Peter Finch

A personal ramble around the book world from the man who has experienced all sides of it. This book has something for everyone: writers, academics, critics and other enthusiasts in search of a no-holds-barred personal history; administrators wishing to navigate the obstacle course that is funding writers and writing; fans hunting data on the Poetry wars of the 70s, and fellow litterateurs who will want to check whether they have received a mention in these pages. Few others in Wales know the business and how we got here like Finch does. And few others will have been capable of reporting back in such an entertaining fashion.

Five poems from five poets. The bus pass tour.

This book has something for everyone: writers, academics, critics and other enthusiasts in search of a no-holds-barred personal history; administrators wishing to navigate the obstacle course that is funding writers and writing; fans hunting data on the Poetry wars of the 70s, and fellow litterateurs who will want to check whether they have received a mention in these pages. If you’re new to the game and seeking publication, or just someone who enjoys the cut and thrust of the literary world, then this book is for you. Few others in Wales know the business and how we got here like Finch does. And few others will have been capable of reporting back in such an entertaining fashion.

Peter Finch and John Briggs build on the success of their book Walking Cardiff and venture outside the capital and into the very different world of the Valleys. Over the past two centuries the Valleys have gone from idyllic rural landscape to the engine room of the British Empire to post industrial decline. As centres of coal mining and iron and steel-making, the Valleys saw over a hundred thousand people crammed between their steep sides. Their industry produced not only fuel and products exported around the world, but also archetypal working class communities, with their chapels, union militancy, self-funded workers’ institutes, and seemingly unbreakable identities. Fuelled by massive immigration, they were also a social experiment in assimilation and radical politics. Now the pits and foundries have become heritage sites, the chapels are retail centres or housing, and Finch and Briggs explore how the Valleys have changed, and what they have become. Their forward-looking book is also one of record, as the towns and villages evolve into the twenty-first centuries. This is their take on Abercynon, Aberdare, Aberfan, Bargoed, Caerphilly, Gelli, Gelligaer, Merthyr Tydfil, Pontypridd, Porth, Rhymney, Taffs Well, Tonypandy, Treherbert and Ystrad Mynach. The informative texts can be used as both a route finder and a literary entertainment in themselves. Armchair walkers will find the book as interesting and as useful as those actually pull on their boots. And natives and visitors alike will find a new discovery around every corner. Each walk is illustrated with a map and photographs by John Briggs.

Peter Finch is perhaps the foremost chronicler of Cardiff, past and present. His response to the 2020 lockdown restrictions confining people to their local authority area was to begin walking the boundary of his. This was in a mirror of his long walk along the south Wales coast recorded in Edging the Estuary. The Cardiff border rarely appears on maps. The city is no longer has walls (like York or Chester), or a modern transport périphérique like London’s M25. Instead its dotted line boundary travels across fields, along motorways, up rivers, through forests, over rail tracks and along miles of intertidal mudflats following the edge of the Severn. The border itself is made up of waymarked trails, city streets, highway liminal zones, woodlands. Mud-soaked tracks up hillsides, bridges, diversions, disentanglements and discoveries all play a part in this informative text created for walkers and armchair travellers alike. Edging the City explores (often literally) why and where borders exist, their purposes, their love of water courses. It discusses other cities with walkable borders including York, Chester, London, Paris, Bruges and Seoul. It considers legal and geopolitical reasons for borders (the battles over placement of ‘Welcome’ signs, for instance), how they change and what happens when politics crosses boundaries. Cardiff’s medieval and other boundaries are tracked. The border is walked, run and sailed. Finch talks to ultra runners who have traversed the 50 plus mile route in a single day. He provides textual diversions on border history, north Cardiff trees, words for mounds, the mountains of Cardiff, the city’s coalmines, its triads, historical figures, battles, hill forts, poets, politicians, housing developments and other divertissements. There’s a city’s edge playlist which filled the author’s head as he strode available on Spotify. Edging the City is a view of Cardiff like no other, full of insights and discoveries.

