IAN HAMILTON FINLAY

ARTIST’S BOOKS

CYTHERA. 1965. WITH INK DEDICATION TO “JANIE R.” DATED 1965.

Edinburgh: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1965
5.5 x 20.6cm, 28pp. Original wrappers and typographic blue dustjacket. The inner pages have single words or short phrases printed in an italic font. The text in page order is: "air/ in blue/ leaf/ blue bark/and blue leaf/ a leaf/ a barque/a blue leaf/ a barque in leaf-blue/aire" The book title Cythera is from the title of the painting - The Embarkation for Cythera ("L'Embarquement pour Cythère") by Jean-Antoine Watteau. The painting is usually regarded as highly romantic (in a love sense rather than the movement) and the couples represented by Watteau are heading to board a boat to go to the mythical idyll.
When one reads Finlay's text the sense is of romance, beauty and of the joy of being at one with nature. The text also reflects the idea of a journey and, finally, the punning of bark/barque and air/aire brings a musical aspect to the poem which might also be inferred in the painting from the stylings of the putti dancing in the air. One of Finlay's most beautiful books.
This example has a handwritten dedication by Finlay to a "Janie R" in blue ink and is dated 1965.

GLASGOW BEASTS AN A BURD. 1965. FIFTH EDITION. DEDICATED BY PETE MCGINN.

n.p. : The Wild Flounder Press, 1962
11.7 x 17cm, 32pp. Card wrappers with blue on brown typographic design dust jacket. Finlay's third book of poems - as with other early Finlay poetry the language is Scots with touches of Doric. The poems all relate to animals and other creatures ("inseks" and a "fush") and there are papercuts by John Picking and Pete McGinn. This is the fifth edition of this book and the orientation and design of the dust jacket has been changed. There is a hand written ink dedication on the half title "For Paul (Robertson) Pette McGinn / 05". VG+ condition.

5 POEMS. FUTURA 7. 1966.

Stuttgart: Edition Hansjorg Mayer. 1966
Single sheet, 64 x 48cm, folded three times (24 x 16cm folded size), printed one side only. A single number from the famous Futura series dedicated to the work of Finlay. Five concrete poems are reproduced in b/w.

… UND ALLES BLIEB WIE ES WAR: VIER EINAKTER. 1966. WITH INK DEDICATION BY FINLAY.

Wein: Universal-Edition , 1966
14.5 x 20cm, 118pp. Original card covers. First edition of this German translation of a number of short plays by Finlay originally written in the 50s and translated by Estella Schmid. The Estate Hunters and Walking Through Seaweed are two of the works which were later published in a Penguin Anthology "New English Dramatists" in 1970 (see separate listing in this site).
Pages somewhat browned as the paper employed in the printing was cheap. This copy has an inscription in black ink by Finlay to "To Eduard/ with love from Ian/ 15 March 1966."

AUTUMN POEM. 1966. SIGNED & DEDICATED TO MAXWELL ALLAN BY FINLAY IN INK.

N.p.: (Edinburgh): Wild Hawthorne Press, 1966
16.5 x 17cm, 20pp (recto only) plus bound in transparent papers. Original card wrappers with printed dust jacket. A series of photographs of ploughed earth by Audrey Walker, printed black and white, overlaid with translucent pages printed with Finlay's minimal concrete poetry. The text uses the metaphor of "turning over the earth" to illustrate the images of digging but the circular photographs represent the planet and Earth is indeed turning. This example is signed and dedicated on the inside front cover by Finlay in black ink to Maxwell Allan the sculptor. VG+ condition. Murray 3.16. Scarce.

6 SMALL SONGS IN 3’S. 1966.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1966
21 x 9.5cm, 24 pp plus card wrappers and illustrated dustjacket. A series of "constellation" works (as per Gomringer's vanguard poems) where trios of words are placed in a grid and combined to give different word pictures. Each is illustrated by a linocuts by Zeljko Kujundzic. .
This example is signed "love from Ian, 1966" in thick green felt tipped pen on the first blank end page. VG+.

Zeljko Kujundzic

TEA-LEAVES AND FISHES. 1966.

Edinburgh: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1966
10 x 25.5cm, 28pp (recto only) printed on different coloured papers (of different thicknesses) with card covers. Metal slide binding. Twenty eight concrete poems by Finlay. A rather attractive early book. Quite scarce. Murray has this as 3.19.

OCEAN STRIPE SERIES 4. 1966.

