Tripwire 23 - Work/Anti-work

If there is a centre around which the language of this pamphlet circulates, then it is Palestine. As this centre, Palestine enables a transformative power that persistently and steadfastly turns repression and silencing into solidarity. Essay-fiction, prose poetry, radical philosophy, speculative nonfiction — this uncategorizable collection of texts brings militant inquiry to each utterance, each narrative turn, in acts of transnational and transhistorical becoming.

A special issue focused on performance writing, with work by Tanya Lukin Linklater (with Michael Nardone), Jibade-Khalil Huffman & Simone White, Jean-Thomas Tremblay, Claudina Domingo (trans. Ryan Greene), Kim Rosenfield, Nathan Walker, Liz Knox, Rona Lorimer, Léo Richard, & Hector Uniacke, Mohamed A. Gawad & Dalia Neis, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge & Teddy Yoshikami, interviewed by Michelle N. Huang, Kyoo Lee and Jocelyn Saidenberg, Adriana Garriga-López, Gabrielle Civil, plus a Kevin Killian Tribute, with Eileen Myles * Scott Hewicker * Cliff Hengst * Karla Milosevich * Craig Goodman * Michelle Rollman * Anne McGuire * Wayne Smith * Tanya Hollis * Steve Orth * Lindsey Boldt * Maxe Crandall * Arnold J. Kemp * Carla Harryman, Lee Ann Brown & Tony Torn * Susan Gevirtz * Laynie Browne * Patrick Durgin * Norma Cole * Jo Giardini. & reviews: Jessica Lopez Lyman & Jocelyn E. Marshall on Gabrielle Civil, alex cruse on Merce Cunningham, Rob Stanton on Anne Boyer, Jack Chelgren on Miyó Vestrini, David Grundy on Stephen Jonas, Virginia Konchan on Sarah Vap.

The first English translation of Leslie Kaplan's crystalline novella Miss Nobody Knows, about the lived aftermath of May '68: its hopes and failures and how they continue to resonate today.

“Ostensibly about the May '68 strike and a man who cannot deal with its aftermath, but really a love story to these moments when suddenly the utopian comes into view and no longer feels impossible. It’s a book to read right now so as to remember that there have been moments when people come together in the name of possibility, rather than in rage.” —Juliana Spahr

“Thank you for sending Leslie Kaplan's book, so strong and graceful, so… so… so… as if the novel were suspended between the animal and the human.” —Jean-Luc Godard, letter to Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens

“One thought he understood it all, the other wanted to see it all. Through two opposing characters, Leslie Kaplan brings to life something of May '68 … This novel breaks an opening out of the infinitely mad universe that was captured by Leslie Kaplan's first book, Excess-The Factory.” —Claire Devarrieux, Libération

Featuring work by Sara M Saleh, Joni Prince, Shatr Collective, Carlos Soto Román, Petra Kuppers, Diane Ward, Dianna Settles, Mayra Santos-Febres translated by Seth Michelson, Elena Gomez & Chelsea Hart, Noah Mazer, Daniel Borzutzky, Ash(ley) Michelle C., Ghazal Mosadeq, Darius Simpson, Mohammed Zenia, Mario Payeras translated by Dan Eltringham, Ferreira Gullar translated by Chris Daniels, Christophe Tarkos translated & read by Marty Hiatt, Andrew Spragg on Tom Raworth, Matthew Rana on Ida Börjel, & Paisley Conrad on Harryette Mullen

Narrative/Prose issue, featuring a special section: I was writing, but it was drawing: a Renee Gladman mini-feature with work by Renee Gladman * Earl Jackson, Jr. * Bruna Mori * Alexis Almeida on Renee Gladman & Julie Carr * Lewis Freedman & Vanessa Thill on Renee Gladman & Mirtha Dermisache. as well as work by Isabel Waidner * sissi tax (translated by Joel Scott & Charlotte Theißen) * Susan Hefuna * Mira Mattar * Lital Khaikin * Maryam Madjidi (translated by Ruth Diver) * Omer Wasim & Saira Sheikh * Ilse Aichinger (translated by Christian Hawkey & Uljana Wolf) * Bronka Nowicka (translated by Katarzyna Szuster) * Maude Pilon (translated by Simon Brown) * Mehmet Dere * Syd Staiti * Jena Osman * Germán Sierra * Natani Notah * Julia Bloch on Bernadette Mayer * Robert Glück on Clarice Lispector * Rob Halpern on Bruce Boone & Dennis Cooper *Dylan Byron on/after Bruce Boone * Linda Bakke on Communal Presence: New Narrative Writing Today * Anna Fidler * Corey Zielinski on Bob Glück & Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative 1977-97 * Jackie Kirby on From Our Hearts to Yours: New Narrative as Contemporary Practice * David W. Pritchard on Kevin Killian * Dale Enggass on Simone White * Allison Cardon on Anne Boyer * Robert Balun on Leslie Kaplan * Marco Antonio Huerta on Omar Pimienta * Allison Grimaldi Donahue on Josué Guébo * Sara Florian on Lasana Sekou * Louis Bury on Allison Cobb * Hugo Gibson on Annie Ernaux.

New edition of one of the founding works of Language writing. 

Lyn Hejinian is among the most prominent of contemporary American poets. Her poem My Life has garnered accolades and fans inside and outside academia. First published in 1980, and revised in 1987 and 2002, My Life is now firmly established in the postmodern canon. This Wesleyan edition includes the 45-part prose poem sequence along with a closely related ten-part work titled My Life in the Nineties. An experimental intervention into the autobiographical genre, My Life explores the many ways in which language — — the things people say and the ways they say them — shapes not only their identity, but also the very world around them.

