Rousay Mending: 24 Island Words & Colours (with Selected Brews) for Ian Hamilton Finlay, by Alistair Peebles, is now available to purchase from two sources: the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney (in person or online) and James Fergusson Books and Manuscripts, London. Rousay Mending is presented in a hinged metal
Such an Air VI The poet John Sharkey's arrival in Rousay was completely unexpected. He had followed Ian from Edinburgh, more or less on a whim. Malnourished, impoverished and sick with the rigours of travel, probably by hitch-hiking, he spent a week or so recovering in hospital
Such an Air (IV) GEORGE SUFFERED too from this shivering thing, and hadn’t believed Ian would make it back here. He’d long been physically sick as well, with TB, but had got away at last, via Newbattle, and Muir, and now the university. Whatever he did later, the
Such an Air (III) WEDNESDAYS IN Kirkwall were half-day closing, and the other week Ernest had asked Ian along to the Cathedral. He was keen to tell him more about the plans already in progress for a plaque to be installed there in Edwin's honour, interred as
Such an Air (V) SO.—JOCK? GIRLIE? The boys at the quarry? His own Arcadians. There were plenty of stories, and things he felt towards: nets, boats, lapsters, moons, creels, cuithes. Seaboots. Folk “not disquieted by the desire for change,” as Pater has it. Well, almost. What had Girlie called
Such an Air (II) JOCK WAS out early to see to his creels, then fetched the lorry from the yard at the pier. The Shapinsay boys had taken care of yesterday's delivery, including extra road lamps—wee buggers, you find them everywhere, halfway up the cliffs—and a
Such an Air (I) THE SEA AIR, the sea spray, the unbearable cabin, the long hill of the island coming closer and closer, rearranging levels, shapes, becoming itself. Sooty-black hilltops that so resembled Nolde's painting in the book Janet gave him that Christmas. All as though summoned
July 2026 in progress (2 now printed, one being reprinted with stronger tea colours) Size A6 Subscribe
“As soon as I could, I went to Orkney, where I started to write poetry.” Ian Hamilton Finlay, c.1965 HE HAD DREAMED and spoken about it for months, for years. But at last, one evening in early March 1959, the 33-year-old writer and playwright Ian H. Finlay
Bibliography Yves Abrioux, Ian Hamilton Finlay: A Visual Primer (revised edition) (Edinburgh: Reaktion Books, 1992) Stephen Bann, “‘The Horizon of Holland’: A Poetic Prelude to Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Gardens”, in Stephen Bann (ed.) Interlacing Words and Things: Bridging the Nature-Culture Opposition in Gardens and Landscape (Dumbarton Oaks: Washington,
In connection with something I'm writing about his relationship with Orkney, I've been thinking lately about IHF's 1960 collection The Dancers Inherit the Party. The title of one poem in particular, "Orkney Interior", struck me as being quite painterly in its implication—
This is mainly a re-posting of this (slightly updated) flyer, but readers may be interested to know that following the presentation of the double bill, concrete as an ART form at The Space, Rousay (Orkney) on April 11, screenings of the film are scheduled to take place at the