Abstract

The subject of this paper is a work of creative non-fiction by the acclaimed Cardiff poet Peter Finch whose psychogeographical  prose writings constitute his series of 'deep-walking' guides to 'Real Cardiff'. The essay begins by examining the origins and contexts of Edging the City: A Journey Round the Border of Cardiff (2022), including the work of Iain Sinclair, Will Self, Allen Fisher and David McAnish,and within the frames provided by these different influences, it unravels the book's preoccupation with an elusive suburb of Cardiff, Ely. The paper examines how Finch makes a distinctive and original use of web culture but combines this creative technique, through his interest in deep walking and typography and in micro locales and the personality of place, with a highly subjective psychogeography and a personal narrative.  While Ely, and Caerau with which it merged in the nineteenth century, is the specific subject of four chapters in the book, its presence is assiduously maintained throughout the volume.  The essay maintains that drawing on the analysis of micro locales and the concepts of defensible space, dirty realism and Americanisation, Ely is presented in Finch's text, as in the culture of Cardiff itself, as a 'hypercommunity' which (under the influence of an important work of local history and a local, photographic exhibition on which that text was based) is broken down into 'hyperplaces'. The essay examines how Finch's psychogeographical adventure into Ely resonates with other published examples of deep walking in that the activity of walking itself and the unencumbered thinking that it stimulates challenge conventional knowledge boundaries, encourage fresh attentiveness to the minutiae of locales and generate levels of creativity which will have an impact on Welsh literature in the future and on Welsh studies generally.

Keywords: Cardiff, Ely, psychogeography, deep walking, mapping, hypercommunity, hyperplace, web culture, deep topography, environment, Welsh language, defensible space, dirty realism, Americanisation, musical mood boards

How to Cite:

Peach, L. D., (2025) “Cardiff, not Cambridgeshire: Edging Peter Finch's Ely”, International Journal of Welsh Writing in English 12(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16922/ijwwe.12.1