#Raymond Antrobus

[lifeinpoetry]

What are they singing to us? Is it painless to listen? Will music soothe our anxious house?

— Raymond Antrobus, from "Upwards (For Ty Chijioke)," All the Names Given

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

From The New Yorker - 'Signs, Music' by Raymond Antrobus...

[Irish Centre for Poetry Studies]

[barrowsteeth]

Loveable by Raymond Antrobus All The Names Given (2021)

[ID in ALT]

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Signs, Music: Poems

By Raymond Antrobus.

[poem-today]

A poem by Raymond Abtrobus

THE PERSEVERANCE

Love is the man overstanding Peter Tosh

I wait outside The Perseverance. Just popping in here a minute. I’d heard him say it many times before like all kids with a drinking father watch him disappear into smoke and laughter.

There is no such thing as too much laughter, my father says, drinking in The Perseverance until everything disappears — I’m outside counting minutes, waiting for the man, my father to finish his shot and take me home before

it gets dark. We’ve been here before, no such thing as too much laughter unless you’re my mother without my father, working weekends while The Perseverance spits him out for a minute. He gives me 50p to make me disappear.

50p in my hand, I disappear like a coin in a parking meter before the time runs out. How many minutes will I lose listening to the laughter spilling from The Perseverance while strangers ask, where is your father?

I stare at the door and say, my father is working. Strangers who don’t disappear but hug me for my perseverance. Dad said this will be the last time before, while the TV spilled canned laughter, us, on the sofa in his council flat, knowing any minute

the yams will boil, any minute, I will eat again with my father, who cooks and serves laughter good as any Jamaican who disappeared from the Island I tasted before overstanding our heat and perseverance.

I still hear popping in for a minute, see him disappear. We lose our fathers before we know it. I am still outside The Perseverance, listening for the laughter.

Raymond Antrobus

Listen to Raymond Antrobus introduce and read his poem (54:10).

The Perseverance (pictured above) is a pub on Broadway Market in London.

More poems by Raymond Abtrobus are available on his website.

© 2018, Raymond Antrobus From: The Perseverance

[7r0773r]

All the Names Given by Raymond Antrobus

The Acceptance

Dad’s house stands again, four years after being demolished. I walk in. He lies in bed, licks his rolling paper, and when I ask Where have you been? We buried you. He says I know, I know. I lean into his smoke, tell him I went back to Jamaica. I met your brothers, Losing  you made me need them. He says something I don’t hear. What?  Moving lips, no sound. I shake my head. He frowns. Disappears. I wake in the hotel room, heart drumming. I get up slowly, the floor is wet. I wade into the bathroom, my father standing by the sink, all the taps running. He laughs and takes my hand, squeezes, his ring digs into my flesh. I open my eyes again. I’m by a river, a shimmering sheet of green marble. Red ants crawl up an oak tree’s flaking bark. My hands are cold mud. I follow the tall grass by the riverbank, the song. My deaf Orisha, of music, Oshun, in brass bracelets and earrings, bathes my father in a white dress. I wave. Hey! She keeps singing. The dress turns the river gold and there’s my father surfacing. He holds a white and green drum. I watch him climb out the water, drip toward Oshun. They embrace. My father beats his drum. With shining hands, she signs: Welcome.

***

The Rebellious

hold what they can in front of a supermarket

or police station or voting booths. I am

kind to the man sitting next to me

in C.L.R. James Library, even if his breathing disturbs me.

Can we graciously disagree? I am tired of people

not knowing the volume of their power. Who doesn’t

deserve some silence at night?

***

For Tyrone Givans

The paper said putting him in jail without his hearing aids was like putting him in a hole in the ground.

There are no hymns for deaf boys. But who can tell we're deaf without speaking to us?

Tyrone's name was misspelled in the HMP Pentonville prison system. Once, I was handcuffed,

shoved into a police van. I didn't hear the officer say why. I was saved by my friend's mother who threw herself

in the road and refused to let the van drive away. Who could have saved Tyrone? James Baldwin attempted suicide

after each of his loves jumped from bridges or overdosed. He killed his characters, made them

kill themselves—Rufus, Richard, Black men who couldn't live like this. Tyrone, I won writing awards

bought new hearing aids and heard my name through the walls. I bought a signed Baldwin book.

The man who sold it to me didn't know you, me or Baldwin. I feel I rescued it. I feel failed.

Tyrone, the last time I saw you alive I'd dropped my pen on the staircase

didn't hear it fall but you saw and ran down to get it, handed it to me before disappearing, said,

you might need this.

***

In Law

I feel the cuffs in his voice when he greets me. It should go without saying that you are no man’s property,

that I would not touch you anywhere you don’t want. These things have nothing to do with bullets

even though I’m never far from the father that would kill me faster than life can flash

blue then darkness, so let me say, love, my arms are in the air.

