The Welsh Poems

Peter Finch is a poet, critic, author and literary entrepreneur living in Cardiff, Wales. From 1975 to 1998 he ran the Arts Council of Wales's specialist Oriel Bookshop in Cardiff. He was chief executive of The Welsh Academy and then the national agency Literature Wales from 1999 to 2012. He now writes full time. He works in both traditional and experimental forms. He is best known for his declamatory poetry readings, his creative work based on his native city of Cardiff and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the UK poetry publishing scene.In the sixties and seventies he edited the ground-breaking literary magazine, second aeon, exhibited visual poetry internationally and toured with sound poet Bob Cobbing. In the eighties and nineties he concerned himself with performance poetry, was a founder member of Cardiff's Cabaret 246 and of the trio Horse's Mouth. This was work with props, owing as much to theatre as it did to literature. In the new Millennium he was worked on psychogeographies and alternative guides to his native city of Cardiff. The city has become his obsession.Today he is much in demand as a reader as well as a lecturer at festivals and venues up and down the country. You can get into Finch's performances. There's little deliberate obscurity. His talks on Cardiff and how it is with urban living are always entertaining.Peter Finch has published more than 20 books of poetry including Food, Useful & Poems For Ghosts (Seren), Antibodies (Stride), and The Welsh Poems (Shearsman). His New & Selected Later Poems came from Seren in 2007. His Zen Cymru (Seren) collects more recent work.His prose works include a number of critical guides including How To Publish Your Poetry and How To Publish Yourself (Allison & Busby) as well his famous alternative handbooks, guides and literary rambles, Real Cardiff, Real Cardiff Two and Real Cardiff Three(Seren). With Grahame Davies he edited the anthology The Big Book of Cardiff (Seren). His Edging The Estuary, a book about the lands that surround this great waterway appeared from Seren in 2013. He is currently editing books for Seren's Real series.Peter Finch writes a self-publishing section for A&C Black's Writers' & Artists' Yearbook. He is a regular book reviewer and writes articles on Cardiff, Wales and the business of poetry. His poetry and criticism is widely published in magazines and anthologies.