published by Penned in the Margins in April 2016.

Scottish writer Helen McClory (http://twitter.com/HelenMcClory) had her first flash fiction collection, On the Edges of Vision, published by Queen’s Ferry Press in August 2015 and won the Saltire First Book of the Year (http://www.saltiresociety.org.uk/awards/literature/literary-awards/scottish-first-book-of-the-year/) . There is a moor and a cold sea in her heart.

Helen Ivory (http://twitter.com/nellivory) is a poet and visual artist. Her fourth Bloodaxe Books collection is the semi-autobiographical Waiting for Bluebeard (May 2013). She edits the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears and is tutor and Course Director for the new UEA/Writers Centre Norwich creative writing programme. Fool’s World (http://www.gatehousepress.com/2015/12/fools-world-a-tarot-helen-ivory-tom-de-freston/) , a collaborative Tarot with the artist Tom de Freston, is out now from Gatehouse Press and she is working on a book of collage poems for Knives Forks and Spoons Press.

Prudence Chamberlain (https://twitter.com/PrueChamberlain) is Poet in Residence at Surrey University. Her work has been published in 3:AM, Poems in Which, HYSTERIA, By&By Magazine and Jungftak, while her collection I sit on your face in parliament square is forthcoming with Knives, Forks and Spoons Press. She is currently working on a Disney collaboration, House of Mouse, with poet SJ Fowler, and writing a book on empathy for Copy Press (http://www.copypress.co.uk/index/) .

Wendy Choi was born and educated in Korea, currently reading English at University of Cambridge. She likes to pickpocket words and thoughts from texts around her and exploits the difficulty of writing in a second language.

So there it is. Read, look, ponder, write. Not necessarily in that order.
The image is the starting point, the rest is up to you.
Kristen Harrison and Preti Taneja
with Eley Williams

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Volume 03, Chapter 03 | January 2016

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Image by Ville Miettinen

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Welcome to 2016 and to a fresh new edition of Visual Verse to kick off your writing. As you all know, we are a truly global journal with contributors from many countries; nevertheless all of us dream of some kind of escape. Maybe that’s what has inspired our new image from Finnish entrepreneur and photographer Ville Miettinen (https://www.flickr.com/photos/wili/373624474/in/photolist-z1Vxh-xStbd-cQyKH-qCeGpJ-98THYY-8PPonW-7xQJ78-5Ty6yf-5PDhAg-4pzojK-4mYNSS-4jVftj-z6rF1-7AfMeH-yrbAC-xvKf6-54vHaN-qUQdwL-kG2A7h-jMgRZF-e3jN2n-e2zuWE-dWcJzU-dQEGDE-bQZXgz-biHjhK-bgt2rt-bePKQp-babBbr-aLEEMn-9d4xA3-7smgQo-7rTMEX-6WrTrV-qtuh6M-qxSGhL-brb22f-bhzxC6-anh3kj-7vMzpm-5TRBSR-5S57XJ-5S2V8C-5REaP9-5QHQzX-5QfGpm-5Qb2e9-4Hc5Yr-4CYmRb-4ozC7J) , with its evocations of strange guardians, golden sunsets and the ebullience of youth. This image is all about witnessing a moment of change.

Our lead writer Alex Pheby captures this perfectly. Alex’s most recent novel, Playthings, is available now from the legendary independent publisher Galley Beggar Press (http://galleybeggar.co.uk/store/books/playthings) . We’ve read it, we love it, and we are thrilled to have him on the site. He lives with his family in London, where he lectures (http://www2.gre.ac.uk/study/courses/ug/eng/w801) and runs the wonderful annual Greenwich Book Festival (http://greenwichbookfest.com/) .

We are also excited to bring you the work of British-American poet Robert Peake, who lives near London. He created the Transatlantic Poetry (http://www.transatlanticpoetry.com/) reading series, bringing poets together from around the world for live online readings and conversations. He also collaborates with other artists on film-poems, and his work has been widely screened in the US, UK, and Europe. His latest collection The Knowledge is now available from Nine Arches Press.

Last but not least, is Patience Kyenge, a young spoken word poet from Democratic Republic of Congo. Now living in Belgium, Patience performs at club nights and writes and sings Congolese blues with her troupe of musicians – she’s electric to watch and we are proud to say this is her first published piece.

