A Model of Order

Selected Letters on Poetry and Making

by Ian Hamilton Finlay


"I don't usually play games but it seems to me
that most games are like many poems, in that
they are so complex that luck (randomness)
re-enters by the complexity - and that it is better,
therefore, to have a kind of 'concrete' game, where
the basic moves are simple, but can result in a kind
of measured complexity which one can see."


Edited by Thomas A Clark
Published by WAX 366
Available from David Bellingham,
119 Wilton Street 2/1, Glasgow G20 6RD
Price £9.95

To Flow Away

Near the entrance to the Falkland Centre for Stewardship in Fife,
a pond is fed by the Maspie Burn. Beside the pond, a circular bench
is placed round the trunk of an old lime tree. A poem has been carved
onto the bench, in a line going round the tree

to flow away continually
to be constantly replenished

People can sit on the bench and watch a movement of water
constantly supplying the stillness of the pond. To read the poem,
they must pay homage to the tree by walking round it.

Letter cutting by Roger Hall