Finlay, Ian Hamilton

(1925- )

   Born in Nassau, he was educated in Scotland and in the Orkney Islands, and was in the Army from 1944 to 1947. After the war he worked as a shepherd and became known in the 1950s as a writer of plays, short stories and poetry and as a broadcaster. With Jessie McGuffie he founded the Wild Hawthorn Press in 1961, and soon established himself as Britain's leading concrete poet - poetry that deals with the visual aspect of the poem. As a sculptor his designs have been executed as stone-carvings, as con134 structed objects and even in the form of neon lighting. He devotes a lot of time to his garden, Little Sparta, at Dunsyre near Edinburgh. He was made honorary professor at Dundee University in 1999 and a commander of the British Empire in 2002. Some of his publications: The Sea Bed and Other Stories, 1958. The Dancers Inherit the Party, 1960. Rapel, 1963 (his first collection of concrete poetry). Some of his poems: "Bedtime," "Orkney Interior," "Orkney Lyrics," "The Boat's Blueprint," "The Cloud's Anchor," "The Horizon of Holland."

   Sources: A Book of Scottish Verse. Maurice Lindsay and R.L. Mackie, eds. St. Martin's Press, 1983. Ian Hamilton Finlay Artist and Art: The-artists.org (http://www.theartists.org/ArtistView.cfm?id=8A01F432-BBCF-11D4A93500D0B7069B40). The Grove Dictionary of Art (http://www.artnet.com/library/02/0283/T028352.asp). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse. Robert Crawford and Mick Imlah, eds. Penguin Books, 2000. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Who's Who. London: A & C Black, 2005. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).