The Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay is one of the most influential artists of the late twentieth century. Controversial, obdurate, famously irascible, he inscribed himself in Scottish culture as the eternal outsider, a poet in exile in his own land, constantly at war with an age that he claimed had lost an essential piety.

Over on his blog, Emmett Stinson comments on my article on creative writing courses in the university, ‘Liberated Zone or Pure Commodification?’ There is much to agree with in Stinson’s post, though his defence of creative writing courses is rather tendentious. Still, there were several points that attracted my attention. In particular, Stinson critiques my […]