Volume 08, Chapter 07 | May 2021

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Image by Unknown Artist / Wellcome Trust

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Dear writers,

This month we have a special collaboration with the much-respected imprint, Serpent’s Tail (https://serpentstail.com/) , to celebrate the debut novel (https://uk.bookshop.org/books/before-the-ruins/9781788163798?aid=7452) of Victoria Gosling.

Let me tell you a little anecdote about Victoria Gosling (https://twitter.com/VictoriaReaderB?s=20) . Several years ago, I found myself an hour from Berlin, in a strange little Fort (replete with a moat) with cavernous rooms and an honesty bar. This was The Reader Berlin (https://www.thereaderberlin.com/) ’s Fort Gorgast Writer’s Festival and I was there to represent Visual Verse. I sat in on a workshop that Victoria ran, in which she took participants through a number of writing activities that were very much in the spirit of the surrealists, and in the spirit of Visual Verse. These were activities designed to tap the subconscious and remove mental barriers to one’s own creativity. I expected to be more of an observer than a participant but as Victoria unfurled her intriguing, thoughtful array of writing exercises I found myself deeply engaged. I have kept the work I did that day. And I have never forgotten the feeling of liberation as her prompts evoked words I never knew I had in me.
Victoria has a special kind of magic: she’s a gifted writer and also someone who can share that gift, conjuring other people’s talents with great empathy and sensitivity.

So without further ado, I present your May visual writing prompt, an intriguing artwork thought to be from around 1850, by an unknown artist, and courtesy of Wellcome Collection. It is an honour and pleasure to present Victoria’s response on page one. Her first full-length novel, Before the Ruins (https://uk.bookshop.org/books/before-the-ruins/9781788163798?aid=7452) , will be published on May 6th by Serpent’s Tail. It is a fabulous book, full of mystery, speculation, characters that oscillate between dark and light, a complex but accessible narrative, and a protagonist who keeps us at arms length while anchoring us to her plight. Put it on your summer reading list immediately.

On page two, we are thrilled to feature another new Serpent’s Tail writer, Alice Ash (https://twitter.com/aliceash_?s=20) , whose short story collection Paradise Block (https://uk.bookshop.org/books/paradise-block/9781788165549) was released in February. Alice is the current Writer in Residence at Open Book (https://openbookreading.com/) , a literary organisation working across Scotland; you can read Alice’s stories here (https://openbookreading.com/unbound/#lockdown) . She lives in Brighton with her boyfriend and 2,000 books.

And as you know we often invite regular contributors whose work has caught our eye month-to-month. On page three we are delighted to introduce you to Rachel Belward (https://twitter.com/RBel2?s=20) . Rachel grew up in northern Italy, and she now lives in London. She is a regular contributor to Visual Verse, and her short stories have been published by Dear Damsels. She works for a mental health charity, and is working on a novel about love, music and climate disaster. She loves to read, and her Instagram book reviews are my go-to for reading recommendations. Follow her on Instagram at @rach_is_reading (https://www.instagram.com/rach_is_reading/) .

Now it’s your turn, dear writers. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Enjoy!

Kristen
with the VV team, Preti, Lucie, Isabel and Luke.

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Volume 04, Chapter 06 | April 2017

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Image by Oliver Burston (aka Spooky Pooka)
Overall winner of the 2017 Wellcome Image Awards.

Dear writers, readers and friends,

It is April, and it is around this time each year that the Visual Verse team come together to hatch new plans. We drink, we eat and we talk about how much your writing inspires us to keep going, and to do more. This year our chats are focussed on how we will create the first printed anthology of Visual Verse and what shape it will take. And, of course, how we will fund it properly to ensure it’s the best it can be. We hope to announce these plans before the summer so stay tuned.

In the meantime, we are thrilled to have our first collaboration with the Wellcome Trust, whose work we so admire. This month we present the winner of the annual Wellcome Image Awards as your writing prompt. These awards showcase science imaging in the form of photography, illustration, data visualization and any other visual media. The technologies and ideas used to visualize organisms, disease, bacteria and scientific data are becoming more sophisticated each day, and are having a huge impact on how we understand our world. And, in the case of the winning image, how we understand individual experience of illness. Illustrator Oliver Burston (aka Spooky Pooka) (http://www.spookypooka.com/) has won the award with this haunting image embodying the physical and emotional impact of Crohn’s disease, a condition he lives with. Visit the Wellcome Image website (http://www.wellcomeimageawards.org/) to find out more.

In response to this image, our first two pieces this month are rather special. They were written as a series by friends Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney, who co-run the website SomethingRhymed.com, which celebrates female literary friendship. They are also the authors of A Secret Sisterhood: The Hidden Friendships of Austen, Brontё, Eliot and Woolf, which will be published, with a foreword by Margaret Atwood, in June 2017. Emma’s novel Owl Song at Dawn was recently named BookHugger Book of the Year, Emily is a winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and they both teach at New York University, London. So much amazingness.

Our third lead is by Amanthi Harris (http://www.amanthiharris.com) , a writer and artist who studied at Central St Martins and Bristol University. She won the Gatehouse Press New Fictions Prize 2016 with her novella Lantern Evening which is published by Gatehouse Press. Her short stories have been published by Serpent’s Tail and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as Afternoon Readings. She is part of the V22 Artist Collective and works in 3D and drawing. She runs StoryHug (http://www.storyhug.com) an Arts Council England funded art and storytelling project.

And, to cast you off, we present new words by James Clammer (https://twitter.com/JamesClammer) , a writer based in Sussex, England. His novel for young adults, Why I Went Back, has been longlisted for the Branford Boase Award, and his short stories have been published by Galley Beggar Press. He writes, nightly, in a winterproofed shed at the foot of a cliff.

So there, dear writers, is your spring selection (for those in the northern hemisphere) or autumn inspiration (for those south of the equator). Before we let you go we also want to thank Lucie Stevens (http://www.luciestevens.com/) , our guest editor, who does such an immense job of helping us to bring your work to the site each month (while also writing her own novels). Thank you Lucie.

Enjoy, be inspired and don’t forget: the image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Love, Kristen and Preti

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