Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
7.9 x 6.5cm, 4pp. The Christmas song "O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum" is echoed in a translation that changes the Christmas tree to a Hazelgrove.
O Hazelgrove, O Hazelgrove,
How beautiful is thy gear.
Hazelgrove being the name of a trawler - BCK 35 - out of Fleetwood. The gear being its equipment. (The number is now allocated to a new ship). VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
11.7 x 15.9cm, 1pp. Printed blue and orange on white card - the drawing of the boat is after William Gilles (as I write this I am only 100 m from Gilles former house) by Gary Hincks. Finlay often compares boats with lemons. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
10.3 x 14.8cm, 1pp . Printed brown on light brown card - the HASTING(S) LUGGER has both the meaning of a boat and also a mild dig at Finlay's friend, the poet, Harry Gilonis (from Hastings). The boats were very large and sluggish with crews of ten and usually 3 masts. Above the main test is "Storm Brewing. Tea Brewing" - another comparison between boat and man. The print colour also being that of strong teas. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
4.5 x 14cm, 4pp . The card has a definition work -
PLANK, n. a segment of the skin or rind of a small boat, especially a small fishing boat. See Lemon.
placed in a brown shape that resembles a boat. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
Two cards in same format although one is printed blue on white, the other brown on white - each 6.7 x 10cm, 4pp (assymetric fold) . The cards both have PL on the front but when opened the blue card reads PL/OVER and the brown card reads PL/OUGH. Both are things (bird and farming equipment) that one would find in spring. The blue and brown, of course, reflecting the sky and dirt (blue and brown being often used by Finlay in part for the sky/earth dichotomy but also an oblique reference to Wittgenstein). VG+ in like envelope.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
8 x 6.8cm, 4pp card with a digital photographic montage of the proposed temple along with a poem by Finlay internally:
Near
the donkey's fence
the rowing boat
leaves
for the Claude.
Claude is perhaps Claude Lorrain painter of idealised landscapes often looking out to see with a sunset causing a sense of wanderlust but the word is similar to the Clyde; the Scottish river that begins at the Falls of the Clyde which is not so far from Dunsyre and Little Sparta. The rowing boat also is perhaps being compared to an upturned leaf in its leaving.
Finlay also produced an artist's book as a proposal for this monument which again compares one thing - the vengeful god Apollo with Saint-Just another famously judgemental figure. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
12.1 x 8.3cm, 2pp card with a poem by Finlay after Eugen Gromringer's "Cars and Cars" although Finlay moves the context to that of fishermen and their boats. Finlay also notes Theocritus, Idylls XXI - The Fishermen - where two fishermen discuss a dream in which one sees a golden fish and after discussing the meaning of the dream, they come to the realisation that their wealth will come from their catches. Finlay repeats (after the original) in different combinations the images of creels, men, net-ropes, cobles - each creating a subtly different image ending with "men and men". VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
15.3 x 14.0cm, 2pp artist's postcard with a b/w reproduced photograph by Robin Gillanders of a faux gravestone for Loraine Niedecker. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
6 X 6cm, 4pp outer card with a 5pp concertina folded sheet tipped on that opens up to 5 x 23.5cm list of all the monarchs of France from Louis Premier to the deposed and beheaded Louise Seize and finally the last name is Louise David the revolutionary painter who documented in paint the events from before 1789 to Napoleon and to the restoration of the Bourbons hence David is the culmination of the succession and the most noble of the men listed. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
10.5 x 5.7cm, 4pp card with a series of purple numbers made up of the randomly changing sequence of 1 - 6 (apart from the top number which is made up of seven numbers 1 - 7). A green line moves erratically down through the numbers separating them into two parts. The top three numbers have a thin line between them and the ones below.
The latin name for the foxglove flower is Digitalis purpurea - which might be read as purple digits hence this bastardisation of the latin creates a visual poem aided by the two colours. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
6.4 x 7.7cm, 4pp (single folded sheet) with a painting by Gary Hincks of a sky full of white trails on the front. Inside Finlay has a two line poem
Season of mists and milling Messerschmitts,
Close bosom-friend of the repeating gun.
The smoke trails are not solid but dotted lines - much as a trail of bullets can be seen in comic depictions of machine gun fire. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
9.9 x 8.6cm, 4pp card with two concrete poems on the inner folds on the left is an English translation of Guillaume Apollinaire's calligramme Miroir (Imagine angels not as reflections are in this mirror I am enclosed alive and real as you) the words are broken up and in a circle to indicate a mirror and Apollonaire's name is in the middle.
On the right a version of the same work is found but with important changes (Imagine mariners and not as reflections are in this mirror I am enclosed afloat and real as you). The circle in the second work becomes an ocean with the change to mariners instead of angels and the name afloat in the centre is that of the poet/conceptual/land artist Ian Stephen, a friend of Finlay's. VG+.
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