Ian Hamilton Finlay Quotes

Ian Hamilton Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas. He was a Scottish poet, sculptor and gardener. He studied at Dollar Academy and Glasgow School of Art. His first collection of poetry, The Dancers Inherit the Party was published in 1960. In 1963, he published Rapel, his first collection of concrete poetry, and it was as a concrete poet that he first gained wide renown. Later, he began to compose poems to be inscribed into stone, incorporating these sculptures into the natural environment. This kind of 'poem-object' features in the garden Little Sparta that he and Sue Finlay created together in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh. The five-acre garden also includes more conventional sculptures and two garden temples. In December 2004, in a poll conducted by Scotland on Sunday, a panel of fifty artists, gallery directors and arts professionals voted Little Sparta to be the most important work of Scottish art.