Volume 05, Chapter 12 | October 2018

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Image by Mark Basarab

Dear writers, readers and friends,

This month we bring you the final issue in Volume 5 of Visual Verse. To celebrate, we have handed the editorial over to one of our dearest friends, So Mayer – a writer, curator and activist. Her recent books include Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2015) and (O) (Arc, 2015), and recent projects include the touring programme Revolt, She Said: Women and Film After ’68 (http://www.clubdesfemmes.com/revolt-she-said/) with queer feminist film collective Club des Femmes, and Raising our Game (https://www.raisingfilms.com/resources/raising-our-game-report/) , a report addressing exclusion in the film industry with campaigners Raising Films. Current writing projects include Disturbing Words (https://tinyletter.com/sophiemayer/) , a tinyletter about language, and a poetry chapbook , due from Litmus (https://www.litmuspublishing.co.uk) this autumn.

So’s selected writers are all radical thinkers and multi-talented artists. We are very excited to have them inspire us this October, responding to a stellar image (sorry, couldn’t resist) by Vancouver photographer Mark Basarab (http://www.markbasarab.com/) .

Warning: this work is dark and blazing – perfect for the times we live in.

Jason Barker is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, comix artist, and occasional stand-up comedian. He has been a co-producer of Transfabulous and a programmer for BFI Flare, the London LGBT Film Festival, where his first feature film A Deal With the Universe (http://adealwiththeuniverse.com/index.html) , a documentary about his pregnancy, had its world premiere. He is the Education Lead for Gendered Intelligence, and facilitator for GI West in Bristol.

Sarah Crewe is a working class feminist poet from Liverpool. Her first full poetry collection, floss, is upcoming from Aquifer Books (http://glasfrynproject.org.uk/w/category/aquifer-press/) this winter. Her work has featured in Tenebrae, Litmus, Cumulus, zarf and Datableed. Her most recent pamphlet was weimar after dark: fourteen poems on fassbinder’s berlin alexanderplatz (contact Sarah on Twitter to order).

Sachiko Murakami (Canada) is the author of three collections of poetry: The Invisibility Exhibit (Talonbooks 2008), Rebuild (Talonbooks 2011), and Get Me Out of Here (Talonbooks 2015). She has been a literary worker for numerous presses, journals, and organizations, and most recently was the 2017 Writer-in-Residence at the University of Toronto. Her projects include Project Rebuild (http://www.projectrebuild.ca/) , HENKŌ (http://powellstreethenko.ca/) , WIHTBOAM (http://www.whenihavethebodyofaman.com/) and FIGURE (http://www.figureoracle.com/) .

Anna Coatman is a writer and editor from Leeds, now based in London. In the past she has worked at I.B. Tauris, RA Magazine and Sight & Sound, and is currently Senior Commissioning Editor for BFI, Film & Media at Bloomsbury. She was one of the founding editors of 3 of Cups Press and has contributed to publications including frieze, TLS, LRB and The White Review. She is currently working on a project concerning women and social realism, and will be chairing a panel discussion titled ‘Whose Story?: Working Class Women on Screen (https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=3C59E017-BF84-40D4-B379-AA6A43060C85&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=688F7842-DE4B-4183-9CF3-05F7778DAC4C) ’ on 9 October at BFI Southbank in London.

Jules Koostachin is a band member of Attawapiskat First Nation, Moshkekowok territory, and she currently resides in Vancouver. She is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia, with a research focus on Indigenous documentary. Her television series AskiBOYZ (2016) is currently airing on Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. In the fall of 2018, Jules’ latest short film OChiSkwaCho premieres at ImagineNative, and she publishes her first book of poetry Unearthing Secrets, Gathering Truths (Kegedonce Press, 2018). Her short films PLACEnta and NiiSoTeWak screen at the 12th Native Spirit (https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/12th-native-spirit-indigenous-film-festival-2018-canadakent-placenta-niisotewak-with-jules-tickets-50317019560) Film Festival in London on 18 Oct.

And now, dear writers, October is yours. Do your best – keep reading, get inspired and send us your 50-500 words written in the space of one hour, by 15 October. We will publish up to 100 of the best of them. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

So, Preti, Kristen and Lucie

Volume 05, Chapter 11 | September 2018

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Image by Penny Byrne

Dear writers, readers and friends,

September! How we love this month. To celebrate the turning of the seasons, we’ve handed the curation of Visual Verse over to writer and performance poet Carmen Marcus. Together with Carmen, we are proud to bring you one of our finest images alongside one of the finest selections of form-breaking prose we’ve had the pleasure to publish.

Our featured image this month is by Australian artist Penny Byrne (https://pennybyrneartist.com/home) . This piece, called Fukushima Symphony, is the epitome of what we love about Byrne’s work: it’s aesthetically seductive (even a little quaint) while being politically charged and thought-provoking. We hope it inspires the best of your words.