***

Outside the marriage registry in Jefferson Parish there’s a 10-foot statue of Thomas Jefferson

I felt-tip the forms declaring alien immigrant. Where the form asks my race,

I write Black / White, hand it to a man who points at my words,

says I cannot be two races. His short wool hair flinches in the air-conditioned room;

his badge says his name is Jeff.

***

Closer Captions

After Christine Sun Kim

[muffled]

[sound of one story]

[heart accelerating]

[sound of skin covering bodies]

[sound of wider seeing]

I lose my hearing aids and move more fluid

the same way I do  when I swim the way I do when I sex

the thing  the neighbours hear

through the walls is me being pushed out of myself

It’s silence that stills  the noise in my eyes.

Reader, this is the place I try to take you when I close them.

[writerly-ramblings]

Books Read in November:

1). All the Names Given (Raymond Antrobus)

2). Elizabeth Finch (Julian Barnes)

3). The Red Parts (Maggie Nelson)

4). I’d Rather Be Reading (Guinevere de la Mare)

5). Commonwealth (Ann Patchett)

6). The Family (Naomi Krupitsky)

7). The Green Road (Anne Enright)

8). Plain Pleasures (Jane Bowles)

9). Hopscotch (Hilary Fannin)

10). Read Until You Understand (Farah Jasmine Griffin)

[nicethingsthose]

Signs, Music

The first word my son signed was music: both hands, fingers conducting music for everything—even hunger, open mouth for the choo-chew spoon squealing mmm—music. We’d play a record while he ate music when he wanted milk so I pour and hum a lullaby or “I Just Don’t Know” by Bill Withers because it’s O.K. not to know what you want and I want him to know that. Music is wiping the table after the plates music is feel my forehead for fever is whatever occurs in the center of the body, whatever makes arms raise up, up. The second word my son signed was bird—beaked finger to thumb, bird for everything outside—window, sky, tree, roof, chimney, aerial, airplane—birds. I saw I had given him a sign name. Fingers to eyes raising from thumbs—wide eye meaning watchful of the earth in three different roots—Hebrew, Arabic, Latin—I love how he clings to my shoulders and turns his head to point at the soft body of a caterpillar sliding across the counter, and signs, music.

Raymond Antrobus

[nevinslibrary]

Totally Youthful Tuesday

Oh, this is the coolest book. It’s all about Little Bear. He not always certain what people are saying around him. Especially all those who are asking him “can bears ski”. It even seems like he’s ignoring his friends. But… then he goes to an “audiologist”, and he gets answers to his questions. But, even those answers and the solution to his problem, bring new questions, and just plain loudness.

It’s such an amazing and slightly sideways way to approach deafness and all that surrounds it. I also really liked that it takes a kid centric look at all the issues too. Totally from Little Bear’s point of view, not imposing any sort of adult-ish point of view on it. A great read.

You may like this book If you Liked: Boy by Phil Cummings, I Yam a Donkey by Cece Bell, or Party Problems by C.L. Reid

Can Bears Ski? by Raymond Antrobus

[nsantand]

Raymond Antrobus – Duas armas no céu para Daniel Harris

"Duas armas no céu para Daniel Harris", um poema de Daniel Harris

Quando Daniel Harris saiu do carro1,o policial estava à espera. Arma erguida. Uso o pretérito, embora seja irrelevantena língua de Daniel, que é a dos sinais. Sinais não têm futuro nem pretérito; é língua do presente.Nunca se está mais presente do que quando uma arma é apontada para você. Que língua expressa issose não a dos sinais? Mas o policial viu mãos acenando no ar, disparou e Daniel…

[seaanimalonland]

With Birds You’re Never Lonely | Raymond Antrobus

I can’t hear the barista over the coffee machine.

Spoons slam, steam rises. I catch the eye of a man

sitting in the corner of the cafe reading alone

about trees which is, incidentally, all I can think about

since returning. Last week I sat alone

on a stump, deep in Zelandia forest with sun-syrupped Kauri trees

and brazen Tui birds with white tufts and yellow and black beaks.

They landed by my feet, blaring so loudly I had to turn off my hearing aids.

When all sound disappeared, I was tuned into a silence that was not an absence.

As I switched sound on again, silence collapsed.

The forest spat all the birds back, and I was jealous—

the earthy Kauri trees, their endless brown and green trunks of sturdiness.

I wondered what the trees would say about us? What books would they write if they had to cut us down?

Later, stumbling from the forest I listened to a young Maori woman.

She could tell which bird chirped, a skill she learned from her grandfather

who said with birds you’re never lonely. In that moment I felt sorry

for any grey tree in London, for the family they don’t have,

the Gods they can’t hold.

[lifeinpoetry]

Once I’d seen him stand behind my mother’s market stall when a woman held up a necklace my mother made, and ask him how much it was, and he turned to my mother, said Rose? And he said it like something in him grew towards the light.

