Body English: Text and Images by Len Lye
![Body English [LEN LYE creative writing collection]](http://www.thebigidea.co.nz/files/imagecache/display/images/BodyEnglish02.jpg "Body English [LEN LYE creative writing collection]")
Edited and with an Afterword by Roger Horrocks “Body English” was Len Lye’s catch-all term for all forms of communication that incorporate a physical dimension – from “body language” (which includes gesture, stance, and facial expression) to surprising combinations of words that function as an “umbilical cord from brain to body”.
Roger Horrocks has brought together lively texts from different phases of Lye’s career which focus on this concept central to his aesthetics and combined them with ten “doodles”, free-wheeling drawings which share some of the same qualities of “old brain” imagination, physicality and implied motion.
The book is a companion volume identical in size and format to HAPPY MOMENTS, also combining texts and images by Lye which Roger Horrocks edited for the Holloway Press in 2000 and is long out of print.
BODY ENGLISH is designed and letterpress printed for The Holloway Press by Tara McLeod on a Littlejohn cylinder press using metal types. The text is 12 pt Granjon, linotype set by Longley Printing Co. Titles are handset in 18pt Lydian italic. Images are printed from photo-polymer plates made by Inline Graphics. Binding is by Design Bind. Paper is Evergreen Ivory text 104gsm. Tipped-in photograph by John Phillips, c. 1938. Edition of 150 signed and numbered copies
See more about this publication from Holloway Press
Social bookmarking
Member Profile
Auckland University PressAs we publishers work out how to reach new readers in a world of netbooks and notebooks, e-books and iPads, it’s easy to forget some of the basic things that books are meant to do. Books tell stories. Stories told from a distinct point of view, stories that haven’t been told before, stories that re-create experience, stories that define cultures. In 2010 at Auckland University Press we have some great stories to tell about our lives here in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Some stories are personal. The smell of macrocarpas and the sound of his mother’s piano down the hall as C K Stead grows up in the shadow of Mt Eden; the rush of events facing Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard during the global financial crisis; the conflicted feelings of Bill Pearson growing up gay in 1930s Greymouth; Paula Green’s poems recounting a battle with illness; the ways and words of mystic hipster David Mitchell.
Some stories are cultural. The gesture and phrase that Poia Rewi finds in whāikorero, the world of Māori oratory; the poems of Polynesia collected by Albert Wendt, Robert Sullivan and Reina Whaitiri; the merging of indigenous and imported ideas in the first Māori churches analysed by Richard Sundt; the tuamaka, the rope, holding our cultures together that Joan Metge untwists; the noise, sweat and smells of the shearing shed that Hazel Riseborough opens the door to; and the long history of Māori and Pākehā from Tasman to today brought together in one volume by Vincent O’Malley, Wally Penetito and Bruce Stirling.
Some stories recreate whole worlds of experience. Chris Bourke blasts us with the jiving rhythms coming out of a Timaru dance hall; Perrin Rowland introduces us to the silver service at K Road’s Hi Diddle Griddle; Gordon Brown gives us a glimpse into Colin McCahon’s studio; and Julia Gatley shows how a cow shed down the road could inspire the Group Architects.
And some stories lead us to places we hadn’t imagined. Sarah Broom chasing tigers on the Awhitu Peninsula; Murray Edmond biking narrow roads in Poland; Paul Millar heading back to Baxter’s Jerusalem; Lynn Jenner casting the pink light of inquiry on Mansfield, Houdini and Mata Hari.
We invite you all to read some great New Zealand stories.
