The Roots of Rock from Cardiff to Mississippi by Peter Finch

Photo by John Briggs from: http://www.peterfinch.co.uk/pfphoto6.htm

Praise for Peter Finch and his work:

"Since the early 1970s, Finch has been the principal innovator in Welsh poetry.....he deserves a Welsh knighthood." - Richard Kostelanetz, Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes
" Just this side of chaos" - Jon Gower

"almost a wave by himself...." -. Victor Golightly, NWR

" there's no-one writing quite like him in Wales, despite the emergence of younger urban poets in Cardiff and Swansea." -John Barnie, (on Food), Gwales.Com 
            
" I was lucky enough to catch Peter Finch, Welsh performance poet, poetry activist, editor and impresario (he's been central to the Welsh poetry underground scene since the 60s), at a show last week, and was blown away. Wild, witty, staccato and with a voice that hints of Hopkins' Hannibal with a velvet edge, he was doing "tens" without trying. His book Selected Poems is a good place to start" - Todd Swift, in Hungary's virtual magazine @gent

" The man is like Alka-Seltzer. His words (and sounds) fly at you and fizz in your face.....Breathless and manic with dramatic pedigree, and funnnier than most stand-ups, Finch's 'intros' had the audience howling at every turn." -John Elcock, (on a last Thursday performance at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea), Roundyhouse.

"In this book, Peter Finch gets the balance damn near spot on, casting the gentlest of aspersions, giving the knife a tiny twist where necessary, but always while staring you unwaveringly in the eye as a true poet. This is not just true poetry, however, it is also travel writing of the sharpest kind.....Finch's particular skill is his supreme ability to weave the past in with the present, and to that end his illustrations are often exquisite in their sparseness". - Mike Parker on Real Cardiff Two, Planet, April, 2005

"This is a marvellous book - one of the very best books about a city I have ever read. It makes me feel terribly old-fashioned - superficial too, because I have never actually lived in the cities I have written about. I skip most of the poems, which I don't understand, but everything else in it is gripping me so fast that I have momentarily suspended my first ever reading of Wuthering Heights." - Jan Morris, writing to the author.

Taken from: http://www.peterfinch.co.uk/aboutpf.htm

#ReadingDaringly #DarllenBeiddgar