The two volumes of Peter Finch’s Collected Poems chart the course of a remarkable writing career. After reading Allen Ginsberg’s Howl as a young man Finch was inspired to become a poet, found the Second Aeon magazine and publishing house, and become a poetry entrepreneur, bringing to all these things an unquenchable vitality which set him apart in contemporary poetry. This first volume makes available poems from long lost chapbooks, broadsheets and limited editions, as well as more conventionally published work. Here are concrete poems, sound poems, typographical poems, visual poems, poems in cartoon form or as crumpled photocopies. Whatever their form, Finch’s poems are always vivid and alive, pulsing with inventive energy. As he says himself, this is work which pushes the idea on until it breaks, flowers, or dissolves. It means that Finch’s writing can never be taken for granted. The Collected Poems is also a restless exploration of the ideas behind the poems. It is a testament to the experimental in literature, to ways of doing it differently, and to an alternative modernist culture in Wales and Britain. Consequently, invaluably, they also open a window on a poetry scene seemingly lost from view to the twenty-first century. They remind us that there was interesting and vital writing happening outside of what has calcified into the canon of twentieth century British poetry. And that Finch was at its cutting edge with poets like Bob Cobbing and Henri Chopin Paul. Editor Andrew Taylor has included an informative Introduction, a timeline of Finch’s artistic activity, and helpful notes. The book is completed by poet Nerys Williams’ appreciative Foreword.

The two volumes of Peter Finch’s Collected Poems chart the course of a remarkable writing career. After reading Allen Ginsberg’s Howl as a young man Finch was inspired to become a poet, found the Second Aeon magazine and publishing house, and become a poetry entrepreneur, bringing to all these things an unquenchable vitality which set him apart in contemporary poetry. This second volume includes poems from the ‘second half’ of Finch’s career, in which his poems also appeared in his prose books, and in public places on sculptures and buildings particularly in his native Cardiff. Yet still the poems continued to ‘operate at the far edges of what poetry is understood to be’. Although the poetry landscape of Britain has changed since Finch’s first published poem in 1968, his desire to experiment, to question what constitutes a poem, and to challenge orthodoxy has remained both undiminished and relevant. The Collected Poems is also a restless exploration of the ideas behind the poems. It is a testament to the experimental in literature, to ways of doing it differently, and to an alternative modernist culture in Wales and Britain. Consequently, invaluably, they also open a window on a poetry scene seemingly lost from view to the twenty-first century. They remind us that there was interesting and vital writing happening outside of what has now calcified into the canon of twentieth century British poetry. And that Finch was at its cutting edge with poets like Bob Cobbing and Henri Chopin Paul. Editor Andrew Taylor has included an informative Introduction, a timeline of Finch’s artistic activity, and helpful notes. The book is completed by poet Ian McMillan’s perceptive Foreword.

Machineries of Joy is the vibrant, uproarious, pointed and wildly entertaining new collection from renowned Cardiff-based performance poet, Peter Finch. Known for his inventive and multi-faceted formal strategies and his best-selling psycho-geographical peregrinations around Wales and the USA,Finch gives us the world in all its contemporary complexity.

Poet and psychogeographer Peter Finch undertakes 20 walks around his native city, picking out features en route and providing interesting stories, historical and contemporary, about life in the city past and present. His sharp eye and compendious knowledge of Cardiff is illustrated by photographer John Briggs’ images in a lively guide to the city.

Discover more of Cardiff in this latest volume by Peter Finch, Real Cardiff – The Flourishing City. In it the Cardiffian continues his vigorous exploration of the obvious and the hidden vistas of the city, discovering new treasures and revisiting past haunts to find them drastically altered over just ten years. The pace of change has never been quicker, surpassing the booms of the city’s nineteenth century heyday, and the clearances and redevelopment of the 1960s and 1970s. Real Cardiff – The Flourishing City is a characteristically eclectic mix. Here are the last days of Dic Penderyn, the ornate Mahogany Room above Burger King, the battle for the Vulcan pub, the wedding at Charles Street Carnival, the inside track on Howell’s School, the Cross at Culver, the Great Heath, and the lure of Penylan Quarry, among so many other excursions. Jan Morris called Real Cardiff “one of the very best books about a city I have ever read”, and in this latest book Peter Finch has captured the essence of Cardiff again. Whether you are a Cardiffian or an outsider this book continues the story of Cardiff, and of so many places.

