Yorkshire Sculpture ParkRESOURCE FILE

Alec Finlay

Alec Finlay biography Alec Finlay was born in Inverness, Scotland in 1966. He is an artist, poet & publisher living in the North-East of England, in Byker, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. His work is concerned with contemporary observations of nature and landscape. Finlay’s practice uses a range of forms and is incredibly diverse. It includes the use of neon text; found objects; innovative poetic forms such as the ‘mesostic’ and ‘circle poem’; major interventions; multiples, as well as print and web-based media. Finlay describes his work as ‘microtonal’, combining a number of smaller elements within a wide field. He often works collaboratively, weaving together art and text to create generous experiential works, some mapped directly onto the landscape, others woven into the fabric of our social selves, accessible online, via mobile phones or name-tapes. Finlay was visiting artist at Yorkshire Sculpture Park from 2003 to 2005, and several works remain as a legacy, including Propagator in the Bothy Garden; Home to a king (3) in the open air, which is part of a larger ongoing project in which he has sited nest boxes at various locations in the UK and circlesthroughthepath, a walk through the park and a poetic map of the landscape. His work has been widely exhibited at The Bluecoat, Tate Modern, Norwich Castle Museum, ARC Gallery, Sofia; HICA (Highland Institute for Contemporary Art); Turner Contemporary, Margate; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art, Norwich; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; Bickachsen 6, Bad Homburg; Cairn Gallery, Pittenweem; and EAST, Norwich. Finlay has published extensively including the pocketbooks series, platform projects, bookscapes, morning star and web-books and his poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies, including island, Practice and Poetry Review. In 2010, Finlay was shortlisted for the Northern Art Prize and has won two Scottish Design Awards. Recent works include The Road North (2010-11) a project with Scottish poet Ken Cockburn composing a contemporary word-map of Scotland across a year-long journey through its landscape. Their journey recalled the journey made by seventeenth-century Japanese poet Basho, whose Narrow Road to the Deep North is considered one of the masterpieces of travel literature. Other word-map projects include white peak / dark peak (2009) where Finlay and a team of fellow poets map the Peak District National Park using a combination of walking, letterboxing, renga ‘word-maps’ and field-recording.

Alec Finlay: New project at YSP The Bee Library, 2012 01.03.12 until 15.04.12 / YSP Concourse Open air from 12.05.12 / Historic lakes and woodland The Bee Library is a new project by Alec Finlay, comprising a collection of twenty-four bee related books launched to coincide with World Book Day, 2012. Once read, each book will be transformed into a nest for solitary or wild bees at YSP, forming an art installation on a walking route around the lakes and woodland. The Bee Library at YSP is part of a larger project to amass 120 books in five locations, evolving into a global bee library. See www.the-bee-bole.com for more information. Selected Solo Exhibitions 2001 Flowers of the North Sea, Overbeck House, Lubeck, Germany 2002 B.Open, Labanotation, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK 2003 Woodland Platform & Xylotheque, The Hidden Gardens, Tramway, Glasgow,

Scotland Right of Way (with Guy Moreton), Galway Arts Centre, Galway 2004 Crossword, The Public, West Bromwich, UK Tweed, Tweed Rivers Interpretation Project, Scottish Borders Your Name Here, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Scotland

Dance Trace Dance Music (with Andrew Hodson), Dance City, Newcastle, UK 2005 The stars before we heard them into conversations: Performance at Tate,

London, UK Three Rivers Crossword, Nexus, Newcastle, UK

Ludwig Wittgenstein: There Where You Are Not, (with Jeremy Millar and Guy Moreton), John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK

Hill of Streams, Cairnhead Community Forest, Dumfries and Galloway 2006 Avant-Garde English Landscape, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK Mesostic Lepodorum, Noses’s Point, Seaham, County Durham

Cubecircle, platforms 000006, Waygood Gallery, Newcastle, UK String of Pearls, Dysart, Fife, Scotland International Edible Art Award, artist project, Village Bakery Gallery, Melmerby, UK Floating Island Garden, Northumbria Coast, UK

Sky-Field, public artwork, Noses’s Point, Seaham, County Durham

2007 Three Estates Renga (with Gavin Wade and Ravi Duprees), Birmingham, UK Four Seasons, Five Senses, Northumbria Coast, UK 2008 two wheat fields, Milton Keynes Gallery, UK 100 Year Star Diary, Kielder Observatory, Kielder, UK Void White Light Festival (with Kevin Cannon), Guildhall, Derry, Ireland Night for Day, Trinity Gardens, Newcastle, UK Selected Group Exhibitions 1998 Anthology, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland 2002 Generator, Spacex, Exeter, UK Football Haiku & Labanotation, Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland 2003 Outside of a Dog: Artists’ Books, BALTIC, Gateshead, UK Wind Blown Cloud, Brighton Photo Biennial, Brighton, UK 2004 Revolver, Witte de With, Rotterdam; toured to ICA, London; Istanbul Biennial Inset (Atopia), Blaffer Gallery, Houston, USA 2005 EAST 05, Norwich, UK