Carmen Marcus (http://Carmenellen2013.wordpress.com) , our guest curator and lead writer, is from Saltburn in North Yorkshire. Her debut novel How Saints Die is published with Vintage in 2018. It won New Writing North’s Northern Promise Award and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. She is an advocate for working class voices and set up the No Writer Left Behind (http://www.nowriterleftbehind.wordpress.com) website to share the journeys of under-represented writers. She has written and performed poetry for The Royal Festival Hall, Durham Book Festival and BBC Radio. She’s currently working on her second novel and her poetry project The Book of Godless Verse, funded by Arts Council England. She strives to live up to the words of her first critic and primary school teacher: ‘minus one house-point, weird’.

Carmen’s selection of writers begins with Kathy Hoyle (http://www.kathyhoyleblog.wordpress.com) , a recent Creative Writing graduate from The Open University. She writes short prose fiction, flash fiction and creative non-fiction. She has been both long- and short-listed in various competitions and her work has appeared in several online lit mags such as Ellipseszine and Spelkfiction. In 2017 she was highly commended for Spread The Word’s inaugural Life Writing prize for her piece ‘Scab’. She is currently working on a novel Kingfisher Blue, a coming of age story, set against the backdrop of the 1984 miner’s strike. She says she will work for chocolate…

Next is Iain Rowan (https://www.iainrowan.com) , a writer who lives in the north-east of England. In 2017 he was shortlisted for the Bath Novel Award, and in 2018 he won a Northern Writers’ Award. Iain is also Director of the Sunderland Festival of Creative Writing, which we urge you all to check out.

Our fourth piece comes from Lisette Auton, a disabled writer, activist, spoken word performer, theatre-maker and creative practitioner. She is a Creative Future Literary Award winner for poetry and her children’s novel has gained her a place on Penguin RHUK’s #WriteNowLive programme. Friend Lisette on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/lisette.grout) to find out about her wordy adventures, particularly since she specialises in working with people whose voices are not fully represented in the mainstream.

Douglas Bruton (http://douglasrdb.blogspot.com) throws words together. Sometimes they make sense and sometimes they even make stories. He sends those thrown-together words ‘out there’ and every now and then that makes sense, too. He has been published in many nice places, including Northwords Now, New Writing Scotland, The Delinquent, The Vestal Review, Interpreter’s House, Flash Magazine, The Irish Literary Review, Fiction Attic Press, and in an Edinburgh anthology by Freight Books and most recently by The Fiction Desk. His first novel for grown ups will be published in December 2018.

Astra Bloom (https://twitter.com/AstraBloom) writes poetry fiction and creative non fiction for all ages. She has been shortlisted by Bridport prize, she won Bare Fiction poetry prize, was runner up and Sussex winner in the Brighton Prize, was shortlisted by Live Canon Poetry and has been published by Magma poetry magazine and Under The Radar journal. She’s recently been commended by Brittle star and longlisted by Mslexia International Novel award for two novels. Astra has a short story forthcoming in A Wild and Precious Life, an anthology on the theme of recovery from mental and physical illness and addiction, which featured on the For Books Sake site as their Weekend read. She is one of the 16 new writers selected by Kit De Waal for the Common People anthology of working class writing and her novel has been selected by Penguin Random House for their Write Now Live initiative.

So dear readers, there we have it – a selection of some of the best voices in the game to inspire and delight you. Send us your 50 to 500 words, written in the space of an hour in response to the image. We publish one piece per writer and only around 100; submission deadline is 15^th September.

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

Carmen, Preti, Kristen and Lucie

Volume 05, Chapter 10 | August 2018

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Image by Jon Tyson

Dear writers, readers and friends,

The August edition is alive, one day late this month due to travel commitments. We hope the extra day has simply given you time to build your enthusiasm.

For some reason all three of our lead writers have names beginning with ‘S’ this month. Maybe it’s because we’re based in the northern hemisphere and the summer is going to our heads. Or maybe it’s a nod to a strange and sublime image, meant to literally swirl your creativity into ever more intricate formations and bamboozle the words out of you. This captivating visual is courtesy of Jon Tyson whose fabulously gritty photographic work you will find here (https://unsplash.com/@jontyson) .

Our lead writer is Sam Guglani (https://twitter.com/@samirguglani) , a writer and Consultant Oncologist in Cheltenham who specialises in the management of lung and brain tumours. He has Masters degrees in Ethics (Keele, 2009) and Creative Writing (Oxford, 2014). He writes poetry, a column for The Lancet titled The Notes, and his novel Histories is published by riverrun (Quercus Books, 2017). He is Director of Medicine Unboxed, a project that engages health professionals and the public in conversation around medicine, illuminated by the arts, and his piece is intergalactically good.

Next up we have Samuel Fisher (https://twitter.com/@fishersamuk) , author of one of our debut novels of the year, The Chameleon. He also wears many hats – running Burley Fisher books in East London, where many, many writers find a warm welcome, support for their events and an excellent selection of books. And, he is also a publisher – of the recently minted Peninsula Press, bringing you thought-provoking essays in beautiful book form – a true example of the issues and objects of our times. His piece, to hint at its inspiration, is a thing of beauty.

