Alec Finlay

Ross Birrell

This anthology investigates all aspects of counter culture in Scotland, tracing a timeline of seismic events, ideas and art-actions that were retranslated by each successive generation. It surveys the literary avant-garde of the 1960s, via Ian Hamilton Findlay, Edwin Morgan, Alexander Trocchi, and Tom McGrath; the adventurous art scene that gravitated to the Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh the 1970s; the wilderness of Thatcherism and the post-Referendum dark age; and up to the present, through Beltane, post-punk and dance nation, the voice of young Scotland.

An Archaeology of Scottish Counter-culture (1960-2000)

Justified Sinners

Ken Cockburn

the road north is a word-map of Scotland, composed by Alec Finlay & Ken Cockburn as they travel through their homeland, guided by the Japanese poet Basho, whose Osu-no-Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Deep North) is one of the masterpieces of travel literature. Ken and Alec left Edo (Edinburgh) on May 16, 2010 - the very same date that Basho and his companion Sora departed in 1689 - and on their return, on May 16, 2011, they published 53 collaborative audio & visual poems describing the landscapes they had seen and the people they had met.

The Road North

Ian Hamilton Finlay

"The Scottish concrete poet, visual artist, short story writer, aphorist, editor, and 'avant-gardener' Ian Hamilton Finlay is one of the great polymaths of our time. His writings alone would put him in the pantheon of twentieth century poets. Finlay's son Alec, himself a poet, has now given us a selection of his father's writings, beautifully edited and annotated, lavishly illustrated, and with a superb new introduction to the work. I consider this book, long overdue, to be a milestone in publishing. --Marjorie Perloff, author of "The Futurist Moment and Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by other means in the 21st Century" "Ian Hamilton Finlay was an entirely original, and continuously challenging, voice in the poetry of the English-speaking world over the second half of the twentieth century. This promises to be the first book in which his early verse, his concrete poetry and his distinctive compilations of aphorisms and 'sentences' are all substantially represented." --Stephen Bann, author of "Ways Around Modernism" "When I was young and trying to figure out how to think about landscapes and gardens and their cultural histories, no one opened the garden gates wider than Ian Hamilton Finlay in his poetic and sometimes provocative print projects, garden sculptures, concrete poems (sometimes in actual concrete or stone), aphorisms, and other works. Finlay was a loner, a visionary looking backward to think on revolution and paradise, Arcadia and insurrection, and this book put together by his artist son Alec makes that work available for the first time in a long while, and as gorgeously as possible. Alec's long biographical essay is itself a hugely valuable resource for anyone interested in the elder Finlay's works, and then there are the poems, and the pictures..." --Rebecca Solnit, author of "Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas" "Only a handful of poets working in the visual tradition in the twentieth century have a profile that shows up in the broader scenes of fine art and modern culture. Among them, Ian Hamilton Finlay is probably the most frequently cited. But the work and thinking of this complex, enigmatic, and sometimes controversial figure is not necessarily well understood. This new volume documenting the many facets of Finlay's work as a poet, sculptor, and thinker across many media and a lifetime of creative activity will make it possible to study and appreciate his work anew. This collection makes a welcome addition to studies in book arts, visual poetry, and conceptual art through the presentation of an artist whose contributions have registered across these fields." --Johanna Drucker, Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles "While Ian Hamilton Finlay's career is one of complexity, as a creator he was a champion of the simple. Engaging regional melodies, quotidian objects, and native terrain, he took poetry back to its Greek root, 'to make.' This half-century journey--from folk poem to concrete poem to poem-in-the-world--is at all points filled with a vital restlessness." --Lisa Jarnot, author of "Night Scenes" "One must never forget that poets are "makers, " most vividly so in Scotland, where William Dunbar's 'Lament for the Makaris' must still echo with uncanny poignance. Poetry is 'a made thing', as Robert Duncan put it. No poet will ever manage a word, much less a line, without all the resources of that art in timeless history sounding there, as each word finds its place in turn. There is no way to learn simply the intimacy of voice that Finlay has always, bringing one in to his physical person. It is a constant of his art in all its forms." --Robert Creeley, from the foreword to the 1996 edition of Ian Hamilton Finlay's "The Dancers Inherit the Party and Glasgow Beasts, an a Burd"

Selections

Records the notation of Gemmill's famous goal from the Scotland v. Holland 1978 World Cup game, and shows via photographs 3 dance versions of the goal.

The Archie Gemmill Goal

Labanotation

Jack Kerouac

Morning Star Publications

Quotes from Visions of Cody

Ian Hamilton Finlay (b. 1925) is a unique figure - writer, poet, artist, gardener, thinker, revolutionary whose work ranges from lyrical beauty to an insistent confrontation of violence. Wood Notes Wild is the first collection of essays to consider his work as a whole, from his early poetry and Concrete poetry, to the creation of the acclaimed garden at Little Sparta, and the international recognition he has received as an artist.

Alec Finlay

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