Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
11 x 14.2cm, 1pp card. A drawing of a lemon by Michael Harvey using architectural methods - as if on a blue print giving plans and body plans. Finlay often uses fruit to represent boats and the various parts of the fruit here are labelled as "aft" or fore". VG+.
Little Sparta: WIld Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1994?)
5.5 x 11.5cm, 4pp artist's card with a drawing by Gary Hinks on the front of Loch Eck - the site of the sinking of the model Aeronaut Schwerer Kreuzer Prinz Eugen. With the model boat having sunk (on 23.6.94) the water shows no sign of the ship. The poem inside the card reads:
not waving
but drowning
not
shrinking
but sinking
a partial reworking of the famous Stevie mith. VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
10.5 x 14.2cm, 2pp card designed by Michael Harvey under Finlay's instruction. A brick wall has the words
Holland
WINDMILLS
WATERWAYS
BICYCLES
BRICKS
The cliches of Holland are conjoined with Dutch brick which is (clear from its name) a regional brick which was used to create a different architectural look (and also for ballast in British boats), Dutch bond is also a style of laying bricks in which " the vertical joints of the stretchers in any course are in line with the centres of the first stretchers above and below." as here. VG+.
N.p. (Pittenweem): Cairn Gallery, 1994
14.8 x 10.5cm, 4pp (single sheet folded twice). An artist's card with a prose poem by Finlay:
A pond in the shape of a sailor's collar.
In the middle of the pond
floats a model warship, a
key protruding from one
of its funnels.
The handle of the key suggests a small summer cloud.
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A visual poem created out of words - linking the toy boat to the elements around it.
Scarce. VG+ condition.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
9.9 x 8.6cm, 4pp card with two concrete poems on the inner folds on the left is an English translation of Guillaume Apollinaire's calligramme Miroir (Imagine angels not as reflections are in this mirror I am enclosed alive and real as you) the words are broken up and in a circle to indicate a mirror and Apollonaire's name is in the middle.
On the right a version of the same work is found but with important changes (Imagine mariners and not as reflections are in this mirror I am enclosed afloat and real as you). The circle in the second work becomes an ocean with the change to mariners instead of angels and the name afloat in the centre is that of the poet/conceptual/land artist Ian Stephen, a friend of Finlay's. VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
6.4 x 7.7cm, 4pp (single folded sheet) with a painting by Gary Hincks of a sky full of white trails on the front. Inside Finlay has a two line poem
Season of mists and milling Messerschmitts,
Close bosom-friend of the repeating gun.
The smoke trails are not solid but dotted lines - much as a trail of bullets can be seen in comic depictions of machine gun fire. VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
10.5 x 5.7cm, 4pp card with a series of purple numbers made up of the randomly changing sequence of 1 - 6 (apart from the top number which is made up of seven numbers 1 - 7). A green line moves erratically down through the numbers separating them into two parts. The top three numbers have a thin line between them and the ones below.
The latin name for the foxglove flower is Digitalis purpurea - which might be read as purple digits hence this bastardisation of the latin creates a visual poem aided by the two colours. VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
6 X 6cm, 4pp outer card with a 5pp concertina folded sheet tipped on that opens up to 5 x 23.5cm list of all the monarchs of France from Louis Premier to the deposed and beheaded Louise Seize and finally the last name is Louise David the revolutionary painter who documented in paint the events from before 1789 to Napoleon and to the restoration of the Bourbons hence David is the culmination of the succession and the most noble of the men listed. VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
12.1 x 8.3cm, 2pp card with a poem by Finlay after Eugen Gromringer's "Cars and Cars" although Finlay moves the context to that of fishermen and their boats. Finlay also notes Theocritus, Idylls XXI - The Fishermen - where two fishermen discuss a dream in which one sees a golden fish and after discussing the meaning of the dream, they come to the realisation that their wealth will come from their catches. Finlay repeats (after the original) in different combinations the images of creels, men, net-ropes, cobles - each creating a subtly different image ending with "men and men". VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1994
8 x 6.8cm, 4pp card with a digital photographic montage of the proposed temple along with a poem by Finlay internally:
Near
the donkey's fence
the rowing boat
leaves
for the Claude.
Claude is perhaps Claude Lorrain painter of idealised landscapes often looking out to see with a sunset causing a sense of wanderlust but the word is similar to the Clyde; the Scottish river that begins at the Falls of the Clyde which is not so far from Dunsyre and Little Sparta. The rowing boat also is perhaps being compared to an upturned leaf in its leaving.
Finlay also produced an artist's book as a proposal for this monument which again compares one thing - the vengeful god Apollo with Saint-Just another famously judgemental figure. VG+.
