Walking
Cardiff - Peter Finch and urban photographer John Briggs explore
the lesser-known and offbeat parts of the city. Large format. Photographs,
text and maps. £14.99 from Seren Books here.
Check the blog here

The Machineries
Of Joy, first new collection of poetry by Peter Finch in a decade.
Available now. £9.99 direct from Seren here.
"Peter Finch continues to make iconclastic works that sparkle
and spit... his new collection is a painfully joyful achievement -
not only in its command of various genres, including concrete poetry
and the sombre-comic anecdote, but also in the ability to unite his
variety of singing fish in the net of a single poem." Carol Rumens
in The Guardian. A free podcast from Alternative Stories and
Fake Realities is available entirely free here.
Read more about this groundbreaking new vol here.
Second
Aeon (1966-1974) A revised history of Peter Finch's historic magazine.
The past comes back to life. History here,
bibliography of the magazine and the press here.
Oriel. A revised and illustrated history of the Charles Street
and The Friary manifestations of this enterprise. Check here.
Films.
Peter Finch reading A
Welsh Wordscape and Urology
made by the Israeli film maker Omri Lior. Filmed at the end of
2018 these are a cut above the regular face to camera and breathe
new life into two of Peter Finch's most popular poems.
Real Cardiff The Flourishing City, the fourth volume in the series,
is available from Seren Books. Copies can be ordered directly from
the publisher, Seren, here,
or are available from good bookshops. The
blog for book containing extracts and additional material is here.
The Roots Of Rock From Cardiff To Mississippi And Back - Peter
Finch traces the music on both sides of the Atlantic. Music, travelog,
psychogeography, playlists, history. Published by Seren Books @ £9.99.
You can buy directly from the publishers here.
Or from Amazon.
The Roots of Rock blog is here
Edging The Estuary - Finch on the estuary that separates Wales
from England. The new title from Seren. Chepstow to Worm's
Head, Gloucester to Lynmouth, the barrage, the islands, the water.
Now available from Seren. For more information check here
Real Cardiff - the truth about Europe's youngest capital.
A irreverent, informed and thoroughly readable guide to the Capital
of Wales in all its reinvented glory. Cardiff the multi-layered. Cardiff
the multi-cultural. Cardiff the post-industrial. Cardiff the much
bigger that you thought. Based-on and much extending Peter Finch's
books for Seren, the Real Cardiff section
of this site is an essential guide.
Real Cardiff,
the original and first book, is now in its fourth printing, Real Cardiff
Two extends the boundaries. Real Cardiff
Three - The Changing City is the new one and you can check the
content here. The BBC story and photo
slideshow is here.
The Big Book of Cardiff (edited with Grahame
Davies) collects contemporary writings by many hands.
City Littoral
- David Enrique Spellman's film from the Cardiff edge. See
it here
Real Wales
- based on the success of the Real Cardiff series. A book encompassing
the whole country. Finch's Real Wales
(Seren) is available. View the Real Wales Flickr photostream here.
hammer
lieder helicopter speak is Peter Finch's sonic history of twentieth
century music published in folded poster form as #1 in Antonio Claudio
Carvalho's revival of Hansjorg Mayer's sixties futura series.
The Archive
of the Now is an electronic and print collection of poetry. Based
at Queen Mary, University of London, it hosts recordings of over 100
poets based in the UK, including many unique, specially commissioned
recordings unavailable anywhere else. All the recordings can be downloaded
free of charge. Finch's extensive entry including many specially made
recordings is here.
RSAW - For his work in these areas Peter Finch was made an
Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Architects of Wales (RSAW)
in September, 2007. Read the citation
Ted Slade
Award For Service To Poetry. Peter Finch won this award in 2011.
"The Ted Slade Award is given annually to a person who is in
the opinion of the selection panel has given unstintingly of their
time and efforts over many years to promote poetry to a wider audience."
More
info.
Blog with Peter Finch at http://peterfinchpoet.blogspot.com/
The Peter
Finch Archive is also one of the original writers' sites on the
net. Here is collected information on self-publishing, on the poetry
scene, Welsh literary links, examples of Finch's own poetry, prose
and criticism, concrete, visual and experimental verse, a unique and
avant-garde information resource on the poet R.S.Thomas, and a lot
more.
Poetry - Finch's
work can be read in Food, published Seren Books.
His innovative The Welsh Poems is published
by Shearsman. His fat Selected Later Poems
is published by Seren. Download
special purchase offer, three Finch titles for the price of two, here
(44K pdf)
Zen Cymru - Finch's
collection of poetry is available from Seren. More details.
YouTube clip of Peter Finch reading from
Zen Cymru at The Promised Land, Cardiff is here.
You Tube - look
here for embedded files of Peter Finch
performances
Finch as Taliesin Grahame
Davies's tribute poem read at Finch's standing down from his post
as CEO of Literature Wales. Here
Not About Pete
Ifor Thomas's tribute poem. Here
Vizet / Water is
a selected Finch in Hungarian, edited (and for a large part translated)
by the amazing Kinga Kovacs, published by Konkrét Könyvek of Budapest.
Read here. Andrew Wood's videos of readings
from Foodball and the Viset launch in Budapest can
be viewed here
and here.
The Argotist Online
offers a transcription of Zoe Skoulding and Ian Davidson interview
with Peter Finch carried out at Theatre Gwynedd, Bangor, in January,
2006. Here
Public poetry -
Peter Finch's work has been incorporated into five public structures
in Cardiff. Across the entrance, glass frontage, foyer and main corridor
of BT's Internet Data Centre in Cardiff Bay is an extensive extract
from Finch's post-modern interpretation of the work, life and influence
of Wales' greatest twentieth century poet, R S Thomas. The BT
IDC is situated in the west Bay, on the Ferry Road peninsular.
To the east, running across the top of the re-claimed Lamby Way refuse
dump, is a Finch commission which recycles itself as it goes. The
structure is just about visible from the road alongside the Rumney
River. Finch's acrostic concrete poem as part of Jean-Bernard Metais'
L'Alliance is situated outside the new John Lewis store in the center
of Cardiff. Look down not up. His Ballast Bank poem now fronts the
new South Wales Police HQ on James Street in Cardiff Bay. His poem
Kerdif can be read on the front windows of Cardiff's Central
Library
Biography - in one
page here's a handy Peter Finch biography.
Where is Peter Finch appearing next ?
Flickr - Peter
Finch's photostream is here
Slope. Visit also
the Welsh issue of Slope,
the on-line US magazine. Finch's guest edited edition includes everyone
from Dannie Abse to Childe Roland. Find out what's really being written
in Wales today.
Bob Cobbing 1920-2002 - A Tribute.
But
check the rest of the Peter Finch Archive before you go.
