Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006) was an acclaimed Scottish poet and artist. Alec Finlay is an artist and poet.

• Acknowledgments Autobiographical Sketch Introduction: Picking the Last Wild Flower EARLY WRITINGS Postcard from Glenlednoch The Money Walking through Seaweed From The Dancers Inherit the Party: The Dancers Inherit the Party Angles of Stamps O.H.M.S. Love Poem Ah, So That Is Why Bedtime Black Tomintoul Gift Frank the Bear Writes His Deb Friend Orkney Interior Optimist Milk Bottles Archie, the Lyrical Lamplighter The Writer and Beauty Finlay's House (in Rousay) The Chief Crop of Orkney Bi-Lingual Poem Island Moment Castles Jess The Island Beasts Wait for the Boat Two Variations on an Orkney Theme, with Notes Orkney Lyrics Twice Spring Holiday Catch Art Student Scene Poet End of a Holiday The Tug Glasgow Beasts, An a Burd Voyage Fishing from the Back of Rousay Another Huge Poem for Hughie Blossom Quarry, Rousay How to Be Happy Lucy's Wee Brother My Little Beat Mill in the West Poem on My Poem on Her and the Horse Such Is the World Lucky Midhope (All Gone) Dalchonzie The Pond of Oo (in Orkney) No Thank You, I Can't Come LATER WRITINGS Concrete, Fauve, Suprematist, Sequential, Kinetic and Optical Poems: Detached Sentences on Concrete Poetry Homage to Malevich A Peach an Apple Lullaby Acrobats Ring of Waves Green Waters First Suprematist Standing Poem Cythera Column Poem 3 Happenings Little Calendar Arcady Purse-Net Boat Net / planet Seams Net 3 Blue Lemons Names of Barges Point-to-Point 3 Norfolk Dishes From 'The Analects of Fishing News' From 'TA MYTIKA of Fishing News' From 'The Illuminations of Fishing News' From 'The Metamorphoses of Fishing News' Headlines, Pondlines One-Word Poems: a bird of dawning sea a heart-shape a spray, from a breton sea-hedge a sea-saw a water-lily pool osiris drip-dry curfew the boat's blueprint elegy for 'whimbrel' and petrel the cloud's anchor an orchard of russets a scotch daisy hill wave a grey shore between day and night a pinnate evergreen a patch for a rip-tide a keel with a tuck in it a machine for fishing from purse seine a sepia wild flower eec sea channel light-vessel automatic One-Line Poems and Monostich (I): The ABC of Tea Epicurus at Chatou A Pittenweem Fancy The Sea's / Waves Elegiac Inscription Stem Sea Your Name From Domestic Pensees Steam Drifter Evolution of the Boat Magic Vessel Sound Poem Kit Elegy for A From A Mast of Hankies: Preparations The Hanky Sails The Harbour The Old Nobby The Stopped Sailboat The End So You Want to Be a Panzer Leader? Fly Navy After Gael Turnbull Sundial Inscriptions: The Four Seasons as Fishingboats The Four Seasons in Sail The Four Seasons as Fore-and-Afters H)Our / Lady Be in Time Dividing the Light Earth * Air * Fire Umbra Solis Sundial (After Paul Claudel) From Detached Sentences on Gardening From Detached Sentences on the Pebble From Detached Sentences on Exile Two Translations Errata of Ovid Ovidian Flowers From Interpolations in Hegel The Months From Camouflage Sentences A Dryad Discovered Arbre (Tree) Hitler's Column From Table Talk of Ian Hamilton Finlay From Detached Sentences on Weather in the Manner of William Shenstone Heroic Anagrams Aphrodite Detached Paragraphs on the Anagram Anagrams: A Postscript Idylls Myosotis arvensis Memory Wildflower Stiles I One-Line Poems and Monostich (II): Dove, Dead in its Snows Poverty Pitted with Larks Fax, Idling in its Sails Monostich An Eighteenth Century Line on a Lukewarm Hotwaterbottle A Classic Monostich A Line Struck from James Thomson's Seasons A Valentine The Colours of the Vowels A Question for Lovers Posters (from The Little Spartan War) Some (Short) Thoughts on Neo-classicism And Even As She Fled (1) And Even As She Fled (2) It Is Not True In the First Chapters For the Best of the Jacobins You Cannot Step The French Revolution From The Ivory Flute Selected Dispatches of Louis Antoine Saint-Just: Clay the Life King The Sound of Running Water Heard through Chinks in a Stone Dyke His Bed a Meadow Mystic Sublime The Revolution 1794 From 'Clerihews for Liberals' A Reflection on the French Revolution Streiflichter From Proverbs for Jacobins From Detached Sentences on Friendship The Inscriptions From Flakes From Spring Verses Images from the Arcadian Dream Garden Epitaph The Brewster Buffaloes From Glider Days In the Manner of the Early Winters From New Proverbs From A Book of Wildflowers Homage to Lorine Niedecker Creels and Creels Lines of Foam Found Free-style Haiku Oak / Bark / Boat Line Light Lade Adaptation Variations Expectation Romanticizing 10 Sentences Cinema-Going Event A Stone Lemons without Bitterness Boat Boat Lore A Last Word Pledge (for Pia) Frisson Schlachtschiff The End ... Notes A Note on the Critical Heritage Selected Bibliography Credits

"Almost wherever Finlay leads us, in verse, prose, or garden, there is a pervasive wit and invention of great brilliance in evidence... Finlay's son Alec has edited together and introduced a hugely enjoyable anthology of Finlay's writings, in prose, and truly beautiful-especially when surreal-verse. We should all be grateful to him." -- Andrew McNeillie Country Life "A hugely enjoyable anthology of Finlay's writings, in prose, and truly beautiful-especially when surreal-verse." -- Andrew McNeillie Country Life "[Finlay's] temples are mock-historic edifices, but who are we to say that they are not sacred sites?" Booktryst "This welcome new volume ... is full of revelations that cast new light on the subject." -- Gerald Mangan Times Literary Supplement (TLS) "This welcome new volume, Selections, ranging from Finlay's first stories and plays to his final inscriptions and aphorisms, reminds us that most of his career consisted of unilateral declarations of independence, in a territory staked out by his own definitions and designs. It is full of revelations that cast new light on the subject-notably in the sixty-page introduction by Alec Finlay, the author's son. His portrait of his father ... manages to sound objective as well as affectionate. He clarifies the poet's debts to international and avant-garde movements, but invites us to recognize the irreducible Scottishness of his character and inspiration." -- Gerald Mangan Times Literary Supplement (TLS) "Scottish poet Ian Hmilton is one of the most influential artists of the late twentieth century... [Ian Hamilton Finlay: Selections] is an essential purchase for anyone interested in the poetry of the second half of the twentieth century... it's a delight." -- Alison Croggon Oyster Boy Review