In The Roots of Rock, from Cardiff to Mississippi and Back Peter Finch reflects on how popular music has shaped both his life and the culture in which he lives, from first hearing American music on the radio in his Cardiff home in the 1950s to the compendious and downloadable riches of digital files. Finch has always gone to gigs and now he travels to the bars of Ireland, the clubs of New York, the plains of Tennessee, the flatlands of Mississippi and the mountains of North Carolina to get a feel for the culture from which his favourite music originates. The resulting book mixes musical autobiography with an exploration of physical places in western Europe and the US. It is a demonstration of the power of music to create a world for the listener that is simultaneously of and beyond the place in which it is heard. Finch marks his journey with reminiscences of music in Britain from skiffle and early Cliff Richard pop to Bill Cotton and his Band to Champion Jack Dupree playing the local British Legion. There are asides on forming your own (destined to fail) band, the rise of folk music, the arrival of the blues and the burgeoning Welsh language scene. In the US come visits to Dollywood, Graceland, Muscle Shoals, Grand Ole Opry and Stax, plus the Appalachian mountains and the crossroads on Highway 49 where Robert Johnson made his devilish pact. The cast of musicians includes Muddy Waters, Taylor Swift, Bessie Smith, Tommy Steele, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Chris Tweed and singing cowboys. They are joined by music historians like Cecil Sharp, Maud Kapeles and Harrison Mayes who helped formalise and save traditions, by jugbands, gospel choirs and Anne Nichols, the tragic Knoxville Girl. Each chapter is accompanied by a multi-track play list to help the reader have the full flavour of what Finch’s musical experiences and bring alive the many sharp witted stories and thoughtful cultural connections. The result is an entertaining, informative book from which the reader will learn much and hear more.

In the Middle Ages, the port of Cardiff stretched all the way from Chepstow to Gower. Peter Finch, archetypal Cardiffian, sets out to explore his heritage, walking the Welsh side of the Severn Estuary – reclaiming personal memories and discovering the lives of others. He then crosses over to England, taking in cultural differences with every step and looking at his homeland from abroad.Rich in anecdote, evocative in description, the book takes in villages and cities, power stations and fishermen, castles and caravans, leg-aching walks and deckchairs on the beach. The tragedy of Lynmouth, the competing delights of Porthcawl, Barry and Weston-super-Mare, the industrial sites of Usk and Port Talbot, the fate of Cardiff, Newport and Swansea docks, the ancient trackways of Swansea Bay and the Star Inn at Neath are just some of the many stories which punctuate Finch's epic walk along some of the most beautiful coastline in Britain.Peter Finch lives in Cardiff. He won the Ted Slade Award for Service to Poetry in 2011; his most recent collection is Zen Cymru (Seren, 2010). He is Series Editor of Seren's Real series of travel guides, and author of Real Cardiff (2004), Real Cardiff Two (2004), Real Cardiff Three (2009) and Real Wales (2008).

Llanelli stands on several borders in Wales. Industrial town, or still belonging to its rural Carmarthenshire hinterland? Welsh or Englishspeaking? Plaid or Labour? Shaped by its workers or by the small number of families who employed them? It all makes Llanelli that much more interesting than a town of its size has any right to be.Jon Gower has written a lively and engaging account of Llanelli and its environs, from how to pronounce 'Llanelli' to how a village in rural Carmarthenshire became a European centre for iron, steel and tinplate. He examines this industrial heritage but also its residue today, hitching a lift on the delivery of Llanelli-manufactured widgets to a manufacturer in Germany. He charts the industrial decline and transformation into leisure, particularly sport (Stradey or Parc y Scarlets?), beer and the environment. Then there's the nearby cockling, farming inland and the leisure/ ecological development of the coastal path and park.Shaped by and shaping all these things are the people: steelworkers, farmers, professional and amateur sportsmen, artists and writers, the small local bourgeoisie, the famous who may have left the town but still carry a part of it in them.The Llanelli identity may be complex but it is embracedby an almost tribal people.Broadcaster, journalist and writer Jon Gower proves well- equipped to explore Llanelli and its culture in both languages in an entertaining book full of fresh insights and fascinating stories. From Burry Port to Trimsaran it's all there.

Sing Sorrow Sorrow is a chilling collection of supernatural myth and otherworldly horror stories from some of Wales' most exciting new and established authors.From the dark waters of the Styx to the circling birds of the Mabinogion, from the lonely house to cities of the mind, the contemporary stories in Sing Sorrow Sorrow grow out of European folk, fable, fairy tale and legend – all tales which belong to the domain of the underworld. There are ghosts, murderesses, blood-soaked enchantment, black humour and stories with the darkest twists of the imagination – perfect for reading at Halloween, or rather the eve of its pagan Celtic predecessor Samhain. Draw the chair nearer the fire and enjoy.

