Writings

In the early 1930s Lye was encouraged by his friends Robert Graves and Laura Riding to start writing for publication.  In 1930, their Seizin Press published No Trouble, a collection of Lye’s prose poems.  For the rest of his life he continued to write poems and “myth” stories in a highly original style which often grew out of a process of verbal “doodling”. Some of this literary writing has been published posthumously in the collection Body English.

Lye also began producing a number of essays about art and film-making which were published during his lifetime in British magazines such as Sight and Sound and Life and Letters Today and American magazines such as The Tiger’s Eye and Film Culture.

Developing a passion for theorising about art, values, science, individuality and other important issues, he left a rich archive of hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, tape recordings and slide-tape lectures which are now part of the Foundation’s collection.  He also wrote vividly about his childhood in a book published posthumously as Happy Moments.

Photo Gallery: Writings