29 Jul

Posted at 10:22h in Page Works & Contributions

N.p.: n.p., n.d. (1964?) Two stapled sheets - one 20.5 x 20.5cm, the other 25 x 20.5cm both black on yellow. An untitled broadside. The first has a work by dsh - Sonic Water - and the other works by ee cummings, Edwin Morgan, dsh, Ernst Jandl, Eugen Gomringer and Summer Vocabulary lesson by Finlay. The latter is a very early experimental poem:

1. Is the tea infished?
2. It is infished.
3. Suffishiently?
4. Suffishiently.
___________________
1. is it pouring? 2. It is pouring.
3. the rain is pouring.
4. May I pour?

The poem in two parts firstly discusses the tea pot and whether it was full but with a punny reference to fish, the second compares the pouring of the tea to rain.

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10 Apr

Posted at 18:43h in Page Works & Contributions

Paris: Approchest, n.d. (1963)
20.5 x 13cm, 130pp plus original wrappers. A single number of a poetry journal edited by Julian Blaine and Jean-Francois Bory. The editors were aware of the growing changes in experimental poetry and here one finds Pierre Garnier, Jeff Nuttall, John Furnival, de Campos, de Vree, Blaine and Bory alongside Finlay's BROKEN HEART which can be found in Rapel.
The spine and wrappers here are attached but with tears - a bit fragile but a rare early Finlay international contribution and a sign of his growing reputation amongst his peers. Else VG.

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10 Jul

Posted at 20:41h in Page Works & Contributions

Kyoto: Cid Corman, 1962
21 x 15cm, 64pp plus typographic wrappers. This single number from the second series of Cid Corman's important little magazine, features 21 pages of poems by Finlay with additional material from Robert Creeley, Thomas McNicholas, Lorine Niedecker, Louise Zukofsky, Michael McClure, and others. Finlay's letter to Corman is reproduced as a de facto foreword. twenty poems mostly traditional but one "The Pond of OO Farm (Rousay)" could be regarded as one of the artist's very earliest concrete poems and as a result makes this an important book. Most have annotations in print by Finlay.
This is a very scarce publication - only 300 copies were published. Slight sunning along spine else VG+.

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18 Jun

Posted at 09:34h in Page Works & Contributions

42 x 30cm, 1pp b/w xerox copy of the original short story found in the Glasgow Herald in 1958. This was one of Finlay's first published works (along with others in the same newspaper). At this time the Glasgow Herald was a regional newspaper and carried prose and poetry in its pages. Finlay's short story is of meeting a young boy near the sea edge and asking him to solve a riddle. The boy cannot despite several clues - which are all metaphors - and gives up. At the end the boy is excited to see a fishing boat come in and without the answer being given the riddle is solved for us. Excellent and with many themes of later work to come included. It is near impossible to find a copy of this specific newspaper now because even the large suppliers of past issues did not cover regional papers.

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17 Dec

Posted at 10:01h in Page Works & Contributions

30 x 42cm, 1pp b/w xerox copy of the original short story found in the Glasgow Herald in 1955. This was one of Finlay's first published works (along with others in the same newspaper). At this time the Glasgow Herald was a regional newspaper and carried prose and poetry in its pages. Finlay's short story is set in a bakers where the serving girl and a young man discuss the loss of Christmas innocence as adults (19 and 22!) and Finlay compares them to an "old man and woman smiling at a remote memory across the hearth".
It is near impossible to find a copy of this specific newspaper now because even the large suppliers of past issues did not cover regional papers.

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18 Oct

Posted at 10:25h in Page Works & Contributions

42 x 30cm, 1pp b/w xerox copy of the original short story found in the Glasgow Herald in 1955. This was one of Finlay's first published works (along with others in the same newspaper). At this time the Glasgow Herald was a regional newspaper and carried prose and poetry in its pages. Finlay's short story is of a manual road worker telling his subordinate to go and get grapes for him from the hut half a mile away. After several trips they go back together and the navvy shows the younger man that he wanted 'digging' grapes not 'eating' grapes, the difference being severe. The pub enjoys the story but the description of the different workers in the tavern is the real point of this story.
It is interesting that Finlay's story turns on the difference that the pronouns "digging: vs "eating" make to the noun grapes. Many of Finlay's later poetic works use that device to create subtle and not-subtle changes to meaning and the poetic images conjured up.
It is near impossible to find a copy of this specific newspaper now because even the large suppliers of past issues did not cover regional papers.

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15 Oct

Posted at 10:09h in Page Works & Contributions

30 x 42cm, 1pp b/w xerox copy of the original short story found in the Glasgow Herald in 1955. This was one of Finlay's first published works (along with others in the same newspaper). At this time the Glasgow Herald was a regional newspaper and carried prose and poetry in its pages. Finlay's short story is quite long and concerns a near accident amongst a group of potato pickers in a field which really is a study in class attitudes and relationships.
It is near impossible to find a copy of this specific newspaper now because even the large suppliers of past issues did not cover regional papers.

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03 Sep

Posted at 10:18h in Page Works & Contributions

30 x 42cm, 1pp b/w xerox copy of the original short story found in the Glasgow Herald in 1955. This was one of Finlay's first published works (along with others in the same newspaper). At this time the Glasgow Herald was a regional newspaper and carried prose and poetry in its pages. Finlay's short story is told from the perspective of a young child from a middle class family who has a maid. The maid is first courted by a young man (who the child is slightly jealous of) and then the engagement called off with the maid left upset but the child is happy he can get her to draw faces for him again at night. Finlay did come from such a background in the Bahamas but his father lost the family money in a poor investment and Finlay returned to Scotland.
It is near impossible to find a copy of this specific newspaper now because even the large suppliers of past issues did not cover regional papers.

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28 May

Posted at 09:45h in Page Works & Contributions

42 x 30cm, 1pp b/w xerox copy of the original short story found in the Glasgow Herald in 1958. This was one of Finlay's first published works (along with others in the same newspaper). At this time the Glasgow Herald was a regional newspaper and carried prose and poetry in its pages. Finlay's short story tells the tale of a middle class doctor visiting an older woman in her house after she has had a heart issue. The doctor is surprised by things he sees (a baby pig being nursed in a drawer is one) and how clean everything is. He warns the wife not to get up on any account and sits the shepherd down to tell him the same of his wife before leaving. The final scene is the shepherd calling on his wife to get up and make dinner.
Finlay was a shepherd for a while in Orkney.
It is near impossible to find a copy of this specific newspaper now because even the large suppliers of past issues did not cover regional papers.

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