About the Book
In the wake of his father's death, the speaker in Raymond Antrobus' The Perseverance travels to Barcelona. In Gaudi's Cathedral, he meditates on the idea of silence and sound, wondering whether acoustics really can bring us closer to God. Receiving information through his hearing aid technology, he considers how deaf people are included in this idea. "Even though," he says, "I have not heard / the golden decibel of angels, / I have been living in a noiseless / palace where the doorbell is pulsating / light and I am able to answer."
The Perseverance is a collection of poems examining a d/Deaf experience alongside meditations on loss, grief, education, and language, both spoken and signed. It is a book about communication and connection, about cultural inheritance, about identity in a hearing world that takes everything for granted, about the dangers we may find (both individually and as a society) if we fail to understand each other.
About the Author :
Raymond Antrobus was born in Hackney, London, to an English mother and Jamaican father. He is the author of To Sweeten Bitter, The Perseverance, and All The Names Given. He was awarded the 2017 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize (judged by Ocean Vuong) for his poem 'Sound Machine'. In 2019 he became the first poet to be awarded the Rathbones Folio Prize for best work of literature in any genre. Other accolades include the Ted Hughes Award, the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, and a Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award. All The Names Given was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize, and several of his poems were added to the GCSE syllabus in 2022. His picture books for children are published by Walker Books (UK) and Candlewick Press (US). Antrobus is an advocate for several D/deaf charities, including DeafKidz International and the National Deaf Children's Society. He divides his time between England and New Orleans.
Review :
An extraordinary debut.-- "Entropy Magazine"
Stunning.-- "New York Public Library"
A memorable collection. . . . Antrobus interlaces wit and pathos as he examines his identity as a deaf British Jamaican man in a world between sign language and speech.-- "The Sunday Times"
Honest, raw and striking. . . . Antrobus captures the feeling of isolation that comes with navigating a world not made for everyone who exists within it.-- "Arkansas International"
Remarkable. Antrobus, who was born deaf, writes about grief, race and violence in lines that are startlingly immediate and provocative.-- "The Washington Post"
Insightful.-- "Cool Hunting"
A poet who traverses a diversity of worlds.-- "Colorlines"
An affecting, accessible, and astonishingly raw collection of poems.-- "October Hill Magazine"
Intimate and searching.-- "The New York Times Book Review"
Antrobus can be gentle, tactile, and pointed in this book--which collects into an affirmation, a pronouncement.-- "The Millions"
Antrobus's evocative, musical honesty is unforgettable.-- "Publishers Weekly, Starred Review"
Innovative and urgent. . . . Deserves a wide readership.-- "BookPage"
It channels Danez Smith, Malika Booker and Caroline Bird, in formal poems, erasures, free verse, innovative use of Makaton symbols, translation, prose, and a blackout version of Ted Hughes' 'Deaf School'; probably the best poem I read all year, and it doesn't even have any words in it.-- "Will Barrett, Poetry School"
Outstanding.-- "Chicago Review of Books"
Emotionally textured and sonically charged. . . . the poem ['Sound Machine'] gyrates through interrogations of grief and ancestry twinned with a brooded meditation on masculinity and selfhood.--Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
This book is a gift, for how it repurposes my understanding of treacherous feelings, and shapes them into something worth sticking around for.--Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Fortune For Your Disaster
At every turn, Antrobus pushes back against flattening, against the tidy narrative--an invidious Ted Hughes poem gets radically revised, an aunt's misheard utterance becomes 'a faint fog horn, a lost river.' 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.--Kaveh Akbar
Clear, unflinching. . . . We expand our comprehension of humanness in encountering these poems, and recognize the limits of language that is only spoken and heard--The Perseverance is language embodied and utterly present.-- "Orion Magazine, Khadijah Queen Recommends"
The Perseverance relates Antrobus's experiences of being biracial and d/Deaf in sharp and beautiful poems. . . . These poems are expressive and beautiful and will leave readers thinking differently about sound and silence.-- "BuzzFeed"
Raymond Antrobus's compelling debut, The Perseverance, confronts deeply rooted prejudice against deaf people.-- "The Guardian"
The Perseverance is an insightful, frank and intimate rumination on language, identity, heritage, loss and the art of communication. . . . These are courageous autobiographical poems of praise, difficulties, testimony and love.--Malika Booker, author of Pepper Seed
