Image by Kabiur Rahman Riyad
Dear writers, readers and friends,
Presenting our final issue for 2022 which also kicks off the tenth volume of Visual Verse. Phew! By my calculations, a printed box set containing every issue of Visual Verse would span nearly 2 metres on a bookshelf. That’s a lot of words, capturing a decade’s worth of life-altering history that we have shared together. Thank you to each and every one of you for helping Visual Verse to shape and reshape, month after month, and year after year.
This month we chose to give the lead spots over to four of our regular writers who have submitted consistently good work to us over the years. During commissioning, some of the writers shared a little ‘behind the scenes’ of their process and I was reminded of the special kind of magic that is ekphrasis. The surrealists instinctively understood that, by focusing the mind on a visual stimulus (e.g. an image prompt), an artist can enter a receptive state whereby they need not work to find words but simply allow the words to come. Some call this flow, the holy grail for us artists. The ekphrastic process, and finding flow, is not always easy. As Colin Dardis, one of our lead writers, remarked:
“Sometimes you see an image, and your immediate thought is: my goodness, how am I going to find my way into this?! But as usual, you sit with it, and explore, magnify, bend the head and look at parts in isolation, then the whole, and soon something develops.”
This month’s image, by Kabiur Rahman Riyad (https://www.instagram.com/fakeriyad/) , an amateur photographer from Bangladesh, is deliberately abstract and layered. It requires a second look, maybe a third, and perhaps this deep concentration on the visual will distract you long enough to write something you never expected.
To delight and inspire you we have A J Wilson (https://poetisatinta.wordpress.com ) (Angela) on page 1. Angela was born and lives in rural North Wales, UK. She returned to poetry during lockdown after a gap of 30 years. As well as Visual Verse, she has been published in a number of magazines, such as Ink Drinkers Poetry, Write On Magazine and Spillwords, and recently her writing has been featured in two anthologies. She is currently compiling her work for a poetry collection.
On page 2, a response in three parts by Shujaat Mirza (https://twitter.com/shujaat_mirza) , a poet, writer, curator and artist based out of Mumbai and Ahmedabad, India. Shujaat has a passion for multidisciplinary explorations and his primary interest is art at the intersection of visual aesthetics and verbal semantics, a natural fit for Visual Verse. His work has been published online as well as in literary and art magazines and blogs. Find him on Medium (https://medium.com/@shujaatmirza) or follow @shujaat_mirza on Twitter (https://twitter.com/shujaat_mirza) or Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/shujaat_mirza/) .
Page 3 features one of our most prolific and consistent writers, Colin Dardis (http://www.colindardispoet.co.uk) . Colin is a neurodivergent poet, editor and sound artist from Northern Ireland. His work, largely influenced by his experiences with depression and Asperger’s, has been published widely throughout Ireland, the UK and USA. His latest book is Apocrypha: Collected Early Poems (Cyberwit, 2022). His latest album is Funerealism (Inner Demons Records, 2022). You can find his music on your fave streaming service (https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/dardis/dead-leaves-new-seeds) or follow him on Twitter (https://twitter.com/purelypoetry) .
And on page 4 we present the words of Pearl Lorentzen (https://www.pearllorentzen.com) , a journalist and poet who occasionally writes fiction. Pearl is the 2021 recipient of the Canadian Mental Health Association Communications Award (for Alberta). We are proud to have published her work many times in Visual Verse and she has also been published in the Glass Buffalo and The Liar. Her fiction has been published in AE scifi.
Now over to you, dear writers. Let us work together to unfurl another chapter of this beautiful publication. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.
Sending much love – may you find your flow and ride with it into a new year.
Kristen
with Preti, Isabel, Lucie, Ashish, Zaynab and Wes
Find us on socials:
Our Writers
Colin Dardis (https://twitter.com/purelypoetry)
Shujaat Mirza (https://twitter.com/shujaat_mirza)
Our Team
Visual Verse (https://twitter.com/pretitaneja/)
Kristen Harrison (https://www.instagram.com/kittyharrison/)
Preti Taneja (https://twitter.com/PretiTaneja)
Lucie Stevens (https://twitter.com/LucieStevens_)
Ashish Kumar (https://twitter.com/Ashish_stJude)
Zaynab Bobi (https://twitter.com/ZainabBobi)
Wes White (https://twitter.com/archaeologyBoy)