Soapsuds and Whitewash, Turner Contemporary, Droit House, Margate, UK

2006 Around About Words, Tate Britain, London, UK Word Order, Concrete Poetry and its influence, The Changing Room, Stirling, Scotland

Forest Laboratory 06, Darmstadt, Germany Ball Im Kopf, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

fall, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK Isles and Lakes, Village Bakery Gallery, Melmerby, UK 2007 Multiplicities, ARC Projects, Sofia, Bulgaria

The Printed Path. Landscape, Walking and Recollection, Tate Britain, London, UK

Neon, The National Glass Centre, Sunderland, UK Harry Smith Remix, Alt.Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

Sirens: An Evolution from Water, through Water, to Water , 66 East: Centre for Urban Culture, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Threshold 6x4, The Front Room, Bridpoint, Dorset, UK Kiosk, Artists’ Space, New York, USA Inkubator, Edinburgh Printmakers, Edinburgh, Scotland In their own words, End Gallery, Sheffield, UK

Waterlog, Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Norwich; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich; The Collection, Lincoln, UK

2008 Herz:Rasen. The Football Exhibition, Kunstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria

Now Then, Bluecoat Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK Mesostic Laboratorium, Science Learning Centre North East, Durham, UK

Concrete Now, HICA (the Highland Institute for Contemporary Art), Scotland

2010 Northern Art Prize, Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, UK 2012 5-poem objects, Ingelby Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland

Swarm (ASX) and The Bee Library, 18th Bienalle of Sydney, Australia The Bee Library, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK

Residencies 2007-08 windmillmindwill, artist residency, NaREC (National Centre for Renewable

Energy, Blyth 2007 Kielder Partnership, Kielder Observatory, Kielder 2006 Killhope Leadmining Museum, Killhope, North Pennines 2005-06 Science Learning Centre North East, Durham, UK 2003-05 Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK 2001-03 BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK

Selected Publications Eye on Europe, group exhibition catalogue, (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2007) Thought-Cloud Jotter (Science Learning Centre, Durham 2006) Siren, (with Chris Watson, platform projects/bookscapes, 2006) Dance Trace Dance Music (with Andrew Hodson, Dance City & platform projects/bookscapes, 2006) Ludwig Wittgenstein: There Where You Are Not, with Guy Moreton, Michael Nedo (Black Dog, 2005) Some Versions of Landscape: Avant-Garde English Landscape (YSP, Wakefield, 2005) Wind Blown Cloud (Rizzoli, New York, 2005) Mesostic herbarium (platform projects, 2004) BALTIC YEARBOOK, catalogue (BALTIC, Gateshead, 2003) Bynames (platform projects, 2003) Football Haiku (with Guy Moreton, pocketbooks 2002) Labanotation: the Archie Gemmill goal (with Robin Gillanders, pocketbooks, 2002) Justified Sinners (with Ross Birrell, pocketbooks, 2002) pocketbooks series Atoms of Delight (2000) Love for Love (with John Burnside, 2000) Without Day (2000) Wish I Was Here (with Kevin MacNeil, 2000) The Way to Cold Mountain (2001) The Order of Things (with Ken Cockburn, 2001) Justified Sinners (with Ross Birrell, 2002) Football Haiku (with Guy Moreton, 2002) Labanotation: the Archie Gemmill goal (with Robin Gillanders, 2002) Anthologies Hours (WAX366, 2002) BALTIC YEARBOOK (BALTIC, 2003) The Book of the Book (Granary Books, 2001) Goldfish Suppers (Edinburgh City Council, 2004) Cuirt Annual 2003 (Galway Arts Centre, 2003) Poetry Collections football moon (BALTIC, 2002) Poezie bez hranic (Oloumouc Festival, 2004) Small Press Series Wind Blown Clouds Verse Chain (2002)

Bynames (2003) Mesostic herbarium (2004) Friday 8 May, Alexander & Susan Maris (2004) turning toward living (2004). Irish 2 (with Guy Moreton, 2003) The Book of Questions Bookscapes series THREE RIVERS CROSSWORD (with Sandy Balfour, 2006) Siren, (with Chris Watson, 2006) Dance Trace Dance Music (with Andrew Hodson, 2006) Journey to the Lower World (Marcus Coates, 2006)

Alec Finlay

The Bee Library : a bibliography 1. Archer, Michael E., The Wasps, Ants and Bees of Watsonian Yorkshire (Weymouth: Yorkshire

Naturalists’ Union, 2002) 2. Aristotle, History of Animals: Books VIII-X, ed. D. M. Balme (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard

University Press, 1991) 3. Buxton, Simon, The Shamanic Way of the Bee: Ancient Wisdom and Healing Practices of the Bee

Masters (Vermont: Destiny Books, 2004) 4. Cheshire, Frank, Practical Bee Keeping: Plain Instructions to the Amateur for the Successful

Management of the Honey Bee, Vol. I (London: The Bazaar Office, 1879) 5. Chesney, Rebecca, Diligent Observation: A year of bees on the Bretton Estate (Wakefield:

Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2011) 6. Crane, Eva (ed.), Dictionary of Beekeeping Terms, Vol. 7 (Bucharest: Apimondia, 1978) 7. Davies, Andrew, Bee Keeping: Inspiration and Practical Advice for Would-be Smallholders

(London: Collins & Brown, 2007) 8. Foster, A. M., Bee Boles and Bee Houses (Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire: Shire Publications, 1988) 9. Frisch, Karl Von, tr. Dora Ilse, The Dancing Bees: An Account of the Life and Senses of the Honey

Bee (London: the Country Book Club, 1955) 10. Gates, Phillip, Spring Fever: The Precarious Future of Britain’s Flora and Fauna (London: Harper

Collins, 1992) 11. Graves, Robert, The White Goddess: A historical grammar of poetic myth (London: Faber &

Faber, 1948) 12. Hamill, Sam (tr.), The Little Book of Haiku (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2002) 13. Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (London: Cambridge

University Press, 1912) 14. Hesiod, Works and Days, ed. T. A. Sinclair (London: Macmillan & Co., 1932) 15. Hooper, Ted, Guide to Bees and Honey (Dorset: Blandford Press, 1985) 16. Howes, F. N., Plants and Beekeeping: an account of those plants, wild and cultivated, of value to

the hive bee, and for honey production in the British Isles (London: Faber & Faber 1979) 17. Huber, Francis, New Observations Upon Bees, tr. C. P. Dadant (Illinois: American Bee Journal,

1926) 18. Plath, Sylvia, Ariel (London: Faber & Faber, 2010) 19. Preston, Claire, Bee (London: Reaktion Books, 2006) 20. Ransome, Hilda M., The Sacred Bee: In Ancient Time and Folklore (Burrowbridge, Bridgwater: Bee

Books New & Old, 1986) 21. Ruskin, John, Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain, Vol. II

(London: George Allen, 1906) 22. Sinclair, W., illus. Payne, Jill, The Life of the Honey-bee (Loughborough: Ladybird Books, 1969) 23. Virgil,The Georgics of Virgil, tr. Lewis, C. Day (London: Jonathan Cape, 1957) 24. Walker, Penelope, ‘Bee Boles in Kent’, Archæologia Cantiana, Vol. CVI (Gloucester: Alan Sutton,

1988)

Alec Finlay: ongoing projects at YSP Home to a King (3) Open air Home to a king (3) comprises a series of ten nest boxes sited throughout the parkland, each featuring crossword clues based on the names of British trees. These can be used to complete the crossword in an accompanying free guide. Each nest-box is designed to house a particular species of bird found at YSP and is colour matched to the leaves of the tree on which it is hung, enabling the project to become an important part of the Park’s natural habitat. Home to a king (3) at YSP is part of a larger ongoing project by Finlay in which he has sited nest boxes at various locations in the UK, including Durham University Botanic Garden (County Durham), Brogdale Farm (Kent), Springburn Park (Glasgow), George Square Gardens (Edinburgh), Cove Park (Scotland), Killhope Lead Mining Museum (County Durham), and St Andrews Botanic Garden (Scotland).                

In a row, i.e. L, M, N, O, P (3)

1. Print out on 160gsm card

2. Cut out around body and tabs

3. Score and fold along dotted lines as indicated above

4. Stick the tabs carefully

Home to a king (3)© Alec Finlay 2008-09

Alec Finlay: ongoing projects at YSP Propagator, 2003 Bothy Garden In the Bothy Garden visitors can discover Propagator, a greenhouse containing plant pots from which sprout mesostic poems based on the names of flora at YSP. A mesostic is composed of a name-stem and word-branches and the poems reveal something of the plant’s character. As with his earlier ongoing project, circlesthroughthepath (a guided walk of letterboxes and rubber stamp circle poems), this work offers a word-map of the Park landscape. The mesostic is a simple form capable of complex operations. The poems are also an invitation to the reader to compose their own.  Mesostic Herbarium The language of flora is one of beauty and healing. The idea that names are magical and conceal secret knowledge has always been with us. As part of this project, visitors were invited to compose one or more mesostic poems using the names of flora. A mesostic is written with the letters of a chosen plant's name forming a 'stem' from which single-word lines branch out. By researching plant lore and the healing effects of herbs and flower remedies the mesostic poems were able to reveal some of the hidden properties of the plant chosen.

PROPAGATOR

Alec FinlaySelf-interviewed by Davy PolmadieMay-June 2005

Davy Polmadie: Propagate?

Alec Finlay: Propagate – to publishor transmit, as books do, or ideas; tobreed or multiply, as letters grow intowords; to extend to a greater area, asthe imagination can create a new mapof a landscape.

DP: And mesostic?

AF: ...is a name poem,much favouredby the American composer-poet JohnCage, who wrote them as birthday giftsfor friends. Pick a name and then growyour poem around it. The names makestems and the chosen letters theirgrowing branches.

DP: Are they found poems then?

AF:No, grown poems, bred on an existingword-stock: O-A-K.

DP: So the poems are like plants?

