But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry – still. Ian Hamilton Finlay Read Quote
What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff’s officer, or whatever. Ian Hamilton Finlay Read Quote
If the work is pure then you have to think it could be understood. If it is not understood it doesn’t mean that your work is not accessible. It doesn’t worry me, but, of course, I would be pleased if people liked my work. Ian Hamilton Finlay Read Quote
I am always a beginner. I only try to include different parts of life; the pastoral, the tragic, et cetera. Ian Hamilton Finlay Read Quote
The same sort of thing happened in my dispute with the National Trust book: Follies: A National Trust Guide, which implied that the only pleasure you can get from Folly architecture is by calling the architect mad, and by laughing at the architecture. Ian Hamilton Finlay Read Quote
My position is that since the non-secular status of my garden is not recognised by the law; by the world of the public, then the garden can only be private. So, I closed the garden to the public. Ian Hamilton Finlay Read Quote
I came to these mediums through having the garden, and of course, people who have designed gardens have always worked in collaboration, and never made their own inscriptions. Ian Hamilton Finlay Read Quote
No, I don’t make my work in order to challenge or confuse other people’s expectations – I only do what I find natural. Ian Hamilton Finlay Read Quote
For me concrete poetry was a particular way of using language which came out of a particular feeling, and I don’t have control over whether this feeling is in me or not. Ian Hamilton Finlay Read Quote
