Finlay's two early books of poems are The Dancers Inherit the Party, 1960, reprinted 1962 & 1969, and Glasgow Beasts, An a Burd, 1961, reprinted several times up to 1965. Glasgow Beasts, denounced by Hugh MacDiarmid, was an important forerunner to Tom Leonard's Glasgow vernacular poems. A small selection of lyric poems published over forty years has recently been collected in The Blue Sail, edited by Thomas A. Clark (Glasgow: Wax 366, 2002).

The indispensible introduction to Finlay is Yves Abrioux's Ian Hamilton Finlay: A Visual Primer. The revised second edition (1992, 318pp, oversized) was published in Britain by Reaktion Press & in the US by MIT Press. Includes essays by Abrioux and by Stephen Bann, a chronology & a bibliography of Finlay's works, over 200 images, and some of the early poems.

For the garden itself, nothing compares to a visit. In the meantime, content yourself with Jessie Sheeler's Little Sparta: The Garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay (London: Frances Lincoln Ltd, 2003). Sheeler's text runs alongside a stunning collection of photographs by Andrew Lawson.

Another source of biographical information, appraisals, and reminiscences is a special double issue of the Scottish literary journal, Chapman (78-9), devoted to Finlay. Highlights from this collection include extracts from Finlay's letters to the Austrian poet Ernst Jandl, Jenny Penberthy's "A Posse of Two: Lorine Niedecker and Ian Hamilton Finlay," and an essay by Alec Finlay linking his father's work to that of Emily Dickinson and Susan Howe.

Poiesis: Aspects of Contemporary Poetic Activity, edited by Graeme Murray (Edinburgh: The Fruitmarket Gallery, 1992), includes Finlay in two essays: Thomas A. Clark's "Poetry and the Space Beyond," and Francis Edeline's "Flowers and Fragments: On Ian Hamilton Finlay and Mary Ellen Solt," (translated by Ken Cockburn), both of which place Finlay, and poetry itself, in a zone of formal play that defies genre.