Finally we are very excited to bring you a piece by Sarvat Hasin (https://twitter.com/@sarvathasin) . She was born in London and grew up in Karachi. She is the author of the novel This Wide Night (Penguin India, 2017) which was longlisted for the DSC prize for South Asian literature and the short story collection You Can’t Go Home Again (Penguin India, 2018). She is the fiction editor of the Stockholm Review.

So, dear writers, standards are high. Multitasking is the new job for life and we are here to remind you to write for love not glory – although we want that for you too.

And we are now looking forward to reading you! (Don’t forget the RULES: 50-500 words, written in response to the image in the space of an hour. Get it to us by 15 August, and we will publish the best 100 pieces.) The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Preti, Lucie and Kristen

Volume 05, Chapter 09 | July 2018

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Image by Namroud Gorguis
Guest Editor: Richard Georges

Dear writers, readers and friends,

We do get around. Words circle and come back. Lives and geographies and time fold and touch. We talk and we talk and we talk. Back in May, our editor was delighted to take part in a panel for Bare Lit (http://barelitfestival.com/) , the UK’s literary festival featuring writers of colour working in every genre you can think of. Over chats about mythology and monsters, Preti met poet Richard Georges, who is from the British Virgin Islands. They got talking about colonial territories, and Preti invited him to curate Visual Verse for July. Richard is the author of the poetry collections Make Us All Islands (Shearsman Books) and Giant (Platypus Press). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prelude, Smartish Pace, The Poetry Review, wildness, Wasafiri, decomP, The Rusty Toque, Reservoir, L’Ephemere, The White Review and elsewhere.

About his Visual Verse selection, Richard says, ‘I am delighted to compile work for Visual Verse solicited exclusively from some of the most spellbinding poets I know who also happen to be citizens of colonial spaces. Ana Portnoy Brimmer from Puerto Rico (an unincorporated territory of the United States), Arturo Desimone from Aruba (a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands), and Chris Astwood from Bermuda, Erika Jeffers from Montserrat, and myself from the British Virgin Islands (all British Overseas Territories).’ We are delighted to have Richard’s own work in our lead spot, followed by this brilliant selection.

Ana Portnoy Brimmer is a Puerto Rican poet whose work has been published or is forthcoming in Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature, Puerto Rico en mi Corazón, Kweli Journal, Poets Reading The News, Project Censored, Centro Journal, Moko, and elsewhere. For more on her work, visit her website (http://anaportnoybrimmer.com/ ) .

Arturo Desimone (http://arturoblogito.wordpress.com) is an Arubian-Argentinian writer and visual artist. His articles, poetry, and short fiction have previously appeared in CounterPunch, Círculo de Poesía, Moko, Drunken Boat, Acentos Review, and New Orleans Review. His translations have appeared in Blue Lyra Review and Adirondack Review.

Chris Astwood (http://www.chrisastwood.com/) is a Bermudian poet currently residing in the UK and completing a PhD in creative and critical writing at the University of East Anglia. His writing has recently appeared in sx Salon and Caribbean Quarterly. A pamphlet of linked poems entitled JANE DOE is forthcoming from Gatehouse Press.

And finally, Erika Jeffers (https://www.erikajeffers.com/) – a poet and book reviewer whose writing has appeared in Kweli, Callaloo, sx salon, Wasafiri, Adrienne, and Moko; she’s also a reader for Frontier Poetry. Currently based in Brooklyn, she’s at work on her first full-length poetry collection.

All of them have responded to an image so full of stories, potential, surveillance, entropy and nostalgia – captured by Namroud Gorguis via Unsplash. And so to the long month of July, with all of its potential. Let’s make these worlds of words speak to each other. Looking forward to your submissions dear writers – the image is the starting point, the text is up to you. _x005F _x005F

Richard Georges (Guest Editor)
with Preti, Lucie and Kristen

Volume 05, Chapter 08 | June 2018

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Image by Sharon McCutcheon

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Behold your June visual prompt, in all its shimmering glory. This one comes to us from photographer Sharon McCutcheon (https://unsplash.com/@sharonmccutcheon) via Unsplash. We are so impressed by the quality and commitment our writers bring to Visual Verse that, for this month, we are showcasing and celebrating you. We are publishing, in our lead spots, three regular contributors to the site: Liz Young, Michael Caines and Helen Laycock. Each of them has an extensive collection with us, and their work caught our eye. By inviting them to lead, we’ve discovered just how prolific you all are – self publishing, working for literary magazines, and submitting work to many different places while writing in different genres and winning prizes too. It’s incredible to publish your work each month and just goes to show, you never know who your neighbours are on the site, who is reading your work, and where that might take you next.

