Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
8.8 x 12cm, 1pp, black on blue artist's card. The one word poem is:
East Coast Gaff Sloop
scratchbuilt
and a description of the painter Graham Rich who "often applies his paint with a matchstick. Or he scrapes away with a sharp point, a paintt already present on the found object." from Thomas A. Clark and then:
"Scratchbuilt: a model completed from other than a commercial kit". VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
10.5 x 18.9cm, 4pp card printed black on white with a drawing of Gary Hincks of broken and rotting boat. A text inside of the card reads:
Decommisioned Fishing Boats
new Baedeker Blitz
Finlay notes that under EU regulations a fisherman can receive financial compensaiton for decommissioning - destroying - his boat and compares this to the "Baedeker Blitz" where the Luftwaffe mounted revenge raids on English Cathedral towns. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
14.8 x 6cm, 1pp, black on blue artist's card. There are two translations from the Greek:
planks which.
were once
pines of Ida
from Aeneid Book X
and
(jacinta, Antusa)
hunters
of deep sea prey
From Homer's Epigrams XVII
Fishing boats and fishermen. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
9.6 x 14cm, 1pp, black on white artist's card.
The gods went home, and everything beautiful,/everything lofty they took with them, all colours, all life's tones.
A quotation from Schiller written on 13 July 1998. Published in Autumn this card shows regret for the lack of colour as the fall approaches (if we ignore the colours of leaves). VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
10.5 x 7cm, 4pp, black on brown artist's card with a poem from Finlay which is based on a Simon Cutts variation on an original by Samuel Palmer the landscape painter and poet:
loosing
the sheets
open-
ing the
hold
fold-
ing the
last
sail
As discussed elsewhere in these cataloguings, the folding of the sail is related both to maintenance of the boats but also the burial of sailors. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
8.9 x 10.2cm, 4pp, black on grey artist's card with text from Finlay about a broken plastic model of a Spitfire that has been put away in a cupboard. Finlay muses that as long as the model is not in the bin-bag but in the cupboard then "there is Hope".
Finlay then references Luke 9:62: "Jesus replied,'No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.'" which encourages the reader to look ahead, be optimistic and not look back to past issues.
A homely which would not be out of place on the daily Radio 4 (UK) morning news section called " Thought for the Day" where religious and humanist ideas are broadcast. Hence the car title. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
12.4 x 8.9cm, 4pp, black on white artist's card with two drawings by Stephen Duncalf of firstly an hat and gloves and cane (a cliche from black and white movies of a "man about town") and then a cockpit of a warplane with two wheels lying against the open glass - as if it has crashed which is labelled "Plane about town".
Possibly one of the least interesting of cards published by the Press. With original unprinted envelope. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
9.5 x 10cm, 4pp, black on white artist's card with a drawing by Kathleen Lindsley of a stone in a ploughed field next to a wall. Inside there is a poem:
A STONE
A stone turned up by the plough
was carried from the shadow to
lie at the field's edge
where it was found and taken as
ballast to the black hold of a boat.
The fate of the stone to go from blackness to blackness is glum to say the least. Nature is cruel even to the inanimate. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
3.2 x 5.1cm, 8pp, single sheet, concertina folded card printed black on light brown. There are three panels which read:
lamp-stook
jug-stook
table-stubble
A stook is a group of sheaves of grain stood on end in a field. The three visual poems seen at twilight (reflecting colour of the paper stock employed here) are the mistaken images from a distance of a lamp and a jug and when the light gets bad, a simple irritation on the flat earth. Evening, the title of the card, can mean two things - the time of day and the evening out of an image towards less detail and more flatness.
VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
12.7 x 4cm, 4pp card (top hinged) printed black on bright yellow with a poem:
SHORT POEM ON SANDPAPERING
evenly
eventually
The spacing in the typography indicates time passing - and the colour presumably the common beige of the sandpaper. The similarity of the two words seems to suggest one evolves out of the other - which reflects how sandpapering will initially make something even but time is needed for it to work well. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
9 x 14cm, 2pp card printed black on bright yellow is the text:
Inside every toilet roll a ship's funnel is waiting to be let out
which indicates Finlay's love of modelling. An earlier card shows three such funnels made to look like funnels in a photograph.. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
9.2 x 10.5cm, 4pp card with a drawing of a plane with two cockpits that share wings - probably a North American F-82 Twin Mustang - and the text FINIS AMORIS UT DUO UNUM FIANT which translates into Love ends as two are made one. The legend originally was found in the frontispiece of The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (1914) by Pavel Florensky, a Russian thologian, where two cupids seem conjoined in an etching of a statue. VG+.
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