Be My Reader

by Alec Finlay

Be My Reader is a trove of texts made and found by Finlay over the past two decades, touching on philosophy, landscape, dance, football, travel and technology. Affectionate, celebratory and vulnerable by turns, it includes such key texts as his popular homage to Robert Creeley 'I Know A Poem', the long poem-mapping of the Wittgenstein Hut in Norway, and poems which emerged from art projects for civic spaces and landscapes, all interspersed with pitch-perfect renderings of off-key phrases overheard and chanced upon. Formally adventurous and restlessly curious, Be My Reader is a unique confluence of contemporary experimental and generative forms together with the lyric voice.

84 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2012

About the author

Alec Finlay (b. 1960) is a Scottish poet and artist whose work crosses over a range of media and forms. In 2020 he received a Cholmondeley Award for services to poetry. His I remember: Scotland's Covid Memorial was completed in 2022. Publications include I remember (2022), description (2022), a far off land (2018), and gathering (2018). A collected shorter poems, play my game, was published by Stewed Rhubarb in 2023.