Before introducing our regulars, we are thrilled to announce our headliner Julia Webb, a Norwich-based poetry editor for “Lighthouse (http://www.gatehousepress.com/lighthouse/) “, a journal for new writing which we love (and which you should buy, read and submit to). Julia also works as a poetry mentor, creative writing tutor and she blogs about writing (http://visual-poetics.blogspot.com/) . In 2011 she won the Poetry Society’s Stanza competition. Her first collection “Bird Sisters” was published by Nine Arches Press in 2016. Her second collection “Threat” is due for publication by Nine Arches Press early in 2019. You can read more about Julia and her first collection on the Literary Consultancy’s Showcase (https://literaryconsultancy.co.uk/showcase/julia-webb/) or at Nine Arches Press (http://ninearchespress.blogspot.com/2016/05/featured-poems-julia-webb.html) or read some recent poems here (https://proletarianpoetry.com/tag/julia-webb/) and here
(https://atriumpoetry.com/tag/julia-webb/) .

So now to our wonderful regular contributors. We kick off with Liz Young (https://www.facebook.com/lizyoungwriter) on page 2, a self-publishing whizz who lives in Sussex where she writes anything from flash fiction to poetry to novels – wherever her imagination takes her. She was first persuaded to submit to Visual Verse by poet Vanessa Gebbie, whose poetry was featured in a local Arts Festival. Liz also uses another photographic prompt each week to write 100 words of flash fiction on her blog (http://lizy-writes.blogspot.co.uk/) . Her debut novel A Volcanic Race (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Volcanic-Race-novel-Living-Rock/dp/1979086575/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1517654749&sr=1-1&keywords=a+volcanic+race) is getting amazing reviews from readers who are eagerly awaiting the forthcoming sequel.

On page 3 is Michael Caines, who works at the Times Literary Supplement (https://www.the-tls.co.uk/) and is co-editor of the recently founded independent literary magazine, Brixton Review of Books (https://twitter.com/BrixtonBooks) . He is the author of Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century (https://global.oup.com/ukhe/product/shakespeare-and-the-eighteenth-century-9780199642373?cc=gb〈=en&) and a founder member of the Liars League (http://liarsleague.typepad.com/) .

Helen Laycock (https://www.facebook.com/helenlaycockauthor/) is our final lead this month, and one of our most dedicated regulars at Visual Verse. Her poetry has appeared in Popshot, The Caterpillar, Full Moon and Foxglove (Three Drops Press) and Poems for Grenfell (Onslaught). Since winning the David St. John Writing Award for Novice Poetry in 2006, her work has been acknowledged in many competitions. She has also had humorous poetry published on Jonathan Pinnock’s website Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis. Helen also writes flash fiction, short stories and plays. She has compiled three short story collections and eight works of children’s fiction which you can discover here (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Helen-Laycock/e/B006PGFVL6) .

So, let us see what you make of this image, one that is oozing with inspiration. The image is the starting point, the rest is up to you.

Kristen, Preti, Lucie and Rose

Find us on Twitter @visual_verse (https://twitter.com/@visual_verse)

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Volume 05, Chapter 07 | May 2018

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Image by Mary Cassatt

Welcome dear writers to the 1st of May,

Our image this month might be classic, but our writers are raw brilliance. That’s how we like it here at VV.

Painted by American artist Mary Cassatt in 1893, The Child’s Bath depicts an ordinary moment in domestic life. But its quietness is misleading. Through her work, Cassatt gave voice and presence to women, offering a female perspective that had long been dismissed as inferior. Described as the embodiment of the ‘New Woman’, Cassatt played a crucial role in advocating for equality, particularly in relation to education.

We’re always on the look out for the best, most radical and boundary breaking work. So we’re very proud to publish work by Inara Verzemnieks, the author of the astonishing and moving Among the Living and the Dead, published this month by Pushkin Press (https://www.pushkinpress.com/discover-the-breathtaking-among-the-living-and-the-dead) . Inara teaches creative non-fiction at the University of Iowa, and writes regularly for the New York Times and the Atlantic, among other publications. She has won a Pushcart Prize and a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa. Her piece got us in the guts, then twisted them.

Next we bring you essayist and poet Will Harris (https://willjharris.com/) . He is the author of a chapbook, All this is implied, and a groundbreaking essay, Mixed-Race Superman which will be published this month by the very new and exciting Peninsula Press.

Following this, we have a piece by Scherezade Siobhan. An award-winning writer and psychologist, she’s a community catalyst who founded and runs The Talking Compass (http://www.thetalkingcompass.com) —  a therapeutic space dedicated to providing counseling services and decolonizing mental health care. She is the author of Bone Tongue (Thought Catalog Books, 2015), Father, Husband (Salopress, 2016) and The Bluest Kali (Lithic Press, 2018). She says she can be found squeeing about militant bunnies @zaharaesque on twitter/FB/IG as well as www.zaharaesque.com (http://www.zaharaesque.com/) . She invites you to send her chocolate and puppies  via  nihilistwaffles@gmail.com (mailto:nihilistwaffles@gmail.com) .

