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 will be in production for 2009. The Big Book of Cardiff (edited with Grahame Davies) collects contemporary writings by many hands.
The success of Real Cardiff has led to a book encompassing the whole country. Finch's Real Wales (Seren) is now available.
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 citationA blog is 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, the largest set of Welsh literary links available, examples of Finch's own poetry, prose and criticism, concrete, visual and experimental verse, a unique and avantgarde information resource on the poet R.S.Thomas, and a lot more.
Finch's poetry can be read in Food, published Seren Books. His innovative The Welsh Poems has recently appeared from 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)
A new collection Zen Cymru will appear from the same publishers in 2009.
At 57 Productions thirty Peter Finch poems are available for download from 57's new iPoems. You can also view a film of Finch's The Way It Grows (Phil Hayes - camera, Pete Lewis -sound, Paul Beasley - Director) on 57's video-jukebox along with a flash animation by Peter Howard of the poem Blodeuwedd Translated. More work at the edge - check now
Peter Finch's historic magazine second aeon (1966 - 1975) is available again. The past comes back to life with the Poetry Library's online collection of Poetry Magazines. Visit and see what issue 19-21, the huge final smash, was actually like. Read second aeon's history onsite 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.
At Babylon Wales you can read an extended interview which locates Peter Finch's with Cardiff, maps his verse and his attitudes to the avant garde and to Wales. "Finch is the godfather of Welsh literary experimentalism" says Babylon webmaster Anthony Brockway. Check for yourselves.
At The Argotist Online you can read 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 two 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 visible from the road alongside the Rumney River. He is currently working on new public works. Details to follow.
In one page here's a handy Peter Finch biography. Where is Peter Finch appearing next?
Additions to this site include Donny Correia's translations of Finch's work into Portugese, audio & visual files of Peter Finch reading, his essays on British Poetry Since 1945, and on the contemporary poetry scene - Poetry On Top, along with rare historical information on the founding (and final dissolution) of the Welsh Union of Writers.
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.
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