Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1998
13.2 x 9.5cm, qpp card printed black on light blue. A quote from Goethe "Kennst du das Land, is in part translated by Finlay but with alterations (as in his Echoes series) - the land becomes the sea, the lemon trees become ships, flowers become orange net-floats and so on."...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
10.3 x 10.3cm, 12pp plus typographic card covers. A b/w photograph by Robin Gillanders of wild flowers in the Picpus Cemetary where many of the guillotined dead during the last months of the Terror were buried in mass graves and a text by Finlay:
THREE WILD FLOWERS
Julie Boissard
Adelaide Lienard
Agathe Greaude
These are names of three of the women who were murdered during the Terror and buried in the cemetery. Finlay's suggestion that they be seen as wild flowers re-emerging from the ground is a beautiful memorial. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
13.5 x 9cm, 60pp plus black unprinted boards with red ribbon. A list of all the people murdered during the Terror and buried in the Picpus Cemetery in Paris. The cemetery was only five minutes from the Place de la Nation where the guillotine was set up so was used for the creation of mass graves where where the decapitated bodies were thrown in together without regard for social class.
Finlay has listed here the names of all those killed during 7 - 9 Messidor (the tenth month in the French Republican calendar) in the second year of the Terror (a period which is known as The Grand Terror as the numbers of those condemned rose very greatly before the downfall of Robespierre). These dates in the common calendar are Thursday
25 June 1795 to Saturday 27 June 1795.
By our count this consisted of 116 people of differing station and most noticeable is the number of young lives under 30. Of course the popular view of the Terror is that it was the nobility that were guillotined but that is not true - the majority were working and middle class people accused of anti-revolutionary views and actions.
The red ribbon is a nod to the line of red blood on a guillotined body (obviously it was not a line) and the use of such ribbons tied around a wrist as a memorial to those killed. The black unprinted board an obvious allusion to death.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
252 x 14.8cm, 28pp plus card covers and typographic dust jacket. A proposal in book form for the cladding and internal walls and glass of a German bank. The external works are all "definitions" such as:
AFFLUENCE n.
A SHORTAGE OF SACKCLOTH & ASHES.
which is ironic for a bank.
Internally wall paintings of "Evening will come they will sew the blue sail" and also "Wave/Rock" are found. The glass entrance doors have Star/Steer etched upon them.Text in English and German and all works photographed in b/w. The central seven images of the outer claddings open out as an accordion fold-out. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1995)
9.9 x 11.2cm, 4pp artist's card with a drawing of a needle sewing on the front by Gary Hincks, and internally a poem by Finlay:
EMBLEM
Your needle and thread
in the sail of my Zulu.
Which is dedicated to Pia Simig.
On one hand the basic act of repairing sails is described but the practical help of someone in life (Pia was Finlay's lover and assistant) is a comparison. VG+. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
14.5 x 10.5cm, 4pp. A drawing of the birds by Gary Hincks on the front of the folding card is matched by a poem internally:
The Stones of the Field are the Birds of the Air
peewits
Peewits or northern lapwings are ground breeders which lay their eggs in nests which they angrily defend. Hence the stones of the field hatch and fly. VG+.
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N.p. (Little Sparta): s.p. (Wild Hawthorn Press), n.d. (1995?) 16.5 x 15 x 24cm, glazed ceramic teapot with a text "TEAPOTS ARE THE NAVALS OF HAPPY HOUSEHOLDS". A limited edition object multiple - Finlay produced at least two teapots with text of which this is one. Slight internal damage to the pot but not visible from outside when the lid is on. Limited edition - the actual number produced was not many....
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
16 x 11cm, 4pp orange outer folder with printed title. Internally a 16 x 11cm, 4pp sheet with two concrete poems both entitled THE INSCRIPTIONS but the first being for Carl Rakosi and the second for Harry Gilonis.
The former is an objectivist poet, the latter a friend of Finlay's and also a poet. The first form of the poem is duplicated in both but in the second Finlay has crossed out the original words, kept the physical structure but the classical names replaced by names of meaning to Gilonis. The echo here being the similarities in the two poems.
This is one of a series of works which the Wild Hawthorn Press denoted as "Poems in folders". VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1995)
8 x 7.7cm, 8pp plus card covers and printed typographic dustjacket. Artist's book with two poems by Finlay.
The texts read:
TWO BOATS
two half-moons
and
TWO BOATS
two snowdrifts
Two visual poems. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1995)
11 x 11cm, 4pp artist's card with a b/w reproduction of a painting by Philip Wilson Steer (who often painted his subjects looking out of a window) and inside the text:
Philip Wilson Steer Paints the Waves at Walberswick.
"window"
Finlay also notes on the inside left page:
"window" - tinfoil strips scattered from an aircraft to confuse enemy radar
making a poetic correspondence between the flecks of rain seen in the painting with the war decoy. VG+. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
14.5 x 10.5cm, 1pp. printed black on red card. Two quotations - one from a letter by a Untersturmfuhrer of the Hitler Youth Division before the Battle of the Bulge and the other from Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. Both quotations discuss the glory of death in battle. Finlay by this correspondence suggests that the views of both good and evil are often the same and "political correctness" (which sound very like "Political Corrections" tends not to allow one to consider the views of the defeated in anything other than negative terms. A final note says "The works of J. M. Barrie ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995 11 x 10.7cm, 12pp plus card covers. Artist's book with a b/w photograph of the grave of Andre de Chenier from the Picpus cemetary (by Robin Gillanders) and a concrete poem by Finlay in the shape of a guillotine blade (the text reads Andre Chenier Des Illes Grecques HORIZON d'acier quie separa noting the fact that the poet was killed by the revolution by the blade.) VG+. ...