To crown it all, a new piece by Rakhshan Rizwan. Rakhshan was born in Lahore, Pakistan and moved to Germany where she studied Literature and New Media. She is currently a PhD candidate at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Her poems have appeared in Blue Lyra Review, The Missing Slate, Postcolonial Text and elsewhere. She is the winner of the Judith Khan Memorial Poetry Prize (2015). Her debut poetry collection, Paisley, has been shortlisted in the “Best Poetry Pamphlet” category at the 2018 Sabateur Awards.

So – happy reading, writing and submitting. May is the month to settle in to the new season and we can’t wait to read your words. The image is the starting point, the rest is up to you!

Love,
Kristen, Preti, Lucie and Rose

Find us on Twitter

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@soshunetwork (https://twitter.com/soshunetwork)
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Volume 05, Chapter 06 | April 2018

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Image by Anthony Intraversato

Dear writers, readers and friends,

April is a month often associated with beginnings. Now that equinox has past, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are looking forward to a new season – one of light, warmth and colour. When we emerge from our caves after a long winter, will we see the world in new ways? This month’s visual prompt by Anthony Intraversato (https://www.instagram.com/anthonyintraversato/) brings to mind the insight that differing vantage points can create.

With so much going on in the world, we thought it only right to begin April with a choice selection of work arising from diverse pathways in the literary landscape, writers who between them traverse music, translation, travel, poetry, creative non-fiction and fiction
– a celebration of the multiplicity of writing identities represented in Visual Verse and a marker of how art brings us together in all our astonishing difference of form and voice.

Our lead writer Jeffrey Boakye (https://unseenflirtspoetry.wordpress.com/) is an author, teacher and father currently living in East London with his wife and two sons. His first book Hold Tight: Black Masculinity, Millennials, and the Meaning of Grime was published in 2017 by Influx Press. His upcoming book Black, Listed is due for publication in 2019. Jeffrey has a particular interest in education, race and popular culture. This is his first contribution to Visual Verse.

Our second lead, Abeer Y. Hoque (http://olivewitch.com/wordpress/) , is a Nigerian born Bangladeshi American writer and photographer we met in India. She likes velvet, tequila and the corpse pose. Her books include a travel photography and poetry monograph (The Long Way Home, 2013), a linked collection of stories, poems and photographs (The Lovers and the Leavers, 2015) and a memoir (Olive Witch, 2017).

Delaina Haslam (http://dhaslamtranslation.com/index.html) is a translator of French and Spanish; she is also an editor and writer and is based in Sheffield. She has worked for publications including InMadrid magazine and le cool London, and about translation for Glasgow Review of Books, the Poetry Translation Centre, and Yorkshire Translators and Interpreters. She has been the invited translator at Poetry Translation Centre workshops, had a submission accepted for Newcastle University’s Poettrios Experiment and has performed collaborative translation at Sheffield’s Wordlife open mic night. She is writing a memoir about baby loss, for which she won the Off the Shelf Festival Novel Slam in 2016.

Finally, we’d like to introduce our new Editorial Assistant, Rose Warner Miles. Rose is from the US and has a Bachelor degree in English Literature & Psychology from Williams College. She grew up in New York, where she interned at Poets House and worked at the American Museum of Natural History. She is a poet, a wanderer, an intersectional feminist and an unapologetically devoted fan of cheesy TV teen soaps. We’re thrilled to add her enthusiasm and poetic nous to the team.

And so dear writers with April arriving, it’s no joke – the image is the starting point, the rest is up to you.

Kristen, Preti, Lucie and Rose

Find us on Twitter

@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/@visual_verse)
@unseenflirt (https://twitter.com/unseenflirt?lang=en)
@olivewitch (https://twitter.com/olivewitch?lang=en)
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Volume 05, Chapter 05 | March 2018

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Image by Curated by Fiona Kearney, Lewis Glucksman Gallery

Dear writers, readers and friends,

What a wicked sense of humour those Irish have. Fiona Kearney, Director of Lewis Glucksman Gallery in Cork and our guest-curator this month, has bestowed upon us this surreal gift. These macabre little gnashers were exhibited at the Glucksman in a show called Grin and Bear It: Cruel Humour in Art and Life and presented as a re-creation of elements of Wake Games that used to be played with the corpse in Ireland.

The only match for this image is the playwright Enda Walsh whose work is fierce, deep, dark and very funny. His razor-sharp dialogue has a way of bewildering you with its absurdity while moving you with its humanity. It is a dream come true to publish him here after stalking all of his plays. The latest, an adaptation of Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers (https://www.giaf.ie/tours/grief-is-the-thing-with-feathers) , opens in Galway this month and stars Irish hottie Cillian Murphy who is arguably at his best when in an Enda Walsh play. It is produced by Complicité, doesn’t get better than that.