AF:Yes, the letters are like cellsand, if you nurture them with yourimagination, they bloom into meaning.Syntax – the way that a poem reads –is like photosynthesis; light is drawndown through the name-stem andmeaning spreads outwards througheach word-branch.mark or shadow that some event in ourlife has cast on our inner nature. As anartist, I'm interested in the ways that thiskind of knowledge and philosophycontinue, all mixed up with contemporarymedicine – it represents a kind of Doctrineof Signatures and that relates back to thepoetic form and its feeling for hiddensecrets. The project is a compound ofpharmacy and herbarium, like mostpeople's bathroom cabinets.

DP: So some of the poems are aboutinner properties, whether these arechemical compounds or more subtleor inferred influences, but the mesosticsare also poems that have a system.

AF: Their rules are their signature, butthey are poems not plants and this is aword garden. Language is like nature:crossbred, evolving, influenced by habitat,time, climate and use. I love to see a wordtaken over from one use into another,graft or bind, scion or root.

DP: Even though the poems are fixedon trees, they don’t seem to belong toa particular place, a clearing or viewover the park.

AF: No they don’t and I think this is wherethe poems’ letterisme and petalisme arecrucial. Though it is good to 'plant' or fixthe poems and give them a place to belong,when you read them in their particular

Letter to Tilda Swinton

And so books entered our lives ...Alec Finlay

ALEC FINLAY (BALTIC)Maris

Alec Finlay: Droit HouseElizabeth James

Propagator

On Bynames and Bynaming

Bynames

I Want the Water, I Want the Air

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corner of the landscape you take in thesurroundings as a matter of course – thepoem doesn’t need to comment on this.After all, you and the tree and the poemare there. The curl of a piece of birch barkAs it has a clearly defined centre andis neat, a mesostic tends towards theclassical. As it reads through words byway of letters, a mesostic tends towardsthe avant-garde.

DP: The poems read like secrets revealed.

AF: They are mostly slight, littleautobiographies; they are what I couldmake out of the given letters.You cando the same. I don’t think their beautyis a resemblance to flowers or trees, butthe act of growth itself – a secret thatconcerns us all. The single letters showhow words fall apart and come together,as biological organisms split into individualcells. They confront the fundamental shockof our ability to ‘rewrite’ nature byreconfiguring the genetic world.DP: Because a name is a chain of letters,an enchantment of chaos? The poemsmay be only little events but they recognisehow close we have come to chaos.AF: And they may be, or become, elegiesfor plants that will no longer exist – I heardon the radio that as droughts increase theEnglish landscape will lose many of its nativetree species.YSP will become theAuvergne. These issues of growth andextinction are the poems’ context.

DP: So the patterned poems are amnemonic?

AF:Yes, such playful s of words helpsthem rest in our minds as a rule. They aremade for memory and offer distinctiveoutlines, reshaping the flowers and treesin our consciousness. Linnaeus speaksof the naming of plants as applying theskills of arranging, giving station bynumber, form, proportion and situation.

DP: Any useful tips for word-gardeners?

AF: Always begin with the most difficultletter, the z of hazel – double letters aredifficult, the pp in apple – don’t forget thelittle words, and, the, are, and is – choosea plant you know.

DP: And one of your analogies ispeople and plants – a traditional thememade new?

AF: I was always drawn to the silver knotsof the beeches along the roads in the valleywhere I grew up; the truth to reality inhow a tree grows, of how it takes its scars,nicks,wounds into itself. Poisons thatleach and pollute are often invisible to theeye, just as there are words that hurt usfar more than sticks or stones.

DP: The poems go beyond appearances?

AF: Though plants are pretty to us inshowy bs, their effect is intendedtowards specific purposes; their beautyis for the bee, even if our breeding makes

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colours more vibrant. What interest meare the uses and meanings that we makefor plants, especially those that are to dowith healing, whether it’s the extract ofyew that makes a cancer cure, or howhomeopathy ascribes an emotion or moodto a flower essence – the blemishes andspots on the skin of a crab apple make arhyme with its ability to heal shame, ais not a unique event but it is a habit worthputting into words.

DP: Because the poems are here in aSculpture Park.

AF: And the project is an attempt to settlea quarrel with the habit that some artistshave of constructing works of art thatparcel up the landscape into so much realestate; this bit is metal and orange, this isrough hewn stone. I never thought therewas anything to improve nature, exceptperhaps that we should know and respecther better.