Edinburgh: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1966
9.7 x 138cm, 16pp (recto only). Original wrappers with printed mustard dust jacket. Small artist's book with childlike drawings Emil Antonucci, which are mostly visual puns by Finlay but also all are patches of some kind. Finlay has used the metaphor of a patch in many different works and formats - often as a symbol of the poverty or resourcefulness of rural communities. The print here is light blue and black on white. Murray has this as 3.20.
Another in the series of books which Finlay has entitled with the word Stripe in the title.

Emil Antonucci

ARCADY ABC. 1966. WITH TWO HAND TYPED INSERTS/LETTERS.

N.p. (Ceres?): s.p. (FInlay? or Tarasque Press?), 1966
23.2 x 11cm, 2pp plus blue printed wrappers. An unusual artist's book which appears to be hand made and has on the front a concrete poem by Finlay:

Arcady ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

then stapled inside is a much smaller sheet of orange paper (Finlay likes the combination of blue and orange - a colour scheme he uses often in prints and books) on which is a handwritten note in blue ink from Finlay: "Happy Christmas and love to Martin from Ian - Christmas '66"
This small book is in VG condition but two stains (brown marks) to the front of the wrappers and some creasing to the top of the sheet
JOINT TO THE BOOK:
20 x 12.5cm, 1pp hand-typed insert on pink typing paper: "Some questions on the poem, for Christmas Day." listing questions that may be asked of the poem and the writer's intent. VG+.t
JOINT TO THE BOOK:
20 x 12.5cm, 1pp hand-typed insert on green typing paper: "A question on the questions, for Boxing Day." Some browning to the centre of the page near the fold else VG.

This is an early and somewhat limited run artist's book, one of the inner typed sheets are mentioned in the Murray catalogue raisonne as the second "miscellaneous" item (7.2) but clearly Murray did not know of the rest of the publication.
Issued at Xmas, the poem by listing all of the letters of the alphabet and comparing them to Arcady (the mythical utopian country - a place to strive to live) Finlay is suggesting the world of letters, words and symbols is an utopian land for poets.
The additional typed letters may just be fun things to do on Christmas Day and Boxing Day but are really clues to how to 'read' the poem. And in the second letter how to 'read' the questions.
The hand typed and hand-written aspects of this publication may indicate that very few were produced - it is not unique given that Murray had an example of one of the letters but we have never seen another copy. Murray has this as being published by the Tarasque Press and that is possible but the hand- made aspects would suggest it was Finlay himself. Reading the published letters between Bann and Finlay for the months around Xmas 1966 does not find any reference to the book at all so we are for now flummoxed.

STONECHATS. 1967. WITH HANDWRITTEN DEDICATION FROM FINLAY.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1967
12.8 x 10.5cm, 32pp. Card covers with printed dust jacket. An artist's book the title of which refers to a wild bird - interestingly not found in Scotland - which had a loud piercing song which is often claimed to be like two stones being hit off each other. The concrete and experimental poems inside take different forms but one new format found here are two phrases one above the other which together give a poetic description.

THE BOAT'S BLUE PRINT
water

On consideration of the couplet one can see that the displacement of water by a boat might be seen in relativistic terms that the water is forming the shape of the boat above. Poetic if not good physics.

This copy has a handwritten dedication by Finlay in blue ink on the inside front cover (to an unnamed friend the sculptor Maxwell Allan from whom's archive this book was found) "Love from Ian, Easter '68." VG+.

OCEAN STRIPE 5. 1967.

Nottingham: Tarasque Press, n.d. (1967)
20.2 x 16.6cm, 32pp. Original card wrappers and a pictorial dust jacket with an image of a seascape. This artist's book (one of the few by Finlay not published by the Wild Hawthorn Press) places quotations taken from essays on phonic poetry by Ernst Jandl, Paul de Vree, and Kurt Schwitters alongside photographic images of boats (taken from the trade publication Fishing News). Importantly each boat's registration letters can be seen. As a "postscript: there is a sound poem written by Schwitters which is made up of letters very similar in combination to those of the fishing boat registrations which is the point of Finlay's book.
"The basic material is not the word but the letter." is one of the quotes chosen by Finlay to reproduce,.

Ernst Jandl, Kurt Schwitters, Paul de Vree

CANAL GAME. 1967.

London: Fulcrum Press, 1967
23 x 10cm, internally there are 2 full sheets and three sets of 6pp cards all bound one set above the other in plastic spiral binding. This artist's book has taken its design from children's books where different combinations of the inner pages can be chosen. The words in combination display a scene from a boat on canal alongside landmarks - which is a clever recreation of earlier canal stripe books where the changes in scene are over pages rather than by the reader's actions. One of 1,000 copies although 50 copies were signed and numbered.
This example is in VG+ condition.