Jennifer went to Portland and found this.

Thanks, Powell's Books!
Maybe this year we'll put a bird on it.

HERE: HP-09-07-009

Although the ice-skating season is well underway in the frozen Netherlands, Versal is being read in warmer climes by South African Liesl Jobson and her friends. They took a HERE copy of Versal 7 with them to St James' Beach in Cape Town to re-read during a Christmas Day picnic. Thank you for the photos, Liesl.

Pushcart nominations

I am very pleased to announce our Pushcart nominations from Versal 7:

• Jessica Young - “Autosomal Dominant”
• Rufo Quintavalle - “Ball Bearings”
• Mark Bilbrey - “The Dog of the National Register of Historic Places”
• Sawako Nakayasu - “5.28.2003” from “Texture Notes”
• Lehua M. Taitano - “Suit”

Congratulations to the nominees! If you don't have a copy of Versal 7, you can get one here.

Read all about it

Every so often we will use this space to post literary news of Versal contributors and editors. Here's our first round-up:

Marilyn Hacker's new book Names will be published next month by W.W. Norton in New York. He and I, her translations from the French of poems by Emmanuel Moses, was just published by the Oberlin College Press FIELD Translation Series in Ohio. Both contain poems published in Versal 5. Nicole Walker (Versal 7) has a book out in December, This Noisy Egg, from Barrow Street Press. Dawn Lonsinger (Versal 6) published her first chapbook, the linoleum crop, at the start of this year with Jeanne Duval Editions. It was the winner of the 2007 Terminus Magazine Chapbook Contest chosen by Thomas Lux. Her second chapbook, The Nested Object, came out this August from Dancing Girl Press. She has poems forthcoming in The Journal, Blackbird, Cream, City Review, Post Road, Bateau and Packington Review.

Some editors have news too: fiction editor Robert Glick has stories forthcoming from Black Warrior Review and Denver Quarterly. Contributing editor Laura Chalar received the honorable mention for fiction in the Annual Literary Awards of the Uruguayan Ministry of Culture, for her short story collection The discreet charm of lawyering.

Congratulations, everyone! We love to hear about what past contributors are doing now, so please send any more news to us via our versaljournalATwordsinhereDOTcom email address.

Horizon Review

I've been reading the third issue of Salt Publishing's online literary journal Horizon Review and came across a review of the British Oystercatcher Press, a Norfolk-based publisher of poetry pamphlets, which won the inaugural Michael Marks Publishers’ Award in June this year. The review includes glowing coverage of Versal 7 contributor Rufo Quintavalle's pamphlet Make Nothing Happen. Read it here.

NewPages reviews Versal 7

NewPages has just posted a review of Versal 7 by Sima Rabinowitz.

Check it.

A windy toon o' cloods an' sunny glints

I got back to Amsterdam last week from Edinburgh, where I used to live. If Megan reckons the weather is bad in Amsterdam (see post below) she should think back to her time in Scotland and realise that things can be much worse, although I will concede that no light is as gorgeous as Scottish light. And it was worth stomping through the rain to see friends and sample some festival events. In the wind-blustered tents of the Edinburgh International Book Festival in Charlotte Square, I watched Tom Pow read from his book of new and selected poems In the Becoming, which I had the privilege of editing earlier this year. It was wonderful, having worked on the book by email, to hear Tom reading the poems aloud, bringing to them new resonances: they've somehow settled differently in my head now. Alan Spence, the "Glasgow Zen" poet, also read at that event and reminded me just how much I respect the haiku and tanka forms. A couple of days later I went to the launch of poet Sam Meekings' fantastic debut novel Under Fishbone Clouds and caught up with Jane McKie, whose second collection, When the Sun Turns Green was published earlier this year. Sadly, however, I just missed the second Westport Book Festival, a free, fringey counterpart to the EIBF run by lovely people. I am determined to attend it next year.

I took some copies of Versal 7 with me and am delighted that Edinburgh now has three retail stockists of Versal, as well as being in the Scottish Poetry Library. Edinburghers can now buy copies of Versal 7 in the fine establishments of Fruitmarket Gallery, Word Power and Analogue.

Versal 7 acquired by the Itinerant Poetry Library

The Itinerant Poetry Library was installed at the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam last week - during which time the 1000th Valued Patron of the library was signed up. Versal 6 was accepted into the library last year after a nerve-wracking acquisitions procedure, and was on display in the Itinerant Poetry Library for a day during the festival as part of a "poetry with pictures" selection. This year, Versal 7 scored 17 out of 73 on the acquisition questionnaire, and was also accepted into the library - hurrah!

Versal in the air

In a few hours' time we'll be launching the seventh issue of Versal at the Sugar Factory. Poets Jennifer K. Dick and Rufo Quintavalle have traveled up from Paris, and writer Rita Buckley has flown in from Boston – converging here in Amsterdam for a night of revelry.

This blog is obviously a new step for Versal. With it, we hope to join the lively online literary dialogues, adding our two cents from our perspective "here". Our editors will contribute thoughts about our submission review process and the wide(ning) aesthetic that Versal seeks out. We also hope to invite contributors from Versal's pages past and present to enter into the discussion. In the end, I guess it's just a blog – and in that sense also a bit of an experiment for us.

In this first post, I am also excited to introduce the HERE project. Starting today, copies of Versals old and new will be passed into the hands of a number of potential readers around the world. The project is simple: read & pass on. These copies are marked and numbered, and readers are encouraged (but not obligated) to contact us with their responses: text, image, video, sound...These responses, when received, will be posted on this blog.

In the coming days, we'll be writing more about the HERE project and how&why it came about. And, generally, getting this blog off the proverbial ground. Comments encouraged.