Raymond AntrobusMBEFRSL is a British poet, educator and writer, who has been performing poetry since 2007.[1][2] In March 2019, he won the Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry.[3] In May 2019, Antrobus became the first poet to win the Rathbones Folio Prize for his collection The Perseverance,[4] praised by chair of the judges as "an immensely moving book of poetry which uses his deaf experience, bereavement and Jamaican-British heritage to consider the ways we all communicate with each other."[5] Antrobus was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020.[6]
Biography
Early years
Raymond Antrobus was born in Hackney, East London, to an English mother and a Jamaican father who in the 1960s had emigrated to England to work.[7][8] As a young child, Antrobus was thought to have learning difficulties, until his deafness was discovered when he was six years old.[3] Speaking of his early years, he has said:
"My dad had a really deep voice, so I never struggled hearing him. His presence was a huge thing for me – being able to lie on his chest and feel his vibrations as he would read the story, there was a dimension of comfort and closeness in that.
My parents would often read to me. My mum would read a William Blake poem and we'd talk about it. My dad would read poems to me by Linton Kwesi Johnson. He put a poem called The Song of the Banana Man by Evan Jones on my bedroom wall and my mum put William Blake's London on my wall. They both had a passion for poetry."[9]
Education and career
Antrobus became a teacher and was one of the first recipients of an MA degree in Spoken Word education from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has had fellowships from Royal Society of Literature, Cave Canem, The Complete Works 3 and Jerwood Compton.[7][3][10] In 2015, he was shortlisted for Young Poet Laureate of London.[11][12]
Interviewed in 2016, he said: "I've had many jobs working in removals, gyms, swimming pools, security, etc, but now I make my living off teaching and touring my poetry... and I've never felt more useful working in education as a Jamaican British poet."[8] Of his beginnings as a poet, he says: "When I realised that I wanted to pursue poetry as a career I started looking for a community. At first I came across the London Slam and Open Mic scene, which to me is more of a community than it is a genre. ... and once I found that community I felt very nurtured by it. So for me, certainly there were people like Karen McCarthy Woolf, Jacob Sam-La Rose, and Roger Robinson who were doing a lot of mentoring at the time, but really my first poetry mentor was Malika Booker, which must have been when I was about 21."[13]
In 2012, Burning Eye Books published the pamphlet Shapes & Disfigurements of Raymond Antrobus,[25] about which one reviewer wrote: "Exploring themes of outsider introspection, family connections, love and tangential inspiration, bestriding the continents in search of the answers to the keys questions, it's a chapbook that summons a chest-swelling furore of emotions."[26] His second pamphlet, To Sweeten Bitter — "a very personal exploration of the father/son relationship"[27] — came out in 2017, the same year as his poem "Sound Machine", first published in The Poetry Review, won the Geoffrey Dearmer Award, judged by Ocean Vuong.[18]
Antrobus's debut book, The Perseverance, was published by Penned in the Margins in 2018, going on to many accolades and critical acclaim. Among those who gave positive reviews of The Perseverance, Kaveh Akbar said: "It's magic, the way this poet is able to bring together so much — deafness, race, masculinity, a mother's dementia, a father's demise — with such dexterity. Raymond Antrobus is as searching a poet as you're likely to find writing today.'"[28] Describing the book as "an insightful, frank and intimate rumination on language, identity, heritage, loss and the art of communication", Malika Booker writes: "These colloquial, historical and conversational poems plunder the space of missing, and absence in speech/ our conversations — between what we hear and what we do not say. ... Thought-provoking and eloquent monologues explore the poet's Jamaican/ British heritage with such compassion, where the spirit and rhythm of each speaker dominates. These are courageous autobiographical poems of praise, difficulties, testimony and love.'"[28]
In June 2022, Antrobus's poems "The Perseverance" and "Happy Birthday Moon" were added to the UK's OCR GCSE syllabus.
In April 2022, Rose Ayling-Ellis, deaf actress and winner of Strictly Come Dancing, made history by signing a BSL version of Antrobus's children's picture book Can Bears Ski? on CBeebies – the first airing of a story told entirely in British Sign Language.[36] That same month Ayling-Ellis signed and performed Antrobus's poem "Dear Hearing World" at the BSL rally on Trafalgar Square in support of the BSL Act.[37]
In April 2019, Antrobus married Tabitha, a photographer and art conservator from New Orleans, with whom he collaborates.[41][42][43] Their son was born in 2021.[44]
^"Chill Pill" ("We showcase Spoken Word at Soho Theatre & The Albany Theatre. Hosted by Deanna Rodger, Raymond Antrobus, Simon Mole, Adam Kammerling & BBC poet Mista Gee"), Shapes And Disfigurements Of Raymond Antrobus: Dedicated to Poetry, Spoken Word & Social Commentary.
