Finishing the Picture: Collected Poems

Ian Abbot’s life was one devoted to poetry, but at the time of his early death in 1989 he had published only one collection of poems. To the complete text of that first book, ‘Avoiding the Gods’, this new volume adds poems from Abbot’s archives in the National Library of Scotland - some carefully typed and preserved, destined for publication, others found as drafts, handwritten in notebooks - and those poems (ranging from Abbot’s first appearance in the San Franciscan counter-culture arts journal Kayak in 1968 to a long standing relationship with Lines Review) published during the poet’s lifetime, but uncollected into book form. In his Introduction, editor Richie McCaffery describes his aim as two-fold: to address the abrupt end of Abbot’s poetry and to attempt to secure his reputation as a poet - to help to ‘finish the picture’ of his life and work.