Image: Molly Baber
Dear writers, readers and friends,
As summer yields to autumn, our thoughts turn quiet and we invite you to ‘travel to the land of malady, and back again,’ (a line from our October lead, Susana Moreira Marques). This month we’re all about memory, weight, the things we leave behind. Of course this leads to discovery – coming across treasures in the attic, faded but potent – what stories will they tell? What secret histories are woven into old blankets, and whispered into the wood of abandoned chairs?
Susana Moreira Marques’ extraordinary first book Now and at the Hour of Our Death (http://www.andotherstories.org/book/now-and-at-the-hour-of-our-death/) , translated from the Portuguese by Julia Sanches, was published by & Other Stories (http://www.andotherstories.org/) in September. It won an English PEN award for its beautiful musing on turbulent lives coming to an end in Planalto Mirandês, Trás-os-Montes – a remote region in the northeast of Portugal. Reminiscent of Anne Michaels’ disturbing and moving Fugitive Pieces, we can’t recommend Susana’s raw, poetic work enough.
We are also delighted to publish one of our Visual Verse patrons, the journalist and poet Cathy Galvin. Cathy founded the Sunday Times EFG short story award and Word Factory (http://www.thewordfactory.tv/site/) , our favourite UK literary salon and promoter of short fiction. Her beautiful sequence of sonnets, Black and Blue (http://melospress.blogspot.co.uk/) , is published by the Melos Press – be prepared to call your mothers after reading… and if you can’t – well, this ‘crown’ of works will remind you that you aren’t alone.
Our third spot this month is filled by Dimitra Xidous (http://www.dimitraxidous.com/) , whose poems have appeared in Room, The Stinging Fly, and The Penny Dreadful. She was a finalist in the 2014 Malahat Review Open Season awards, and her poetry was shortlisted for The Bridport Prize (2013). Her musical, immersive collection Keeping Bees is published by Doire Press (2014). Originally from Ottawa, she currently resides in Dublin.
All our writers come together to respond to a dramatic and dishevelled image by British artist Molly Baber (http://mollybaberphotography.weebly.com/) . Molly lives and works in a small town in Brandenburg, just outside of Berlin, so it is no surprise that her recent ‘Abandoned’ series (from which this image comes) feels like some kind of post-modern archaeological dig. It uncovers a history that is rugged, fraught and beautiful all at once and we are so excited to see what you will make of it.
So dear writers, if you live in a part of the world where the leaves are going red, or if you live in place where summer is on its way – now is the month to pause and reflect on the past, take stock of the present, and try to imagine whatever is coming next.
Awaiting your words at www.visualverse.org/submit.
Happy writing.
Preti and Kristen
https://www.visualverse.org