'Femme' describes a constellation of queer, gendered expressions that uproot expectations of what it means to be feminine. Building upon experiences of transformation, belonging and harm, this book is a transfeminist call for collective liberation.

Trans Femme Futures envisions the future through everyday actions that revolutionise our lives. Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift discuss struggles around trans healthcare, the need for collectives over institutions, the importance of mutual care, and transfeminism as abolition.

The authors show how social change can be achieved through transformative practices that allow queer life to thrive in a time of climate, health, political and economic crises.

'A brilliant, useful, and immensely moving book that deals a critical blow to the epistemic austerity of our times' - Jordy Rosenberg

Tendrils threads through grief, joy and solidarity toward futures shaped by collaboration and care. Reaching through ecological crises, these poems seek new ways of living kinship in the more-than-human world.

This anthology gathers international voices that entangle, illuminate and resist: a collective turn to the future with renewal and possibility.

Edited and introduced by fieldnotes collective: Pratyusha, Jessica J. Lee, Alycia Pirmohamed and Nina Mingya Powles.

With contributions by Shasta Hanif Ali, Hala Alyan, Hana Pera Aoake, Polly Atkin, Kara Barlow, Khairani Barokka, Kat Benedict, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Corinna Board, Jody Chan, Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal, Kerri ní Dochartaigh, Carlina Duan, Chloe Elliott, Zoë Fay-Stindt, Sophie Hoyle, Petero Kalulé (petals), Bhanu Kapil, Jayant Kashyap, Maija Makela, Lola Olufemi, Carl Phillips, Nat Raha, Shumin Tan, Dženana Vucic and Alice Willitts.

Fluid and unselfconscious, Ghayath Almadhoun writes love poems in the shape of nightmares: I have brought you a severed hand is a surreal mix of absurd humour, heteroerotic lust and dead seriousness. Caught between two exiles, the one inherited from his Palestinian father and the one he chose and lives, Almadhoun attempts to explain water and tame hope.

This book never misses the defiant beat of an exile’s haunted footing across wars, seas and memory. Almadhoun turns the genocidal logic of colonialism upside down, emptying out the crumbs of humanity and civilisation. —Don Mee Choi

Almadhoun uses every possible means of silence to make the total devastation palpable. —Alfred Schaffer

Many poets attempt to traverse the gulf between the experience of tragedy and the ability to relay its magnitude to anyone else. But few living have done it with such flourish, such sustained passion and formal precision as Ghayath Almadhoun. —Kaveh Akbar

Ghayath Almadhoun (born 1979, Damascus) is a Syrian-Palestinian poet who moved to Sweden in 2008. He has published five collections of poetry in Arabic, the latest being Adrenalin (Almutawassit, 2017) and I have brought you a severed hand (Almutawassit, 2024). In 2017, Adrenalin was translated into English by Catherine Cobham and published by Action Books. In 2023, Almadhoun curated, edited and translated the poetry anthology Kontinentaldrift: Das Arabische Europa (Verlag Das Wunderhorn and Haus für Poesie), which includes thirty-one Arabic poets living in Europe. The English translation of I have brought you a severed hand is published simultaneously by Divided in the UK and Europe and by Action Books in the USA. Almadhoun currently lives between Berlin and Stockholm. His work has been translated into nearly thirty languages.

Catherine Cobham taught Arabic language and literature at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, for many years and was head of the department of Arabic and Persian from 2011 until 2021. She has translated the work of a number of Arab writers, including poetry by Adonis, Mahmoud Darwish, Ghayath Almadhoun, Tammam Hunaidy and Nouri al-Jarrah, and novels and short stories by Yusuf Idris, Naguib Mahfouz, Hanan al-Shaykh, Fuad al-Takarli and Jamal Saeed. She has written articles in academic journals and co-written with Fabio Caiani The Iraqi Novel: Key Writers, Key Texts (Edinburgh University Press, 2013).

Look at Hazards, Look at Losses developed out of a series of conversations, exchanges and visits between kuda.org, Anthony Iles and Marina Vishmidt over 2015-2017 through which different approaches to common problems of cultural production in early-21st century Europe and its peripheries were debated and conceptually probed. Setting out from Theodor W. Adorno’s concept of ‘the aesthetic relations of production’ these discussions proceeded to explore problems bearing upon organisation in small groups in the field of culture, philosophical idealism and materialism, poetry, error and crisis.

The anthology assembled reflects these concerns through engagement with the writing of others who have helped orientate us through these discussions. The book which is the outcome consists of seven original contributions by poets and theorists which attempt to move toward new political interventions in culture and beyond ‘crisis as a way of life’.

Book: 11.7 × 18 cm
Book and Glove: 13.5 × 31.5 cm

Presented in a monster glove

Three broken halves of one god walk a city that wants them dead
Their bodies speak in static hunger and rust
Something follows breathing through their mouths
Read it Bleed from it

In A Psalm for the Third Wind, a film script written from 3 perspectives, Damien Troadec is aiming to address in parallel narrative the struggle of having multiples inner voices and the danger of following their distinct desires. One question is raised without any light at the end of the tunnel, confronting the reader to a conflict : THE COMFORT OF MISERY OR THE PAIN OF CHANGE ?

Le Chauffage (french for “The Heater”) is an artist-run publication based in Brussels. It is conceived as a cross-continental, community oriented platform. Bringing together the work and writing of artists / friends from different cities, Le Chauffage intends to spark discussions and fuel casual forms of critical discourse.