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.
