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

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Volume 04, Chapter 08 | June 2017

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Image courtesy of the Bodleian Libraries

Dear writers, readers and friends,

This month we seen US Comedian Kathy Griffin fired from jobs and berated across the news and social media for an image of her with a beheaded Donald Trump. It was meant to be funny and perhaps if it were less bloody she could have got away with it. But it was particularly gruesome. Kathy’s saga is an example of how no two people ever perceive a single image in the same way. Kathy’s frame of perception, her life experiences, mean she sees it as funny. For others it is a symbol of hate, inciting a murder. For those who dislike blood and guts it’s just a bit gross. While our life experiences inform how we see, we writers can step away from our life experience and see through the eyes of characters and narraters to bring alternate views, perhaps even broadening our own minds in the process. So, who is seeing who in this month’s image? This intriguing Mermaid from the collection of the Bodleian Libraries (http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/) , Oxford University, is something you can
inspect from behind glass or, perhaps, turn the gaze back upon yourself, or us.

Our lead writer for June is a talent whose work we so admire, not just for his writing but also his instinct to bring art into every living moment, inviting participation and observation. Nigerian-born Inua Ellams (http://www.inuaellams.com/) is a cross art form practitioner, a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer and founder of the Midnight Run (http://www.themnr.com/) — an international, arts-filled, night-time, playful, urban, walking experience. He is a Complete Works poet alumni and a designer at White Space Creative Agency. Across his work, Identity, Displacement & Destiny are reoccurring themes in which he also tries to mix the old with the new: traditional African storytelling with contemporary poetry, pencil with pixel, texture with vector images. His poetry is published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches and several plays by Oberon.

Kathleen Heil (http://kathleenheil.net) graces us on page 2 with a beautifully controlled and moving piece. Kathleen is a writer, dancer, and translator. Her poems, stories, essays and translations most recently appear in The New Yorker, Five Points, FENCE, The Brooklyn Rail, Beloit Poetry Journal, Two Lines, SAND, and other journals. As a dancer, Heil has worked with various artists in the U.S. and Europe and performed her own choreography in New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Madrid, and elsewhere. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Sturgis Foundation, among others, she lives in Berlin. For those in Berlin, Kathleen has two workshops coming up – one on Rhythm and Phrasing (https://www.facebook.com/events/166433013891430/) and one on Style and Translation (https://www.facebook.com/events/247453242401643/) .

On page 3 we feature new writing from Erin O’Loughlin, a writer, translator and accidental wanderer. Originally from Australia, she has lived all over the world including Japan, South Africa and Italy. When she’s not busy living all her reincarnations at once (at least, that’s what it feels like some days) she is the associate editor for The Wild Word (http://thewildword.com/) magazine.

We have spent many afternoons reading The (http://thewildword.com/) Wild Word (http://thewildword.com/) where we found Deirdre Mulrooney (https://deirdre-mulrooney.squarespace.com/) , an emerging Irish artist living and working in Berlin. Raised working class in a small nation dominated by Catholicism and men, she now lives as a teacher, a mother and an artist discovering the joy of playing with taboos and visions of female identity that would, until all too recently, have seen her locked away. Her current work is a fantastical and brazenly irreverent take on femininity, sexuality, religion and power. See it in all its glory in her forthcoming exhibition, Bloody Milk River at Gallerie Baeren (https://deirdre-mulrooney.squarespace.com/new-cover-page/) in Neukölln, Berlin, from June 23rd.

Well? Who’s seeing who this month? The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Enjoy,
Kristen and Preti

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