NOTESINDOOR POEMS (PROPAGATOR)in the greenhouse, Lower ParkMESOSTIC is a name poem.BILBERRY is royal purple and it stains.YELLOW IRIS is spring’s flag.MARIGOLD grew orange in the bog by my house.TORMENTIL is a yellow high on mountains.LICHEN makes litmus.DANDELION always seems to tell the same time.SEA KALE decorates the wild garden DerekJarman made on the shingle at Dungeness.THRIFT like a ‘granny hat’, a spog liquorice allsort,it makes a pink blanket bleached by the sea.HOP is beery.SWEET PEA loved by poet Emily Dickinson.CARDINAL that Emily gave to her sister Susan.HONESTY pale in the winter, shaped like a penny.GOLDEN ROD,more yellow than golden.OAT SEED is milky inside.WHEAT is fractally patterned for aliens.CHICKWEED on the menu at our house in 1976.MILKTHISTLE yields silymarin which heals the liver.VALERIAN zzzzzz.TANSY tastes bitter and fights fever.ST JOHN'S WORT heals the black dog.ROCK ROSE is a Bach Flower remedy treatingfear or terror.ECHINACEA fights off all those colds.ASPEN quivers in breezes.WALNUT looks brainy.OLIVE for peace in Palestine.OUTDOOR POEMS (TREES)found according to directions overleafOAK is a heartwood.APPLE after lunch or before bed.HAZEL makes wands and bows.GINGKO ancient from Asia, one to help yourbrain remember.BEECH is the root of the word book.ASH made sea sounds in our garden.SYCAMORE have windmills that turn as they fall.PINE is on the horizon.ROWAN has leaves like fingers and is a ward forwitches at the door.CHESTNUT old and obvious, yet memorable.YEWs grow near pews.GEAN is wild and cheery.CRAB APPLE is our native apple.HORNBEAM is a Bach flower remedy for thosetoo tired to face the day.

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SLOE's plum for gin, sour is wersh in Scots.HAWTHORN the spiky creamy May.BIRCH peels away a sliver of silver paper.

you are invitedartist projects

letterboxanimations

poemsaudio

libraryfeature

linkseducation

artist biographiesbookshop

bookscapes

interviewessayreview

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Alec Finlay: ongoing projects at YSP circlesthroughthepath Open air circlesthroughthepath is a walk through the park and a poetic map of the landscape. Pick up a leaflet at the YSP Centre to find and collect circle poems contained within letterboxes located on the route. circlesthroughthepath was part of Alec Finlay’s YSP artist residency Avant-Garde English Landscape (2003-2005).

Letterboxing is a form of ‘hobby walking’ and rubber stamp collecting. Over the next few years Alec is placing 100 letterboxes at sites around the globe. Each box protects a circle poem. Some of the boxes are sited singly, in locations that are described in guides written by their keepers. Other letterboxes are composed into walks including circlesthroughthepath at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and Isle Arcs, Circles & Ways on the Isle of Thanet. Alec has also written about letterboxes and circle poems and discussed them in an interview with Elizabeth James. If you want to visit a letterbox check whether it has been installed, or for other locations visit http://www.alecfinlay.com/letterbox_guide.html

 

ABOUT LETTERBOXES AND CIRCLE POEMS Some reflections on letterboxing and Circle poems by Alec Finlay a circle poem is not a flat line drawn into a loop; a circle poem is an arc in time in the finest circle poems there is no visible join the classical subjects of circle poetry are time and tide circle poems in letterboxes are the only true found poems these poems, they have homes some day every back garden will have its own letterbox letterboxing, poésie en pleine aire the poems are hidden so that they can be found remember to bring ink to freshen a dry pad rubber stamping, hobby printing always report missing letterboxes, ink pads or rubber stamps letterbox guides, rubber stamps, wooden handles, take away poems ‘you send me your poems / I’ll send you mine’ (Robert Creeley) more and more contemporary poetry requires planning permission some poems will sink, others will be stolen – such is the fate of all poetry Kinloch-Rannoch, Punto Del Este, Missoula: the names are themselves poems some day the collected guides will be a world book

Works by Alec Finlay at YSP Part of his artist residency, 2003-05 Fall

                                              Fall consisted of windfall apples (from YSP’s Bothy Garden) bandaged in woven name tape, stitched with the litany, fall fall fall...

Mesostic

A mesostic is a poem or other typography such that a vertical phrase intersects lines of horizontal text. It is similar to an acrostic, but with the vertical phrase intersecting the middle of the line, as opposed to beginning each new line.

The practice of using index words to select pieces from a preexisting text was developed by Jackson MacLow as ‘diastics’. It was used extensively by the experimental American composer John Cage. His writings, though they started out as purely creative, eventually became poems generated by chance operations. The mesostics emerged as another product of Cage’s exploration of indeterminacy. Some of Cage’s works that included these poems are his Norton Lectures texts (also known as I-VI), Sixty-Two Mesostics Re: Merce Cunningham, and Roaratorio. Cage used chance operations for other forms of writing too. For example, his Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) used subway train schedules and other sources to decide on typefaces, the number of sections per day, margins, and a myriad of other characteristics.

In his early mesostics, Cage would simply write a word (usually a name) vertically down the page, with all the letters capitalised. Then, he would ‘fill in the blanks’ and come up with a poem using the ‘spine’ he had chosen.

Cage dubbed these poems ‘acrostics’ until American classicist Norman O. Brown pointed out that acrostics had their ‘spine’ letters on the edges of the words, not down the middle. Cage renamed the poems ‘Mesostics’, a word derived from ‘Acrostic’, but with an indication that the vertical aspect is in the middle of the word.

According to Cage, in a ‘pure mesostic’, there are no repeated lower case letters that match the previous or next upper-case letter in the poem. The words that surround the spine letters are taken from a selected source text read forwards, or by chance operations. The first letter to appear in any word is used to surround the corresponding spine letter. ‘Wing words’, or intermittent words placed in the text between spine words, may be selected by one’s taste or through further chance operations. They must, however, obey the non-repeating letter rule.

