It’s raining. We talk, here, where we always talk.
Where the pavement flares roundly in front of the Action Centre.
Next door is a caff; we never go there.
The rain started as you told me what the worst thing is for you.
It was gentle then but now we are really wet and you don’t seem to
have noticed.
At my shoulder are my Grandmas and behind them, their Grandmas.
They stand, a long line of women getting wet on street corners.
None of us are dreaming of stairs.
by Anna Robinson
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‘”What is more beautiful than a road?”‘ is copyright © Anna Robinson, 2010, and reprinted from the collection The Finders of London by permission of Enitharmon Press.
Notes courtesy of Enitharmon:
Anna Robinson‘s first full collection, The Finders of London, introduces a compelling new voice in poetry. Working-class voices lend strength to Robinson’s own, and with it she mythologizes, catalogues, and searches for the anima and animus of this multi-natured city.
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.
You can read more of Anna Robinson’s work here, and hear her read ‘The Flats’, another poem from this collection, here.
Enitharmon Press takes its name from a William Blake character who represents spiritual beauty and poetic inspiration. Founded in 1967 with an emphasis on independence and quality, Enitharmon has been associated with such figures as Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Kathleen Raine. Enitharmon also commissions internationally renowned collaborations between artists, including Gilbert & George, and poets, including Seamus Heaney, under the Enitharmon Editions imprint. Discover more about Enitharmon here.
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