lemon, egg, bread
£10.00 – £20.00
Laura Elliott
We are excited to announce the publication of lemon, egg, bread, the long-awaited debut from Laura Elliott.
lemon, egg, bread is a striking first collection; a series of poems which read as an attempt to speed-write the still-life image. Drawn out of a process of meditation on and intervention within various still-life compositions, including works by Laura Letinsky, the collection explores practices of re-articulation by way of the feminist gaze and the gut.
These are direct, imagistic poems formed purely from appetite; a compendium of metabolisms. Bound within sites of both domestic and intellectual labour, the poems narrate the idiosyncratic rituals surrounding food preparation, consumption, and observation.
The vocabulary of the vanitas is here reconfigured via a poetics of devouring, which focuses on the liminal, the leftover, and the wasted. The subject speaks in and through the objects of digestion of the still life, mapping interrelations of celebration and shame, desire and rage, inscribing the most complex and fleeting of hungers.
Description
We are excited to announce the publication of lemon, egg, bread, the long-awaited debut from Laura Elliott.
lemon, egg, bread is a striking first collection; a series of poems which read as an attempt to speed-write the still-life image. Drawn out of a process of meditation on and intervention within various still-life compositions, including works by Laura Letinsky, the collection explores practices of re-articulation by way of the feminist gaze and the gut.
These are direct, imagistic poems formed purely from appetite; a compendium of metabolisms. Bound within sites of both domestic and intellectual labour, the poems narrate the idiosyncratic rituals surrounding food preparation, consumption, and observation.
The vocabulary of the vanitas is here reconfigured via a poetics of devouring, which focuses on the liminal, the leftover, and the wasted. The subject speaks in and through the objects of digestion of the still life, mapping interrelations of celebration and shame, desire and rage, inscribing the most complex and fleeting of hungers.
Laura Letinsky has said of the collection:
‘Elliott’s beautiful and delicate words swerve amidst and between the complications and joys of the domestic. I was struck and amazed by how these poems led me into, around, and through the nuances of the everyday in all their sensorial and emotional glory, along with its opposite. This is important work.’
The book’s design, by Traven T. Croves, foregrounds its materiality and tactility, with an exposed sewn spine and yellow-stained edges. Specially commissioned for this book, the cover artwork is by Florence Shaw.
A limited edition poster, screenprinted in a run of 50 numbered copies, is available for £10 (or £8 if bought with the book).
Laura Elliott
Laura Elliott is a poet and library worker in London. Her work has been published in a number of magazines and anthologies, including The White Review, Poetry London, Blackbox Manifold, and Clinic IV. She co-edits the poetry publishing experiment para·text with Angus Sinclair (@paratextual | paratext.co.uk). lemon, egg, bread is her first collection.
lemon, egg, bread is the second publication in our Arts Council-funded project exploring the interaction of poetry and visual art, following Rachael Allen and Marie Jacotey’s Nights of Poor Sleep.
