Book review: There’s Everything To Play For: the Poetry of Peter Finch by Andrew Taylor

Desmond Clifford

Among Welsh writers it’s a challenge to think of many who have contributed more over the last half a century, figuratively and literally, than Peter Finch. The author of this critical volume, Andrew Taylor, lists more than 60 Finch books from 1968 onwards.

Finch became known as an experimental poet but has produced a stream of impressive non-fiction works too, including the popular Real Cardiff series, genre-defying volumes about his home-town and the wider Wales. His non-fiction retains the poet’s eye for detail and quirk and, occasionally, barb.

Peter Finch took up poetry as someone might take up the guitar – because he liked it and wanted a means of expression. Actually, a link with music is a major part pf his poetic personality, and he has written extensively about his musical interests.

Andrew Taylor identifies Finch’s influences, including those from the folk/ performance scene in the 1960s: Dylan, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton and others. Ginsberg’s “Howl” (published in 1956, bought by Finch in 1963) was a massive influence.

Finch was influenced by the fun and accessible Mersey Poets Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten and a lively crop of Welsh poets: Nigel Jenkins, Robert Minhinnick, Mike Jenkins, RS Thomas and others. Finch went from school to work and skipped university and so was spared the Eng Lit litany of Chaucer to Thomas Hardy; by-passing the grand traditions is an invigorating pathway for a poet.

Revolutionary

Finch’s work is hard to put in a box. As Taylor says, “Finch is picking up on the idea that poetry could be something other than what academia and the establishment determined it to be.” After 50 years of rap this idea is no longer as revolutionary as it would have been when Finch started out.

Then, as now, poetry was guarded by an academic squad. I picture them in Star Trek-type uniforms, not explicitly military, but with a suggestion of something martial held in reserve – phaser guns for errant poets? – for revolutionary challenge.

Finch challenged the establishment by creating his own magazine Second Aeon, an open publication which published experimental work alongside more traditional forms, including translated works. Finch rode the last great wave of literary magazines before the computer changed the terms of trade.

Starting with Homer, poetry was conceived for performance. The invention of printing stimulated a more private way to experience poetry and ever since poetry as performance has drifted in and out of fashion. Performance is central to Finch and the best way to experience his work. His is a compelling presence, his voice strong and expressive, his projection undaunted. Taylor crystalises Finch’s approach, “that desire to push forward in the most constructive way (from the poet’s perspective) regardless of consequence or reception.”

Poetry is about sound, of course, whether performed or read. The relationship of poetry with music is clear (and very explicit in rap, for example, a throwback to ancient practice). Finch was closely involved in Cardiff’s music scene; in the 1980s he was part of a poetry performance group, Cabaret 246. Taylor describes Finch using, “props such as a rubber chicken, a loud hailer, exploding caps and ripped-up Mills and Boon novel.” I wish I’d been there!

Lively literary scene

On a trip to Moscow in 1984 – organised by the Russian Writers’ Union – Finch read his work at a football stadium to several thousand people, only a few of whom, I guess, understood English. He went on the trip with Meic Stephens and Brian Morris, other important figures in Wales’ exceptionally lively literary scene in the late 20th century. It’s a world gone by and would make a great film starring Mike Bubbins and Steve Speirs.

Finch managed Oriel Bookshop in Cardiff for 25 years until 1998. This was an outlet for the Welsh Arts Council and a means of bringing Welsh books especially, and with an emphasis on poetry, to a wider public (not without controversy).

For a quarter century Oriel was an institution and part of a sustained effort to raise the profile and visibility of writing in both Welsh and English. As an aside, I went searching for Finch poetry books in Cardiff’s Waterstones the other day and could find none – though they stock plenty of English poets.

Adequate distribution of Welsh writing remains an issue (and I’m not knocking Waterstones; they try hard in other ways).

