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.

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reproduces the complete set of watercolours that Ian Gardner made in collaboration with Ian Hamilton Finlay for the unpublished book, 'A Walled Garden: A History of the Spandau Garden in the Time of the Architect Albert Speer'.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.

“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

The renowned Scottish artist, Ian Hamilton Finlay is principally a poet - a Modernist artist who has consistently exploited nature, literature and the potency of words in his art.

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.