It should be noted that Cage was not the first to write poetry using these methods. Acrostic poems were a favorite of Lewis Carroll, and Jackson MacLow apparently used Cage’s chance music techniques to write poetry as early as 1950. MacLow's works, however, include what he dubbed ‘Diastics’ - the spine word begins on the first letter of the first line, then moves to the second letter of the second line, and so on.

There are two types of mesostic: fifty percent and one hundred percent. In a fifty-percent mesostic, according to Andrew Culver (John Cage’s assistant), "Between any two [capitalised] letters, you can't have the second [letter]." In a one-hundred-percent mesostic, "Between any two [capitalised] letters, you can’t have either [letter]."

An example of a one-hundred-percent mesostic.

KITCHEN let us maKe of thIs modesT plaCe a room Holding

tons of lovE (and, Naturally, much good food, too)

Taken from Wikipedia

Letterboxing

Letterboxing is an outdoor hobby that combines elements of orienteering, art, and puzzle solving. Letterboxers hide small, weatherproof boxes in publicly-accessible places and distribute clues to finding the box in printed catalogs, on one of several web sites, or by word of mouth. Individual letterboxes usually contain a notebook and a rubber stamp. Finders make an imprint of the letterbox’s stamp, either on their personal notebook or on a postcard, and leave an impression of their personal stamp on the letterbox’s visitors’ book or logbook — as proof of having found the box and letting other letterboxers know who has visited. Many letterboxers keep careful track of their ‘find count’.

History

The origin of letterboxing can be traced to Dartmoor, Devon, England in 1854. William Crossing in his Guide to Dartmoor states that a well known Dartmoor guide (James Perrott) placed a bottle for visiting cards at Cranmere Pool on the northern moor in 1854. From this hikers on the moors began to leave a letter or postcard inside a box along the trail (sometimes addressed to themselves, sometimes a friend or relative)—hence the name ‘letterboxing’. The next person to discover the site would collect the postcards and post them. In 1938 a plaque and letterbox in Crossing’s memory were placed at Duck's Pool on southern Dartmoor.

The first Dartmoor letterboxes were so remote and well-hidden that only the most determined walkers would find them, allowing weeks to pass before the letter made its way home. Until the 1970s there were no more than a dozen such sites around the moor, usually in the most inaccessible locations. Increasingly, however, letterboxes have been located in relatively accessible sites and today there are thousands of letterboxes, many within easy walking distance of the road. As a result, the tradition of leaving a letter or postcard in the box has been forgotten.

Letterboxing has become a popular sport, with thousands of walkers gathering for ‘box-hunts’ and while in some areas of Dartmoor it is particularly popular amongst children, some of the more difficult to find boxes and tougher terrain are better suited to more experienced adults.

Letterboxes can now be found in other areas of the United Kingdom including the North York Moors and have spread all over the world. The Scottish artist Alec Finlay has placed letterboxes with rubber stamp circle poems at locations around the world.

Interest in letterboxing in the USA is generally considered to have started with a feature article in the Smithsonian Magazine in April 1998. Much of the terminology below is associated with letterboxing in the US and would be unfamiliar to UK letterboxers. The growing popularity of the somewhat similar activity of geocaching

during the 2000s has increased interest in letterboxing as well. Clues to American letterboxes are commonly published on several different websites.

Gatherings

Letterboxers organize events, usually called meets or gatherings. The first letterbox meet was held on Dartmoor, and they are now held twice yearly on ‘clock change days’ (in March and October). Gatherings in America are usually at parks or places with enough space for a large group of letterboxers to meet up and do exchanges (exchanging of personal stamps and/or personal travelers), as well as talk and discuss box ideas. Gatherings in America usually have a special, one day ‘Event stamp’. At some gatherings, boxes are created or donated to be planted nearby specifically for the gathering attendees to find.

Types

There are now many different kinds of letterboxes, each with some specific distinction. While purists recognise only those letterboxes planted in the wild, many new variations exist. These include:

Traditional Box A normal letterbox, hidden and uses clue to find it.

Mystery box These are usually traditional boxes, but these ‘mystery’ boxes have either vague starting areas, no starting areas, no descriptions, no clue - any number of things to make the box extremely hard to find.

Bonus Box The clues for these are usually found in a traditional box as an extra one to find. Usually planted in the same area as the traditional that hosts its clue. Clues can be distributed in any way.

Word of Mouth Box (WOMB) The clue is given by word of mouth, or typed up, but a letterboxer can only receive the clue from the planter.

Cuckoo (became known as a Hitchhiker in the USA) A traveling letterbox, it is placed in a traditional letterbox for another letterboxer to find. When found, it is stamped just like a traditional letterbox, but is then carried by the letterboxer to the next letterbox they find. The hitchhiker's stamp should also be recorded in the host letterbox's logbook, and vice versa.

Personal Traveler Much like a traditional box, but instead of being planted, the box is kept with the creator at all times. If another letterboxer is met on the trail or at a meet it is attainable if requested. In the USA this box is usually only attainable if the other letterboxer knows the password or passphrase which is sometimes cryptic, straightforward, almost non-existent, or silly.

