No Trouble

No Trouble was published in 1930 by Seizin Press. It is Len Lye’s first published book, although he had started writing experimental prose in the late 1920s. Lye continued to write both poems and essays for the rest of his life.

Len Lye was encouraged to write No Trouble by the American poet Laura Riding, who he had met in London in the late 1920s and who had seen some of his verbal ‘doodles’ – short, often nonsensical texts which played with language and words. Riding suggested that Lye publish a group of these verbal ‘doodlings’, she then edited them together as No Trouble.

The Seizin Press was founded by Riding and Robert Graves in London in 1927. From 1930 it was based in Majorca, and it published limited edition, experimental modernist texts. Lye designed a number book covers for the press from 1930, including the cover for No Trouble.