Collected Poems: Volume One 1968-1997

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.

About the Author :
Peter Finch is a poet, performer, psychogeographer and literary entrepreneur living in Cardiff. He has been a publisher, bookseller, event organiser, literary agent and literary promoter. Until 2011 he was Chief Executive of Literature Wales. His writing career stretches over 50 years, from early poems in the sixties, through his magazine Second Aeon and its eponymous publisher, through sound, and visual and concrete poetry, via haiku and more conventional forms. He is also a prose writer. Edging The Estuary, the story of where Wales becomes England, appeared in 2013. His musical memoir The Roots of Rock From Cardiff To Mississippi And Back was published in 2016. Edging the City, will be published in 2022. Finch has also edited the Real series of alternative handbooks, literary rambles and guides to Britain’s conurbations. His own Real Cardiff (in four volumes) and Real Wales have appeared in this series. Andrew Taylor is a Liverpool born poet, critic, academic and editor. He is the editor of the Collected Poems of Peter Finch in two volumes (Seren Books, 2022) and the author of four collections of poetry published by Shearsman Books. He is the author of ‘Adrian Henri: A Critical Reading’ (2019), the first critical book on the poetry of Henri. He is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and English and course leader for the BA (Hons.) Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University.

Review :
“Since the early 1970s, Finch has been the principal innovator in Welsh poetry... he deserves a Welsh knighthood.” – Richard Kostelanetz, Dictionary of the Avant-Garde. “For 40 years he has been the Welsh avant-garde, as inventive and as indispensable as he has been consistently undervalued and ignored... one of the few Welsh writers capable of entrancing young students with his verbal chutzpah, his Crazy Gang of words. Henffych, Peter: a hir oes eto i’ch egni ac i’ch dawn.” – M. Wynn Thomas.