In the USA, letterboxes have developed new forms: Cootie

Much like a hitchhiker, except instead of being carried from letterbox to letterbox, a letterboxer passes it to another letterboxer. It can be passed in a Personal Traveler, or planted on another letterboxer or their unattended bags on the trails or at gatherings. Most people are subtle about planting them, but not all.

Flea Like a combination of a hitchhiker and a cootie. Either put in a traditional letterbox, like a hitchhiker, or put it on a person, like a cootie.

Hitchhiker Hostel This is a traditional letterbox with special qualities. Namely, it is a ‘hostel’ for hitchhikers, sized and specially designated to hold multiple hitchhikers at one time. Normally, there are at least one or two hitchhikers in the box at all times, and any letterboxer who takes a hitchhiker out is required to leave a new one in its place. A hitchhiker hostel has its own stamp and logbook, just like a traditional letterbox, and any hitchhiker that is placed within it should be stamped and recorded within the logbook, preferably with both the date of its being added to the hostel (in order to make it easier to move the older hitchhikers out), and the date it is removed.

American Parasite (these should not be confused with English Parasites) A parasite is very much like a hitchhiker except, instead of being carried by a letterboxer between letterboxes on its own, it is carried along with a hitchhiker. When a letterboxer joins a parasite to a hitchhiker (‘infecting"’ it), it is stamped into the hitchhiker. The parasite's stamp is also recorded in the logbook of the letterbox that a hitchhiker is placed in, ‘infecting’ the letterbox, as well. In the event of being placed in a letterbox that has multiple hitchhikers in it (such as a hitchhiker hostel), the parasite ‘infects’ all of the hitchhikers inside. The letterboxer that has done the moving also has the choice of sending the parasite along with a different hitchhiker. (This is a relatively new variation of letterbox, and has only just recently begun to take off.)

Virtual Online letterboxes; actually a scavenger hunt of sorts for an image of a letterbox through different websites, collecting answers to questions posted as the clues to the box. Answers sometimes are unscrambled or simply emailed to the creator. The final answer is put in a blank in a web address, which takes the finder to an image of the letterbox online.

Limited time Box A letterbox that has only been planted for a short amount of time. (A few days or a week, any time length the planter wants.)

Postal (PLB) Boxes that are made just like traditional letterboxes, but instead of being planted in the wild, they are sent via postal mail to the people on sign up lists for the box, or around a ‘ring’ of people in a postal ring, which is usually focused on a theme of some sort. Postals are also very often very well designed and organized, as well as ornate. Since the box is very unlikely to be stolen, go missing, or be damaged, creators of PLBs tend to get quite creative.

Other Anything not described as any of the above listings. They could be bonus stamps inside boxes, a stamp you just have to ask for, etc.

Circle poem A circle poem is a kind of ‘art’ letterbox developed in Britain. There are one hundred planned boxes, each of which contains a rubber stamp circle poem by the Scottish poet and artist, Alec Finlay. These are sited at locations around the world, and each has its own nominated keeper.

                

Further reading

• Anne Swinscow has written several popular guide books on Dartmoor Letterboxing: Dartmoor Letterboxes ISBN 0-9509114-2-9; More Dartmoor Letterboxes ISBN 0-9509114-1-0 ; 101 Dartmoor Letterboxes: But Not How to Find Them! (with John Howard) ISBN 0-9509114-3-7.

• Janet Palmer has writtern a brief guide to Dartmoor Letterboxing: Let's Go Letterboxing: A Beginner's Guide (2nd revised edition) ISBN 1-898964-33-5.

• Alan Rowland has written a specialised guide to the letterboxes on Lundy published in 2006 ( the 20th Anniversary of) Lundy Letterboxes ISBN 0-9506117-8-4

• The Letterboxer’s Companion by Randy Hall was published in 2003 and focuses on letterboxing in North America; ISBN 0-7627-2794-2.

• Cranmere Pool: The First Dartmoor Letterbox by Chips Barber published by Obelisk Publications, UK (1994); ISBN 978-1-899073-03-0.

• Alec Finlay has published two booklets on circle poem letterboxing: Isles, Arcs & Ways (Isle of Thanet, England, 2005), ISBN 1-904477-04-04; and Hill of Streams (Cairnhead, Scotland, 2008).

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ISLE ARCS, CIRCLES & WAYSAn interview with Elizabeth James

Elizabeth James: There's an appealingly simple feeling about thisproject, but it consists of a combination of different elements:poetry, walking, locality, collaboration ... Is there one underlyingintention or impulse that takes precedence?

Alec Finlay: A commission sets a ‘frame’ – in this case, to make anartist’s map of Thanet. I have always loved Which Way Brouwn? bythe conceptual artist Stanley Brouwn, where he asks people theway to a place and they scribble little maps for him, A–B. For IsleArcs, Circles & Ways I have used my own status as a stranger andinvited twelve local people to be my guides. Their guides – whichdescribe how to find letterboxes which contain my circle poems –are word maps. They haven’t written ‘blue plaque walks’; theydirect us to different kinds of places, and, whether or not thesehave any obvious public importance, they become meaningful.

