First Suprematist Standing Poem
1965
Poetry, 23.8 x 9.6 cm.
Materials: folding card; ink on paper
Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp.
'I can’t agree that just any poem defines itself as art. On the contrary, almost any Scottish poem of the present is offered to one as a comment on life, an aid, an extension, etc. . . . Hence we get inane critical remarks like: “X has something to say” (which actual means, X’s poems are crammed with jargon, about politics, hunger, Scotland, his love-life, or whatever). The notion that “something to say” is actually a modulation of the material scarcely enters anyone’s head.' (Ian Hamilton Finlay to the Austrian sound/concrete poet Ernst Jandl, 1965)
Poetry as having “something to say,” as direct commentary on life: all his working life, the poet, short-story writer, visual artist, aphorist, and especially “avant-gardener,” as he himself referred to his role as creator of Little Sparta, his unique Scotland garden, objected to this notion of art. Rather than “cramming” his poems with “jargon,” Finlay was a confirmed believer in minimalism, in the notion that less equals more, provided the “less” is carefully chosen. In the same year that he sent Ernst Jandl the message above, the Scottish poet produced this folding card with the title First Suprematist Standing Poem.
(source: Marjorie Perloff, 'Minimalism of Ian Hamilton Finlay', 2010-2013)
