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The Finders of London

The Finders of London

Current price: $15.95
Publication Date: June 1st, 2010
Publisher:
Enitharmon Press
ISBN:
9781904634942
Pages:
64

Description

Anna Robinson's first full collection, The Finders of London, introduces a compelling new voice in poetry. Her poems, set in and around the centre of London, depict a capital both familiar and alien, peopled with figures contemporary and historical: from the residents of present-day Lambeth, to the victims of Jack the Ripper, and to those whose spirits are still embedded in the reflections of a plate-glass office window, in the earth beneath the author’s feet, or in the flotsam washed up on the Thames beach. It’s these working-class voices that lend strength to Robinson’s own, and with it she mythologizes, catalogues and searches for the anima and animus of this multi-natured city. The river Thames is never far away, its foreshore the setting for the long poem that provides the book's title: ‘The Finders of London’, part-chronicle, part-modern fairytale, caked in mud, challenges the morality of its Victorian counterparts while telling a simple and elegant tale of the toshers and the river they live and work under. The strata of London is made up, in this poem, of clay and mud, everyday treasure, and the compassion and loyalty of people living invisible lives. Shortlisted for the inaugural Seamus Heaney Poetry Centre Prize for Poetry in 2011.

About the Author

Anna Robinson was born and lives in London. She has an MA in Public History from Ruskin College, Oxford. Her pamphlet, Songs from the flats (Hearing Eye 2006), was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. In 2001, she became the first recipient of The Poetry School Scholarship and her poetry was featured in the School’s second anthology, Entering the Tapestry, (Enitharmon 2003). Her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Poetry London, Magma, Brittle Star, the reater, In The Company of Poets (Hearing Eye 2003) and Oxford Poets 2007 (Oxford/Carcanet). As part of Poetry International and the South Bank Centre's Trading Places project, Robinson was Poet in Residence in Lower Marsh in 2006. A former tutor in prisons, she is a regular poetry judge for the Koestler Competition and is a founding editor for Not Shut Up! and the newly established Long Poem Magazine.