Emer Martin (https://www.instagram.com/emerobergo/?hl=en) sends us her words from a cottage in the west of Ireland. She grew up in the UK with Irish parents and read English Literature and Italian at Manchester University before working in national news journalism. In 2016, Emer left London and her job to ‘rewild’ and write. She’s now writing her first novel, The Road To The River.

Next up, we are thrilled to publish Isabel Waidner, the author of Gaudy Bauble (https://dostoyevskywannabe.com/original/gaudy_bauble) (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2017), which is shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize in the UK. Isabel is also the editor of Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature (https://www.dostoyevskywannabe.com/experiments/liberating_the_canon) (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2018), which includes work by Visual Verse contributors. Definitely worth a read.

Finally, wondrous new words by Kusi Okamura, founder and editor of The Wild Word (http://www.thewildword.com) magazine. All she’ll tell us is this: she lives in Berlin with her family. But you know, there’s so much more… start by checking out the Wild Word and their recently published fiction and poetry anthologies (https://thewildword.com/buy-our-anthologies/) .
So there it is, writers. Don’t forget the new rules: submit before 15th February. Also please only submit your piece once, and be patient. Any pieces that are submitted multiple times will not be considered for publication.

As always, enjoy the challenge. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Kristen, Preti and Lucie

Find us on Twitter

@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/@visual_verse)
@obergo (https://twitter.com/@obergo)
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Volume 05, Chapter 04 | February 2018

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Image by Daniel Frost

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Here ye: we are shakin’ things up and making some changes to how we accept and publish submissions. These changes are intended to improve the process for you, our beloved writers, and help us to manage the growth of Visual Verse (something that continues to amaze us).
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New Submission Guidelines:

Henceforth we will release a new image on the 1st of each calendar month (as we do now) and accept submissions up until the 15th of the month. We will publish up to 100 submissions over the course of the month, no more. The other rules remain the same: 50-500 words, written within an hour, in response to the image. The writing must be new and original. Read more about our publishing policy (https://visualverse.org/about-visual-verse/) on the website.

We are excited to see how these changes pan out over the coming months. Both the deadline and the cap on submissions mean that we can focus on publishing the best of what comes in and ensure that these pieces are showcased on the site while the issue is still live. Please let us know if you have any feedback, either now or in the future when the new rules are underway. Email us at visualverse@thecurvedhouse.com (mailto:mailto: visualverse@thecurvedhouse.com) anytime.
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And now, without further ado, we present this wonderful, whimsical painting by Daniel Frost, an artist and illustrator whose work we have admired for so many years. Do your eyes a favour and follow his Instagram: @danielfrostillustration (https://www.instagram.com/danielfrostillustration) .

Our lead response comes from Megan Hunter, a hugely talented writer who is fast building an impressive body of work. Megan was born in Manchester in 1984, and studied English Literature at Sussex and Cambridge. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and she was a finalist for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Her first book, The End We Start From, was published in 2017 in the UK, US, and Canada, and has been translated into seven languages. It was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the 2017 Books Are My Bag Readers Awards and is longlisted for the Aspen Words Prize.

Megan has a long-standing relationship with Visual Verse. She says:

I started writing pieces for Visual Verse a few years ago, before I’d had anything published. I was working in an office and the visual prompts were an ideal creative stimulus during my lunch hour! I found the process of responding to an image, particularly within a one hour time frame, gave a freedom to my work that was so important when figuring out what I wanted to write, and is still so useful now. I think Visual Verse was probably the first time I’d ever seen my name ‘in print’ online, and it’s a real honour to now be writing the lead piece.

We’re pretty chuffed about that.

On page 2 we feature Maisie Chan, a published writer from Birmingham who now lives in Glasgow. She was recently commissioned to write stories for the Human Values Foundation and has also been published in the Penguin decibel Anthology The Map of Me. Maisie won the BBC Writersroom Competition BBC Bites and was a finalist in the 2015 Creative Futures Literary Awards. During 2016-2017, she was chosen for the Megaphone – an Arts Council/Publisher’s Association project to mentor and develop BAME writers writing their first novel for children or teens. Maisie has taught creative writing to children and adults and was an Arvon tutor in 2009. She is working on her first novel for teens about a fifteen-year-old British Chinese girl whose grandfather has early-onset Alzheimers.

Our next writer, Melissa Fu, grew up in Northern New Mexico and currently lives in Cambridgeshire, UK. Her work appears in many journals including The Lonely Crowd, International Literature Showcase, Skin Deep, and The Nottingham Review. In 2017, she was the regional winner of Words and Women’s Prose Competition and one of four Apprentices with the London-based Word Factory.