As a poet, Finch fights against dullness and predictability. In doing so, he rejects tradition and tameness. According to one critic, Nerys Williams, Finch’s engagement with the experimental sets him apart from an Anglo-Welsh tradition which is referential of a “struggle with forefathers”. Finch was influenced by Ned Thomas’s The Welsh Extremist (1971), as were many.

Finch observes that Wales was seen by mainstream British culture, “as a joke and not up to much. I thought this is where I live and it’s not like that.” Finch has a keen sense of politics and identity but avoids his work slipping into propaganda, a common enough bear-trap in Welsh poetry.

Millenial period

Taylor’s chapter on the millennial period is fascinating. This is the first text I’ve read on the impact of devolution on culture, quoting Finch, “a sea change in how many of us began to feel about our country.”

More specifically, and interestingly, Finch says, “Being a Welsh writer began to take on a new and considerably less down-trodden meaning.” At a stroke, this insight explodes the business model of RS Thomas (who died shortly after devolution began) and there are other writers yet to get the memo.

I have a special interest in his poem, “Words Beginning With A From The Government’s Welsh Assembly White Paper.” This is a poem inspired by the 1997 White Paper (A Voice for Wales) which outlined the form devolution would take in Wales. It was the most significant white paper in Welsh history and, as it happens, in a previous life, my first job as a civil servant was to promote its parliamentary launch in London (bizarrely in London, it seems to me now, but that’s where Welsh politics happened before devolution).

This poem extracts words from the white paper and adds other words not in the document, such as “arse”, “arseweakness”, “apathy”. The poem ends with the words “wishing wells”, both a striking phonic juxtaposition and an aspiration or aspersion linked to the project. If only the Welsh Office, of which I was a part in 1997, had enough wit and vision to have commissioned a poetic response to devolution to run alongside the official version.

This same impetus, a sense of Wales changing, inspired the Real Cardiff series of books for which Finch has become best known in recent decades. The idea originated from John Barnie who commissioned him to write for Planet magazine on the dramatic changes underway in Cardiff in the late 1990s – so dramatic they were visible from Planet HQ in Aberystwyth.

This led first to an article, then a website (Finch was an early mover on the internet, unusually for a writer), and, ultimately, a series of books, “psycho-geographies” of Cardiff. The concept expanded to include other parts of Wales and other authors. The books are original and insightful. They are not travel books, at least not in the conventional sense; Finch knew Cardiff intimately to begin with so he’s hardly “discovering” a geography.

Instead, he is experiencing a familiar place through a new lens and writing about how he feels in this new association. The books enable him to quote his poetry in a fresh context and the cross-over, as Taylor notes, gives his work new impetus. Finch’s poetry appears in two substantial volumes of Collected Poems, a thousand pages worth. His work doesn’t easily lend itself to short excerpts and is best experienced through live performance. There’s plenty on youtube and a generous amount of his work appears online.

Mistake

I suggest it might be a mistake to settle down with Peter Finch’s poetry and declaim it as you might Keats or RS Thomas. Better, perhaps, to work with the poems like a crossword or sudoku. The poems are playful, even when serious, and bear exploration. There’s usually an internal logic at work which will yield itself when you pick at it and connect the dots.

Andrew Taylor clearly enjoys Finch’s work. This is a major advantage; critical volumes by authors who don’t like their subjects are glum. The book provides a synthesis of Finch’s long and multi-faceted career as poet, prose writer, musician, book seller, provocateur, editor, entrepreneur, performer. I’ve tried to avoid using the words “avant-garde” for fear of its reductive capacity but if by that we mean inventive, funny, playful, impactful – then the phrase fits.

There is a case for saying that Welsh poetry has been, in the popular mind, both sustained and squashed by the behemoth Thomases, Dylan and RS. Like greedy flowers, they tend to suck all the water and bend to block the sunlight. While magazine coverage of Welsh poetry has been dynamic, critical analysis in book form is rarer and it’s a pleasure to read this companion overview of Peter Finch’s quirky, original and continuing work.

There’s Everything to Play for: The Poetry of Peter Finch by Andrew Taylor is published by Seren Books and is available from all good bookshops.