New year’s resolutions? Who needs them. Let this one be an evolution, not a revolution. The image is the starting point: the rest is up to you.

Happy New Year!
Kristen and Preti

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Volume 03, Chapter 02 | December 2015

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Published in collaboration with Limehouse Books
Image by Philipp Keller

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Prepare for lift-off as we launch into December – a month when the days are darker but the lights are brighter. We have gone a little space-crazy this month as British Astronaut Tim Peake (http://principia.org.uk/) prepares to embark on a historic mission to the International Space Station. What better way to celebrate than with this incredible image of a Medaka fish on the ISS by Philipp Keller, featured by NASA in their Flickr Gallery (https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/) . What will you make of this luminous creature, dear writers?

Our lead pieces this month are in collaboration with London publisher, Limehouse Books (http://limehousebooks.co.uk/) , bringing you a selection of work from some radical voices. First up is Sophia Blackwell (https://twitter.com/@SophiaBlackwell) , performance poet and novelist. After My Own Heart is her first novel with Limehouse and her new collection The Fire Eater’s Lover will be published by Burning Eye Books next year. ‘Sophistication Incarnate’ as her website (http://www.sophiablackwell.com/) describes her – we couldn’t agree more.

On page 2 we have Sophie McCook (http://twitter.com/scriptreader) , a reformed TV and film scriptwriter, now author of Thinkless, a novel equivalent to Peep Show for women. Just what we need to brighten up the month!

Next is North Morgan (https://twitter.com/northmorgan) , who has been described by the Independent as ‘a bitterly funny satirist’ and is author of Exit Through The Wound and Highlights of My Last Regret. If you haven’t come across this writer yet start with his Tweets (https://twitter.com/northmorgan) .

Finally, huge thanks to Bobby Nayyar, writer and publisher at Limehouse Books itself. Bobby will be launching his debut poetry collection Glass Scissors in January, he says, (probably). Follow Bobby (http://www.twitter.com/bobbynayyar) on Twitter too, and enjoy the excellent Limehouse (http://limehousebooks.co.uk/) list.

So, we are feeling the love for all of you this month having just celebrated our second birthday. Thank you to those of you who could make it to Waterstone’s Piccadilly on Saturday. We celebrated with our dear friends at WordFactory (http://www.thewordfactory.tv/) , enjoying readings from John Boyne, Cathy Galvin, SJ Naudé and Kirsty Logan. For those who missed it, Preti read poems by David Rain and Andrew Motion from chapters of Visual Verse, and we toasted all of you writers, readers and followers who have made the last two years such a wild ride. One of our best birthday presents? Coralie Bickford-Smith, whose image from her new book The Fox and the Star featured in our November edition (https://visualverse.org/images/coralie-bickford-smith/) , has just been announced winner of the Waterstone’s Books of The Year 2015 (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/01/waterstones-book-of-year-coralie-bickford-smith-the-fox-and-the-star) . Impeccable taste, Waterstones, and so
well-deserved.

Wishing you a happy December, dear writers, with all that it might bring. For us, we simply wish for more great writing, more submissions and a very creative countdown to 2016.

The picture is the starting point, the text is up to you (https://visualverse.org/submit/) .

Kristen and Preti

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Volume 03, Chapter 01 | November 2015

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Celebrating our 2nd birthday.
Image by Coralie Bickford-Smith

Dear Writers,

Welcome to our 2nd birthday edition, and the beginning of our third volume. How far we have come! In April 2013 we came up with a mad plan to celebrate the inter-collaborative process of writing and art. We wanted to create a contemporary digital platform for cross-pollinating visual arts and literature and we had two rules: 1) there would be set generative constraints, and 2) the site had to be elegant, reflecting traditional book design. Kristen is a publisher of beautiful books (http://www.thecurvedhouse.com/) , Preti is a writer (http://www.preti-taneja.co.uk) , Pete Lewis is a designer (http://www.mrpetelewis.com/) of the highest order… and so in November 2013, Visual Verse was born.

