Thirteen Ways of Looking at Rillie (63)

Edwin Morgan writes: 'Jack Rillie, now retired, was a very distinguished member of the English Department at Glasgow University, and divulged a broad humanism which would make it possible for us to enumerate more than thirteen ways of looking at such a finely exploratory mind.

Several generations of students will testify to his brilliant but never pedantic qualities.

The fact that a special tribute to him in the form of a handwritten version of my poem came from Alasdair Gray, calligrapher and artist as well as novelist and poet, helps to indicate the spread of his interests, as do also "Conversation in Palestine", its unexpected pleasures as yet unpublished, and the 80th birthday poem for Ian Hamilton Finlay, first published in the art-literary magazine "Map".

Many things come together in this remarkable book.'