[Christopher ONeill]

I've always known that the real reason I like poetry is because I am lazy about reading. Even when I go back to novels I loved when I was younger (Nevil Shute, Olivia Manning) - the story runs so very slowly.

I have no attention span. I can manage Laurence Sterne or Heinrich Böll - but really I want poetry.

Even then, I don't want poems I need to reread. I want short things that give me an immediate hit, and which I can readily memorise and replay when I am out walking. I like one-word poems, even no-word poems like the Fisches Nachtgesang over on the Poetry Appreciation thread. Like most reluctant readers, I want it short.

Many of I H Finlay's poems are really sculptures: inscribed paving slabs, or sundials with fancy mottoes. You hardly need to read those at all.

But I adore his tiny book of very short poems The Dancers Inherit the Party. The title poem alone (which is even better than its title) does more for me than entire books of more serious poetry. There are so many different kinds of poems (strictform, freeverse, keens, squibs, surrealist homilies) that even turning the pages is an adventure.

I also love the way that one of Scotland's most uncompromising modernists is also a poet of the islands.

Poet

At night, when I cannot sleep,
I count the islands
And I sigh when I come to Rousay
-- My dear black sheep.

It is as if Finlay doesn't care about schools or loyalties. He knows what is to say, and simply selects the swiftest route.

......

'Buying' Ian Hamilton Finlay's work is problematic in some respects.

But you could start here:

http://www.poets.org/sponsor-book-pr...prmBookID/1015