EJ: What exactly is letterboxing?

AF: Hobby-walking, collecting, with a bit of printing thrown in. Theletterboxes are like bird boxes and they protect a rubber stampand ink pad. ‘Letterboxers’ all over the world collect these, andorienteers use them to prove they have completed a course. To meletterboxing is about shared consciousness as it invites people tobe writers and readers.

EJ: And when people arrive at one of your letterboxes, following aroute 'mapped' in words, what they find is another text, but onewith a visual form, a 'circle poem'. This part-exchange of visual andverbal genres seems to further disrupt our expectations?

AF: Yes, the journey is an exchange between the art of poetry andthe act of walking, without either one of these being given priority.My poems are ‘rosebuds’: they may be beautiful or playful, butthey are also simply an invitation to a journey. The guides aretopographical descriptions, but, whether they are informative orchatty, they contain the texture of different people’s voices and thegrain of their memories. The project may disrupt some peoplesexpectations of what a work of art should be, but any walk guidedby a friend can have something magical about it.In my public projects I use simple forms that are easilycommunicable and these often associate with communities ofreaders, whether local or international. This practice has evolvedinto a series of invitation projects that anyone can take part in,such as wind blown cloud, where I collect slides of clouds whichbecome an archive of the sky; or renga linked verse which appealswith the world haiku community. Letterboxing has the same hobbyor amateur status and it to is about the poetry of the world. Thereis a utopianism and internationalism involved in these openprojects, but they also tend to stay at the level of the individualreader and writer – on a particular day, someone may be walkingto a letterbox in Thanet, Punto Del Este or Connemara (there willbe one hundred sites in the worldwide letterbox project once it iscompleted) and the circle symbolises the way these communitiesand individual journeys overlap.

EJ: So, while you have taken up the metaphorical character of thecircle, which can be imagined in terms of a social world as bothclosed or infinitely expansive, you haven't discarded its universalcharacter and invariant geometry, its ‘perfection’?

AF: Art allows us this variety of reflections and responses. One ofthe poems has become a motto for the project in my mind: a line,an arc in time – for isn’t that how memory is for all of us? Our livesare a narrative thread, but the line arcs in time until there aredistances or horizons of emotion and experience we can no longersee back to. These we can only imagine. There are letterboxes thatI may never see and I don’t imagine anyone will ever collect all onehundred, and yet the project connects us to this one world in whichwe live.The circle is a perfect form and art can represent perfection, butwe have to make our way through a real place where property lawsand the routes that paths and roads follow do not allow us perfectcircles.

ISLE ARCS, CIRCLES & WAYSAn interview with Elizabeth James

THE SHIP I’M INA Renga Dialogue – Ira Lightman & AlecFinlay

FOOTBALL HAIKUAlexander Braun & Alec Finlay

ATOPIAGavin Morrison & ALEC FINLAY

A LIBRARY MIDWAY THROUGH A WOODDavy Polmadie & Alec Finlay

Stand MagazineInterview with Matthew Whelton & AlecFinlay

Lines and correspondancesGavin Morrison & Alec Finlay

A LETTER TO AMPARO MONTERO ESPINAfrom the book Wind Blown Cloud

Alec Finlay http://www.alecfinlay.com/libraryinterviewisle.html

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EJ: It can be hard to just walk, to drift like a wind-blown cloud...The poem found at the culmination of a guided walk is both a newencounter, and a release from the task of wayfinding intomeditation, free of direction; it can afford a view of that ‘horizon’where, for the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, 'a personal life canbe constituted in the heart of the transcendent event'. A puretrajectory is rare in reality. A walking guidebook I often use is fullof instructions to ignore things: 'Ignore narrow track to left' etc. Ofcourse the digressive byways become all the more alluring.Perhaps because all that ultimately lies straight ahead, at someyet-unknown point along the arc, is death: on this view life itself isa diversion, into time.

AF: Yes, I like that and it has the ring of truth. But life is also anactive state – the only time we have – and I want to put the poemsinto a state of use; to give them a home, but also place themwithin the rules of a game, a hiding-and-seeking, to enrich anddeepen the arc of time.

EJ: What are the origins of the circle poem?

AF: I happened upon the form. I found a beautiful phrase in JoanRetallack’s book of interviews with composer John Cage, turningtoward living, which I composed into a circle poem. A “classical”circle poem has neither beginning nor end, and there areconnections with our new models of consciousness and conceptionsof space and time.In the exhibition I am also including some other circular pieces,including 'wordrawings', which are a new series of circular poemsmade by handwriting pairs of words. For instance, at Droit Houseone pair is as an amusing slur on Turner's seascapes that I found ina nineteenth century review, describing them as 'soapsuds &whitewash'.

you are invitedartist projects

letterboxanimations

poemsaudio

libraryfeature

linkseducation

artist biographiesbookshop

bookscapes

interviewessayreview

Alec Finlay http://www.alecfinlay.com/libraryinterviewisle.html

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