In the latest ambitious offering from the Real - series, following acclaim for Real Cardiff and Real Cardiff Two, Finch takes on the alien land he didn't know was his, until he grew and went to see it: Real Wales. A cotton-wool nation, full of football and big-brother slim-screen television, or a land of demons, where white robed druids would wail at you through a never ending mist? In muscular, syncopated and witty prose, Finch presents 30 years of journeys through the familiar, the bizarre, and to all those places on the TV weather map he never before had cause to visit. In a country of small and scattered populations, who are all certain of who they are, and where doubt is a quality none possess, Finch comes across poetry in Merthyr, an abandoned castle in Dinas Powys, UFOs and Waldo Williams in West Wales, Jack Kerouac on the beach at Gwbert, the military at Epynt, bizarre sports in Llanwrtyd, flying gravy in Cricieth, panic on Snowdon, and a stripper at the Royal Welsh. Whether reading a mountain as Braille or clearing a tent at Hay with one poem, Finch seeks to embrace the permanently stern independence of spirit he sees across the country. Personal but never pedestrian, in a country where the past is so near the surface but can never quite be picked up, he accompanies oddballs and novelists, historians and local experts, to find something usually forgotten in a world of oil-powered multi-national commercial empires and federal enormity: Small is beautiful.

In population terms, Liverpool isn't a vast city (dwarfed by Birmingham, say), but it looms colossal in the history (recorded and mythical) of the British Isles, and in fact the world. "Real Liverpool" is Niall Griffiths' antidote to the flood of mawkish twaddle that will appear in the build-up to 2008 when Liverpool is European City of Culture.It showcases Griffiths' love/hate relationship with the city, its maritime and merchant histories, class divisions, sectarian divides, Celtic influences, and the siege mentality underpinning the celebrated Scouse humour. Nor does he flinch from Liverpool's dark side: the drugs, the urban blight, the fallout from Thatcherism, the internecine violence. Jamie Bulger, Heysel, Hillsborough, the Dockers' Strike, the Toxeth Riots, all of these and more are discussed."Real Liverpool" is underpinned by a strong autobiographical element which details the author's birth and formative years in the city, his movement away from it, and the abiding pull it exerts. In addition, Griffiths interviews many people closely connected to the city, from personal friends and family members to artists and workers. From the Wirral to Warrington, Anfield to Everton, Bottle to Diddyland, Griffiths criss-crosses the city by the Ferry and through the Tunnels, from John Lennon airport to the racecourse and down the docks, building a picture of a city which, whatever its faults, is never dull.

Peter Finch is the author of "Poems for Ghosts "and""has published more than 20 volumes of verse as well as prose. He writes the self-publishing section for "Writers' & Artists' Yearbook "and is the former editor of the literary magazine "Second Aeon."

Britain's youngest city as you've never seen it before. Just another Victorian port or an Elizabethan maritime centre? A featureless South Wales town or a growing city on the verge of massive and original redevelopment? The "new Seattle" (Paul Flynn) or a haven for single mothers working the system (John Redwood)?From the splendour of Tredegar House to the towering presence of the Celtic Manor Resort, from the bland sixties shopping centre to the bizarre centenarian Transporter Bridge, from the decline of the football team to the continuing proud tradition at Rodney Parade, it's a place full of contradictions and characters. Join Ann Drysdale in her offbeat exploration of Newport – old and new – and its people, as the city becomes the latest place in Wales to get the 'Real' treatment."The prose is often laugh-out–loud, the poetry is always excellently crafted. Versatile in traditional forms, Drysdale has some great pastiche and some wryly moving pieces; it's a successful contrast with the experimental poetry in Peter Finch's Real Cardiff books… Drysdale's book is so essential for anyone wanting to know anything at all about Newport, and such an enjoyable read, that some may hesitate to go there, lest their sojourn prove less amusing and instructive. To Newportians it must be a revelation." New Welsh Review"Drysdale lovingly celebrates 'The Port's' OP histories, investigates local myths and tall stories, and wherever possible, wanders off the beaten track (usually with her dog Otis in tow). For that, she should be applauded…"PlanetAnn Drysdale is a prize-winning poet and former journalist on the South Wales Argus, with a wealth of knowledge of Newport and its people. Her ability to look at both from an oblique and humorous standpoint is unsurpassed.