When we first launched we were publishing about 30 submissions a month. A watershed moment came in March 2014, when Denise Nestor (http://www.denisenestorillustration.com/) ’s pencil drawing of birds alongside Adam Marek’s The Factory Explosion (https://visualverse.org/submissions/factory-explosion/) in the lead caught your imaginations. Overnight submissions exploded and we had 80 wonderful pieces on the site. In October this year, for the first time, we published over 100 amazing pieces.

Every day that we publish you, we feel delighted and honoured. As the site grows we are refreshed by your commitment, your imagination and your energy. A look at our writers reveals familiar names such as Stella Duffy, Adam Foulds and Nikesh Shukla; and names who we published as they were becoming ‘names’: Eley Williams, Nisha Ramayya, Sandeep Parmar, Sophie Mayer, Declan Ryan, Hedley Twiddle – the list goes on. We have contributors from across Africa, the USA, UK, Indonesia and more… Visual Verse is now a chorus of global voices.

We couldn’t have got this far without our patrons: writers Andrew Motion, Ali Smith, Cathy Galvin and Bernardine Evaristo, and photographers Mark Garry and Marc Schlossman. Thanks go to them.

Now, to meet the party and begin our third year. As a nod to our love of, and respect for, beautiful book design we feature an image by one of the UK’s leading designers, Coralie-Bickford Smith (http://cb-smith.com/) . Coralie is responsible for many of the stunning Penguin series that grace our shelves including the Great Foods series, the clothbound classics and the exquisite F. Scott Fitzgerald series. This month, Penguin imprint Particular Books have published The Fox and the Star – written, illustrated and designed by Coralie herself. This magical book embodies all that Visual Verse stands for – that moment went words and images wrap themselves around eachother so perfectly that you could never imagine them being apart.

We are absolutely thrilled to be celebrating and leading this month with a piece by Ivan Vladislavić. Born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1957, he now lives in Johannesburg. His acclaimed fiction includes Double Negative, The Restless Supermarket and 101 Detectives. His work has won many awards, including Yale University’s prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize in 2015, for which writers receive an unrestricted grant of $150,000 to support their writing. His classic novel The Folly (http://www.andotherstories.org/book/the-folly/) , a sophisticated yet funny book about the power of suggestion and castles in the sky, is published by And Other Stories on 11 sNovember 2015. You read it here first!

Our second lead is the poet Helen Mort, whose first collection ‘Division Street’ was published in 2013 and won the Fenton Aldeburgh prize. She is a Douglas Caster Cultural Fellow at The University of Leeds.
And to celebrate properly, we have commissioned three pieces from longstanding contributors to the site, whose work we admire every month. Rishi Dastidar is a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. A runner-up in the 2011 Cardiff International Poetry Competition and the 2014 Troubadour International Poetry Competition, his work has featured in the 2012 anthologies Adventures in Form (Penned in the Margins) and Lung Jazz (Cinnamon Press / Eyewear Publishing), and most recently in 2014’s Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe). He tweets @BetaRish.

Myrto Petsota was born in Athens, Europe. Places of residence during her formative years include countries that no longer exist, countries that are about to disappear and others that are yet to be, namely Czechoslovakia, Italy, Greece and Scotland. She now writes from Paris, where she also teaches, practices literary criticism and exile. She is immensely fond of the quarterly French literary review L’Atelier du Roman, where she publishes some of her critical pieces of writing.

And last but not least, Hazel Mason, who describes herself thus: ‘Proud to have been a sister in the NHS, now a happy opsimath in Norwich who has stumbled on the panacea of poetry, postal critiquing and vibrant literary group discussion, wallowing in words.’ She tweets @hazelmason10.

So dear writers, we hope you’ll be inspired to keep submitting, keep tweeting us, keep reading each other and talking about what you like about each others’ work. And we hope to see you all at our second birthday party, in conjunction with The Word Factory and the VS Pritchett short story prize, at Waterstone’s Picadilly on Saturday 28^th November, 6-8pm. Book here: http://www.thewordfactory.tv/site/events/ – we hope to see you there!

In the meantime, amidst all the celebrations, don’t forget what it’s really all about… the image is the starting point: the text is up to you.

Happy 2^nd Birthday Visual Verse!

Preti and Kristen

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