And on page 4 we have Yen Ooi, one of our favourite publishing people and a regular Visual Verse contributor. Dirty diapers, science fiction, and CreateThinkDo (http://createthinkdo.com/) is about all Yen has time for nowadays, but she did manage to pen this little piece and connect our February issue to another dimension…
There it is, writers. Submit before 15th February and as always, enjoy the challenge. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Kristen, Preti and Lucie

Find us on Twitter

@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/@visual_verse)
@meganfnhunter (https://twitter.com/meganfnhunter)
@MaisieWrites (https://twitter.com/@MaisieWrites)
@WritingCircles (https://twitter.com/WritingCircles)
@yenooi (https://twitter.com/@yenooi)

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Volume 05, Chapter 03 | January 2018

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Image by Candice Seplow

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Welcome to a brand new year. We have survived New Years Eve in Berlin, dodging the amateur fireworks that take over the streets here (not a health and safety regulation in sight) and finding ourselves full of hope and determination for the coming year. What better way to start 2018 than with a little puff of smoke from photographer Candice Seplow – may it ignite your writing spirit.

We are proud to bring you three wonderful voices to celebrate the new year issue. These writers are brave, poetic and uncompromising, so fasten your seatbelts and get ready for some Visual Verse gold.

First up we have the excellent Niven Govinden, author of four novels including All The Days And Nights, a beautiful examination of something we are obsessed with at VV: humans, art and how to write about them. The others are Black Bread White Beer, Graffiti My Soul, and the stylish, youth rush, New Years Eve appropriate We Are The New Romantics. Niven tweets at @niven_govinden (https://twitter.com/niven_govinden) , go find him.

Tomoé Hill is a senior editor at the wonderful online magazine Minor Literature[s]. Her thought provoking essays and other writing can be found there, and at Numéro Cinq, 3:AM, New Orleans Review, RIC Journal, The City Story, and an excerpt from a memoir in progress is forthcoming at Lunch Review. Follow her @CuriosoTheGreat (https://twitter.com/CuriosoTheGreat) .

And on page 3 we have Divya Ghelani who grew up in Leicestershire and holds an MA in Creative Writing and an MPhil in Literary Studies. Her novel-in-progress has been longlisted and shortlisted for four literary awards. She was a 2016 Word Factory Apprentice and has published stories in Litro: India and the BareLit Anthology to name a few. She lives between Berlin and the UK. Visit her at divyaghelani.com (http://www.divyaghelani.com) or follow @DivyaGhelani (https://twitter.com/DivyaGhelani) . She’s a risk-taker with a sense of humour fitting to start the year.

So, dear readers you know the score. Sharpen your wit and your pencils: the image is the starting point, the text is up to you. Happy New Year!

Kristen and Preti
@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse)

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Volume 05, Chapter 02 | December 2017

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Image by Samuel Zeller

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Welcome to our final issue for 2017. This month we are bringing it all back to where Visual Verse began: Berlin. It was here, in this magical city, where Visual Verse was born in 2013. A spark of an idea from Kristen was fuelled by a beautiful design by Pete Lewis (also a Berlin resident at the time) and is now a raging fireball of amazingness thanks to the editorial leadership of Preti Taneja, her guest editors Eley Williams and George Spender and our deputy editor Lucie Stevens.

As Visual Verse has evolved, so too has Berlin’s writing talent, and this December we bring the best of this talent to you. We showcase Berlin’s diversity: from rollerskating, hotpant-wearing, rrrriot girl art to gothic cyborg tales, imagination and worldclass talent really are in abundance here. This month’s image is a photograph taken in a Berlin shop window and comes to us from Samuel Zeller (https://www.samuelzeller.ch/) . As is customary with our images, we will not reveal further details or give any context, but one thing is for sure about this one: no one will be indifferent to it. Love it or hate it, we know this image will evoke strong reactions.

Our lead piece by Jane Flett (http://janeflett.com/) is a mighty start to our December issue. Jane is a resident of Berlin where she makes up stories, plays cello, and rollerskates down Tempelhof runway in hotpants. She’s been published in over 70 literary journals and translated into Polish, Croatian and Japanese. Jane features in the 2012 Best British Poetry anthology and was voted Berlin’s best English-language writer in 2015 by Indieberlin. Should you wish to tap Jane’s writerly wisdom she sometimes runs courses in creative writing with The Reader Berlin (http://thereaderberlin.com/) but be warned: they sell out fast.

Rollerskating writers? Well, our next piece is from Sharon Mertins (http://nomadicgraphomania.com) , who says she spends her time in Berlin floating around in her thoughts, playing with fire and linking strands of thought together to turn them into elaborate tales. Her work has been published in Leopardskin and Limes, The Wild Word, Jersey Devil Press and Café Irreal.

And on page 3 we have our very own Lucie Stevens (http://www.luciestevens.com/) who is not only deputy editor extraordinaire of Visual Verse but also a writer, editor and maker of small projects. Lucie was awarded an ASA Emerging Writer’s Mentorship and a NSW Writers’ Centre Varuna Fellowship for her first novel, and her work has been performed by the Australian National Youth Theatre Company. When she’s not writing stories about children in formidable circumstances, Lucie helps make books about space with Curved House Kids.

Up next is Dan Ayres (https://www.clippings.me/danayres) , another Berlin-based writer, this time with a penchant for writing fantasy and short stories about the freaky side of technology. He has been published in Open Pen and The Wild Word and he was longlisted for the annual competition at The Reader Berlin. When dancing, he is devoid of bones.

