Recent offerings from Les Figues Press at Committee

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1.Allison Carter (Los Angeles, US) A Fixed, Formal Arrangement (2008) $15 

 Boundaries or containers or commas... Prose that explores the liminal and 

 indefinite things that comprise everyday life.Divided into two sections:
“In Your Spare Time” & “Garages.”

 2. Jennifer Calkins (Seattle, US) A Story of Witchery (2006) $15

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A narrative poem —illustrated by Sarah Lane— that follows an orphan named Emily and her encounters with medicinal fixes and threats.

3. Dodie Bellamy (San Francisco, US) Cunt Norton (2013) $15

Bellamy's treatment of the 1975 edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry splices 

together the canon of poetry with pornographic text. 

4. Urs Allemann (Basel, CH) Baby Fucker (1991) $13

Translated by Peter Smith. A narrative examination of how a few simple words combine to illustrate the capacity of literature to revolt and stagger. This work was both the focus of a German literary scandal and the winner of the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Preis in 1991. 

5. Melissa Buzzeo (New York, US) For Want and Sound (2012) $15
Lyrical investigations into the fluid, unfixed, undefined and unbounded in, on and around us.

6. Christine Wertheim, editor (Los Angeles, US) Feminaissance (2010) $20
Taking up a perspective outside of the contemporary liminal subject to consider the utility of constructed group identities for those who continue to be Othered to even the most unfixed of ideals, this notion of self serves as a departure point for writing that investigates collectivity; feminine écriture; the politics of writing; text and voice; the body as a site of contestation, insurgence and pleasure; race and writing; gender as performance; writing about other women writers; economic inequities; Hélène Cixous; monstrosity; madness; and aesthetics.

Contributors: Dodie Bellamy, Caroline Bergvall, Meiling Cheng, Wanda Coleman, Bhanu Kapil, Chris Kraus, Susan McCabe, Tracie Morris, Eileen Myles, Maggie Nelson, Vanessa Place, Juliana Spahr, Christine Wertheim, Stephanie Young, Lidia Yuknavitch

7.  Frank Smith (Paris, FR) Guantanamo (2014) $17
Translated by Vanessa Place. Composed of text appropriated from interrogation logs and verbal trials from the Guantanamo naval base tracing a line between document and poetry.
Frank Smith 

8. Stephanie Taylor (Los Angeles, US) Chop Shop (2007) $15
Includes an introduction by Vanessa Place, a conversation with Juli Carson, an essay (in German) by Susanne Prinz, and additional visual art by Danielle Adair.
Stephanie Taylor Studio

9. Christine Wertheim, (Los Angeles, US) +|'me'S-pace,  doc. 001.b (2007) $15
Book 1, volume 2 of a wider project known as “For Love Alone” Christina’S-tead.
The author utilizes litteral poetics as a strategy of communication in which words are compounds with independent substance and structure rather than signs with arbitrary associations. Various combinations and permutations are arranged for both the reader’s eye and ear.

“Written in a time when many are questioning if we still need formalism and feminism, Christine Werthiem’s +|’me’S-pace, doc. 001.b is a spirited and fun defense of both. Written, in part, as a didactic instructional manual that cannot keep itself from constantly going astray into beautiful and challenging language play, this is a book that asks crucial questions and reconfigures recent histories. It is essential for its arguments.”

-Juliana Spahr

10. Divya Victor (Buffalo, US/Singapore) Things To Do With Your Mouth (2014) $15

An examination of the mouth as an instrument of the historically contested power of the speech of women through the appropriation of texts ranging from nursery rhymes, contemporary pediatric health websites, biblical passages and Freud’s “Analysis of a Case of Hysteria.”