Ian Hamilton Finlay

This volume surveys the life and work of the Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, who is best known for his extraordinary garden, Little Sparta, a unique “poem of place” in which poetry, sculpture, and horticulture intersect. This book directs sustained attention to Finlay the verbal artist, revealing the full breadth and richness of his poetics. It illuminates the evolution from his early years of composing plays, stories, and lyrical poems to his discovery of Concrete poetry and his emergence as a key figure in the international avant-garde of the 1960s.

This new companion to Little Sparta tells the story of Ian Hamilton Finlay's extraordinary creation, exploring the underlying themes, and introducing and explaining the significance of the main elements and artworks in each part of the garden.

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History & Criticism. Art. THE PRESENT ORDER is an exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show Ian Hamilton Finlay : A Selection of Printed Works held at the Marfa Book Co. Gallery in the Fall of 2010, organized by the book's editors, Caitlin Murray and Tim Johnson. The volume includes texts on the Scottish artist and poet by Michael Charlesworth, Ann Moeglin Delcroix, Alec Finlay, Kenneth Goldsmith, Marjorie Perloff, Stephen Scobie, and Molly Schwartzburg, with full color images, footnotes, and biographical notes on the contributing authors.

Ian Hamilton Finlay's early literary work has been overshadowed by his later achievements in the visual arts, particularly the garden at Little Sparta. This anthology is therefore a welcome volume, to which Ken Cockburn provides an introduction. The mordant wit of a story like "The Money" about an artist's financial situation, still has contemporary relevance; and the poems - particularly the Orkney lyrics and the "Glasgow Beasts" - shimmer with elegy, bright humour and intelligence.

'A Walled Garden' reproduces the complete set of watercolours that Ian Gardner made in collaboration with Ian Hamilton Finlay for the unpublished book, 'A Walled Garden: A History of the Spandau Garden in the Time of the Architect Albert Speer'. Finlay conceived the project after corresponding with the former Third Reich architect in the late 1970s, shortly after the publication of Clara and Richard Winston's English translation of, 'Spandau: The Secret Diaries' (1976), Speer's clandestine record of his twenty-year imprisonment in west Berlin's Spandau prison from 1946 to 1966.

"Though Ian Hamilton Finlay's (1925 2006) work Little Sparta is, according to Sir Roy Strong, 'the most important garden made in Britain since 1945', his influence - and work - is found worldwide. Nature Over Again reveals the story behind the majority of Finlay's renowned garden installations, and is the first study to examine his garden designs and 'interventions' in a consequential way." "An accomplished Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener, Finlay infused his garden designs with a distinct aesthetic philosophy and poetic sensibility. John Dixon Hunt situates his analysis of Finlay's gardens in the context of that broader philosophy and poetic work, drawing on Finlay's books, prints and other written reflections about the art and practice of garden design. From the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart to the Serpentine Gallery in London to the University of California at San Diego campus, the book documents how Finlay built an oeuvre of international renown, and ultimately argues that Finlay's innovations are best understood in the context of the long tradition of European gardens." "Copiously illustrated, Nature Over Again brings the work of this distinguished Modernist to vivid life, making it an essential read for horticulturists, landscape designers and historians alike."--BOOK JACKET.

This volume surveys the life and work of the Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, who is best known for his extraordinary garden, Little Sparta, a unique "poem of place" in which poetry, sculpture, and horticulture intersect. This book directs sustained attention to Finlay the verbal artist, revealing the full breadth and richness of his poetics. It illuminates the evolution from his early years of composing plays, stories, and lyrical poems to his discovery of Concrete poetry and his emergence as a key figure in the international avant-garde of the 1960s.