We are utterly delighted to bring you the work of Isha Ro on page 5, a Jamaican writer living in Berlin. Isha writes creepy stories and funny stories and both of these involve an inordinate amount of murder. You can read more of her work at The Prosateur (http://www.theprosateur.com) .

And finally we complete this issue with fresh new words by Olivia Parkes (http://www.oliviaparkes.com) , a British-American painter and writer currently based in Berlin. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Zyzzyva, The New Haven Review, Gone Lawn, Blue Five Notebook, and American Chordata, among others.

For those of you in Berlin, or looking to visit or move here, keep an eye on The Reader Berlin (http://thereaderberlin.com/) for English-language writing events and courses and also check out SAND Journal (http://sandjournal.com/) , Fiction Canteen (http://www.transfiction.eu/the-fiction-canteen/) , The Wild Word (https://thewildword.com/) and Dead Ladies Show (https://www.facebook.com/thedeadladiesshow/) . These are a few of our favourite Berlin things.

So writers, you know the score: the image is the starting point, the text is up to you. Go forth.

Kristen and Preti

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Volume 05, Chapter 01 | November 2017

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Image by Alicia Bock courtesy of Stocksy (https://www.stocksy.com/ALICIABOCK)

Curated in collaboration with Creative Review’s Storytelling issue (https://www.creativereview.co.uk/the-storytelling-issue-oct-nov-2017/)

Dear writers, readers and friends,

HAPPY FOURTH BIRTHDAY.
Welcome to the very special fourth birthday edition of Visual Verse. We, your loyal publishers, are so very proud. We cannot believe that this project, begun on a creative whim in 2013, has flourished to become the avant-garde online citadel of your ongoing construction. It has survived our day jobs for four years and sometimes we think we have survived because of Visual Verse. Thank you all.

Over the past four years we have commissioned big names and supported emerging ones, we’ve published over 4000 pieces while you’ve been writing your own collections, stories and novels – and getting published and winning prizes yourselves. We’ve celebrated it all with our weird and wonderful tweets (over 4000 of those, a fitting number for our fourth year) and with various events, workshops and partnerships that have seen Visual Verse come alive in gallery spaces, within artists’ projects, as part of performance pieces, and now… in print.

We are so excited to celebrate our birthday issue with a collaboration with Creative Review (https://www.creativereview.co.uk/) , a magazine that regularly inspires us with features about the best of the best in the book design world, as well as the best of the best across the whole spectrum of art and design. Thanks to their lovely Deputy Editor, Mark Sinclair, we have been able to play a small role in helping their latest issue come together. Their October/November issue is a storytelling special in which they ask: could a picture be a starting point? What kind of responses might a single image evoke? They asked their readers to select an image to be featured on the cover and reader Stuart McFerrers suggested the image you see above, by artist Alicia Bock (http://www.aliciabock.com/) via the Stocksy photo library (https://www.stocksy.com/ALICIABOCK) . We helped commission writers to respond to the image by asking a handful of VV contributors whose work always makes us
smile – for reasons of style, substance and sheer visual verve – to respond. They are published in the print issue of Creative Review magazine, and as our supporting leads on Visual Verse. In no particular order they are Susanna Crossman, Drew Milne, Rishi Dastidar, Hazel Mason, Clare Archibald, Elizabeth Gibson and Angela Young. Grab hold of a copy of Creative Review to support us, the writers and the power of creative collaboration.

https://www.creativereview.co.uk/the-storytelling-issue-oct-nov-2017/

As you know we also support small presses, and often publish lead writers who come from the UK’s leading independent publishers including Fitzcarraldo, Comma, Peepal Tree, And Other Stories and Galley Beggar Press. So it’s only right our lead piece this month is written by the ultimate small press champion Neil Griffiths. Not only is he the author of two previous novels – Betrayal in Naples (Penguin), winner of the Authors’ Club Best First Novel, and Saving Caravaggio (Penguin), shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year with a new novel – he also has a new book out by Dodo Ink, As a God Might Be, published last month. Neil also co-founded the Republic of Consciousness Prize (http://www.republicofconsciousness.com/) for Small Presses and is an all-round wonder and gift. Follow him at @neilgriffiths (http://www.twitter.com/neilgriffiths) .

We couldn’t do what we do without our patrons, one of whom – Cathy Galvin – is co-founder of The Word Factory. She’s also the brains behind the wonderful C (http://www.thewordfactory.tv/site/events/) itizens: The New Story (http://www.thewordfactory.tv/site/citizen-festival/) festival taking place in London from 10-12 November and featuring an amazing line up (including more than a few VV-ers) – so get down there, and get into it.

As the new Visual Verse year begins, here are our birthday wishes: that you keep writing, keep submitting, keep reading, keep tweeting – help us make it to five. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Birthday love,
Preti and Kristen

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