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
169 notes
·
View notes
Sam Winston: ‘A Delicate Sight’, Texts by Raymond Antrobus, Bernardine Evaristo, Don Paterson, and Max Porter, Designed by A Practice for Everyday Life, London, 2021
Plus: a twenty-minute film about darkness, creativity and life beyond the screen. Featuring Raymond Antrobus, Bernardine Evaristo, Don Paterson, Max Porter and Sam Winston
49 notes
·
View notes
From The New Yorker - 'Signs, Music' by Raymond Antrobus...
[Irish Centre for Poetry Studies]
11 notes
·
View notes
Loveable by Raymond Antrobus
All The Names Given (2021)
[ID in ALT]
3 notes
·
View notes
Signs, Music: Poems
By Raymond Antrobus.
4 notes
·
View notes
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
4 notes
·
View notes
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.
2 notes
·
View notes
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)
5 notes
·
View notes
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
1 note
·
View note
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
1 note
·
View note
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…
View On WordPress
0 notes
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
118 notes
·
View notes
Sam Winston: 'A Delicate Sight', Workshop, Tate Britain, London, October 13, 2023
The Project: A Delicate Sight
18 notes
·
View notes
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.
1 note
·
View note
'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…
View On WordPress
0 notes
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
0 notes