— Raymond Antrobus, from "Arose," All the Names Given

[martyncrucefix]

'The Man Overstanding' - on Raymond Antrobus' 'All The Names Given'

Genuinely acclaimed first books can be hard to follow up. Raymond Antrobus’ The Perseverance (Penned in the Margins, 2018) was a Poetry Book Society Choice and won the Ted Hughes Award and the Rathbone’s Folio Prize in 2019. I reviewed the book that year as one of the five collections shortlisted for the Forward Felix Dennis First Collection Prize. In many ways it was a conventional book of poems…

[commonplac3s]

And That by Raymond Antrobus

Chicken wings / and that Boss man / salt in them / and that

Don’t assault man / give man a nap- Kin / Big man / no steroid / and that

Dark times / new street lights / and that How’s man? / I’m getting by / and that

Still / boy dem / harass Not beefin’ / not tagged / man / still trapped

Cycle man / I peddle / and that On road / new pavements / leveled / and that

Crackney changed / still / stay dwelling / and that Paradise moves / but I got to land grab

We E8 / East man / ain’t got to adapt Our Kingdom / got no land to hand back

Man / chat breeze / chat Trade winds / and that

You out ends / got good job / legit / and that? Locked off man dem / stay plotting / and that

Rah, Ray / flower shorts? / You hipster / in that Man gone / Vegan? / no chicken wings / and that

[imaginemirage]

[fayrobertsuk]

Poetry for ALL

Some personal anecdotes and a plea follow...

As quite a few of you know, I’ve been engaged in disability awareness and rights campaigning and other work since sometime in the 90s, so when I was given an opportunity to support and host an event dedicated to making performance poetry as accessible as possible in 2018, I jumped on it.

(image description in alt text)

Poetry for All is the brainchild (and heartchild, and soulchild) of Rose Drew, who I first met through one of Richard Tyrone Jones’s Utter events in London. She’s an extraordinary writer and performer, and a powerhouse of an events host and organiser. Within about 30 seconds of watching her on stage, I knew I wanted to be like her when I grew up as an artist. When she got in touch three years later to ask if I’d like to help out with what turned out to be the inaugural event, I threw myself into providing as much support as possible with enthusiastic abandon, and we pulled together a line-up which included the extraordinary performers Raymond Antrobus and DL Williams (“DeafFirefly”), both of whom I’d performed with before and was keen to see again. 

Now, there’s a whole section on our new website about the history of the events where you can read the facts, but I want to say here that, personally, that first event in March 2018 (coincidentally on my birthday!) was an absolute eye-opener – seeing how poetry events could expand and develop the ideal of accessibility in ways I hadn’t considered. It was also extremely inspirational as I realised that, well, I was allowed to write about my disabilities. Seeing and hearing artist after artist sharing so much and so eloquently unlocked something in me that I didn’t even know I’d been repressing:

I’m allowed to be an openly disabled poet. I’m allowed to express my neurodivergence. I can tell my truth. 😱🤯

Bit of a culture-shock, but I owe so much to the poets and to Rose (and to Dave Wycherley, BSL interpreter extraordinaire – that’s a hard and physically/ mentally taxing job as it is, but to do that with poetry? on the fly?! breathtaking...) for helping me get to that starting point, knocking down the walls of my own internalised ableism.

So, apart from a paean to self-expression and why representation and finding tribe matters, and a screed of gratitude for new friends made and old friendships strengthened through the course of these events, why am I writing this? What’s with the hashtag? “Plea...?”

Well, so far, since you ask, all of our events have had local funding in York, where they’ve taken place exclusively so far. Rose applied for Arts Council England funding for this and next year for a tour comprising several venues and a host more disabled artists and BSL interpreters from various parts of the UK (all getting paid properly!), but we found out last week that we’d not got the money. Any of it. So our forthcoming event on 24th November in the gorgeous National Centre for Early Music is in jeopardy and, since the thought of Rose (herself a disabled artist on low wages) having to pay for this out of her own pocket was not to be supported, I threw myself at a plan of creating a (somewhat last-minute) Crowdfunder, so that we can at least pay for the venue, the artists’ and interpreters’ fees, the travel and accommodation expenses of those of us coming from out of town, and the costs of producing merchandise to sell. We’ll be producing an anthology in print and ebook form, as a joint publication between indie publishers Stairwell Books and Allographic Press. And, if we exceed our funding goal, there’ll be video and audio available of the event to boot!

We’ve created a frankly very exciting range of pledge rewards for people wanting to support us (all the way from £1 and £2 options, since money is tight, especially for disabled folk, right now, to more chunky ones like private mentoring, workshops, and a publishing package), and we’ve got three weeks(!) to raise our £1,500 to cover the shortfall from ticket and merch sales. Eeep! So, if you’re able to and would like to help us, we’d be ever so grateful. The campaign is here:

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/poetry-for-all-2023-fundraiser

And if you have absolutely no funds to share with us at all, we’d be incredibly grateful if you shared on social media, with friends, on blogs, all of that!

Thanks for reading all this, and have a great day!