The Finders of London

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.