16 Jul

Posted at 22:14h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
9.5 x 15cm, 1pp, black on bright red artist's card with an appropriated drawing of a Japanese suicide aircraft, and a text:

Many, many things
They bring to mind -
Cherry blossoms

A translation of a poem from the Japanese by Donald Keene which here Finlay associates with the Japanese MXY7 Ohka (Cherry Blossom) rocket-propelled suicide aircraft used near the end of the war in the Pacific. In Japan cherry blossoms are an enduring metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life - which of course is more true of kamikaze pilots than most. VG+.

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10 Jul

Posted at 20:00h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999 16.2 x 12cm, 20pp plus card covers and dust jacket. Printed on thick laid cream paper. String bound. Artist's book with various texts by Finlay displayed over a drawing of a crate by Gary Hinks.

PLEDGE (FOR PIA)
YOUR NEEDLE AND THREAD
IN THE SAIL OF MY ZULU.

VG+. ...

09 Jul

Posted at 20:33h in Letters + Documents

Little Sparta: s.p. Finlay, n.d. (c. 1990s)
21 x 30cm, 11 pages all original xerox printed one side only and stapled three times on left to create a document. The letter (annotated later with short remarks by Finlay) was sent originally in 1962/1963 to Cid Corman who edited Origin (one of the first publications to put Finlay in print) where he praises the magazine, talks about how he writes and feels isolated in doing that and unsure of what he is doing is good and discusses his own mental health (he complains about anxiety). Attached are a number of poems in traditional form from The Dancers Inherit The Party. AN insightful document indeed.
This was sent to Janet Boulton in July 1999.
JOINT:
KNOWING THE LAND WHERE NEON BLOOMS: IAN HAMILTON FINLAY'S INSTALLATION IN ERFURT. n.p.: s.p., 1999 30 x 21cm, 3pp (recto only) stapled. An essay by Harry Gilonis about Finlay's installation of neon works. JOINT:
XEROX COPY OF ARTICLE IN JOURNAL OF GARDEN HISTORY BY STEPHEN BANN. 1981. 30 x 21cm, 13pp (recto only) stapled. An essay by Bann about Little Sparta with lots of phtographs. JOINT:
31 x 21.5cm, original mailing envelope with handwritten notes of the contents by Finlay. Torn badly when opened at top.

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09 Jul

Posted at 19:48h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1999) 10 1 x 14cm, 1pp. Artist's postcard black on blue with a text taken from Mixed fragments by Novalis in which the post sees similarities between metaphysical romance and the adoption of a pen name. VG+. . ...

09 Jul

Posted at 17:18h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1999) 8.2 x 9.5 cm, 2pp artist's card black on blue with a text that Finlay has used on several occasions on the front: FOR "HARVESTER" READ "GLEANER" on the reverse the two boat numbers PD98 and CN 444 are reproduced along with the title EU Erratum. The original boat's name was changed from Harvester to Gleaner when Britain joined the European Union. VG+. ...

08 Jul

Posted at 22:09h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
6.5 x 10cm, 4pp, black on white artist's card on opening one sees a drawing by Jennie Spiers of an upturned boat in a forest and opposite there is a Finlay haiku;

The upturned boat's
snowdrift
soldiers on.

The shape of the boat the wrong way up clearly reminds Finlay of how snow clumps in heaps. And what is more, Finlay knows how to write a classical format of Haiku with the middle word "cutting" the meaning of the scene. VG+.

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08 Jul

Posted at 09:19h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
8 x 9cm, 4pp, black on white card with a linocut by Jo Hincks of sheep in a glade. Inside is a poem by Finlay:

Sheep Folded, Shadows Unfolded

Shoreham

The sheep are home, and the dark is coming - the shadows are "unfolded". Shoreham is a city that famously has plastic sheep as a public artwork. VG+.

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02 Jul

Posted at 21:58h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
14.4 x 10cm, 2pp, black on white artist's card. The drawing by Gary Hincks is of a memorial "grave" stone for Henry Vaughan which can be found in the Little Sparta garden. There is a Pilcrow (¶) at the top of the marker which Finlay explains the poet used in place of a title when certain poems were to be regarded as elegies. Clearly this visual poem is also an elegy for Vaughan.VG+.

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29 Jun

Posted at 21:52h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
6.3 x 12.1cm, 4pp, black on rippled blue/white artist's card. The one line poem inside reads:

Morning: the mountains lifting off the mist

A more common saying would be that the mist is lifting off the mountains but by this reversal Finlay is suggesting the early morning scene of misty mountains gives an illusion of the hills being pulled above the clouds. VG+.

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20 Jun

Posted at 21:46h in Artist's Postcards

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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15 Jun

Posted at 13:32h in Artist's Postcards

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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10 Jun

Posted at 21:42h in Artist's Postcards

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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