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The Poet Index · Entry 1365

Raymond Antrobus
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“Raymond Antrobus was born in 1986 at Homerton Hospital in Hackney, East London, to an English mother and a Jamaican father who immigrated to England in the 1960s for work.”

Editorial intro

Storgy editorial

Editorial intro

Raymond Antrobus placed deaf experience at the formal and philosophical center of English poetry, redefining it as an epistemological condition that alters how language is perceived, missed, felt through the chest, and expressed on the page. His 2018 debut collection *The Perseverance* won both the Ted Hughes Award and the Rathbones Folio Prize—the latter being awarded to a poet for the first time.

He occupies a space at the intersection of the British spoken-word tradition, Black British and Caribbean literary heritage, and the Deaf Arts movement. This amalgamation surprises readers who might expect a singular focus. Instead, they discover a poet equally at home with elegy and formal compression as with the stage, whose work appears in GCSE syllabi, children’s literature, a BBC Radio 4 documentary, and a memoir, maintaining the intimacy that gave his early poems their impact.

Full poem text lives on Poetry Foundation and poets.org — we link directly.

Biographical record

About Raymond Antrobus

Raymond Antrobus was born in 1986 at Homerton Hospital in Hackney, East London, to an English mother and a Jamaican father who immigrated to England in the 1960s for work. As a child, he was thought to have learning difficulties; his deafness was diagnosed at six. This delay significantly influenced his relationship with language and communication, permeating his work as a lived issue rather than a literary notion. At home, poetry adorned the walls: his mother displayed William Blake's "London," and his father showcased Evan Jones's "The Song of the Banana Man." Antrobus’s father, born in rural Jamaica as one of seven brothers, lived with an aunt in Kingston before coming to England, and Antrobus felt his father’s deep voice as vibrations while lying on his chest during bedtime reading. This sensory memory of language as physical contact became a driving force in his poetry.

Antrobus began performing poetry in 2007 and found his first community in the London slam and open-mic scene. His first poetry mentor was Malika Booker when he was around twenty-one. He became one of the first recipients of an MA in Spoken Word Education from Goldsmiths, University of London, and helped establish Chill Pill at The Albany in Deptford and the Keats House Poets Forum between 2010 and 2018, co-curating work by Kae Tempest, Warsan Shire, Inua Ellams, and others. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Complete Works 3, and Jerwood Compton and was shortlisted for Young Poet Laureate of London in 2015.

“His publishing journey began with the pamphlet *Shapes & Disfigurements of Raymond Antrobus* (Burning Eye Books, 2012), followed by *To Sweeten Bitter* (Outspoken Press, 2017), focused on the father-son relationship, featuring a foreword by Margaret Busby.”

That year, his poem "Sound Machine," first published in *The Poetry Review*, won the Geoffrey Dearmer Award, judged by Ocean Vuong. His debut full collection, *The Perseverance* (Penned in the Margins, 2018), explored themes of deafness, the death of his father, his mother's dementia, and his Jamaican-British heritage. Critics hailed the collection as colloquial, historical, and formally varied. It won the Ted Hughes Award in March 2019, judged by Linton Kwesi Johnson and others, and the Rathbones Folio Prize in May 2019, marking the first time that prize went to a poet. It was also shortlisted for the Griffin Prize, the Jhalak Prize, and the Somerset Maugham Award, named Poetry Book of the Year by both *The Guardian* and *The Sunday Times*, and later won the Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award.

Subsequent work broadened his reach across forms. *All the Names Given* was published by Picador in 2021, followed by *Signs, Music* in 2024. His picture book *Can Bears Ski?* (Walker Books, 2020), illustrated by Polly Dunbar, answered the lack of children's titles featuring a deaf protagonist; in April 2022, deaf actress Rose Ayling-Ellis signed a BSL version on CBeebies, the first story entirely in British Sign Language on the channel. His memoir *The Quiet Ear: An Investigation of Missing Sound* (Hogarth Press, 2025) garnered significant critical acclaim, with *The New York Times* calling it "an insightful, bighearted memoir" and a "nuanced discussion of the ways that race and deafness intersect." Antrobus became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020, was appointed MBE in 2021, and named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2026. Two of his poems were included in the UK's OCR GCSE syllabus in 2022.

Reader questions

Frequently asked

How did Antrobus's deafness affect his early life and education?

His deafness was not identified until he was six, causing years to be misattributed to a learning difficulty. This disconnect between his perception and institutional categorization became a prevalent theme in his writing, particularly regarding miscommunication, misdiagnosis, and the politics of being heard.

What is The Perseverance about, and why did it attract so much attention?

*The Perseverance* (2018) navigates themes of loss for his father, his personal experience of deafness, his mother's dementia, and his Jamaican-British heritage. The Rathbones Folio Prize judges noted its exploration of how people communicate, making it resonate with readers regardless of personal experiences with deafness. It was the first poetry collection to receive that prize.

What is Antrobus's formal range, and what does his voice sound like on the page?

His poems balance spoken-word immediacy and lyrical compression; they vary from elegies to odes, and some engage directly with other poets or deaf history. Malika Booker, his first mentor, described these poems as 'colloquial, historical and conversational,' reflecting their capacity to shift registers within a piece. He emphasizes silence on the page as a meaningful sonic element.

What is the most common misreading of his work?

Readers sometimes interpret deafness in his poems as a metaphor for alienation or outsider status, but Antrobus conveys deafness as a literal, physical, and political condition with its own history and culture. This distinction is crucial: his poems do not invite hearing readers to apply their experiences of exclusion to deafness but challenge them to confront a distinct sensory and linguistic reality.

Which other poets does his work most closely resemble or respond to?

His Jamaican-British background connects him with Linton Kwesi Johnson, whose work his father shared with him, and with Roger Robinson and Kayo Chingyoni, with whom he shares community and formal interests. His Cave Canem fellowship links him to a tradition of African American poetry. Ocean Vuong, who adjudicated the Geoffrey Dearmer Award won by Antrobus in 2017, offers a relevant comparison in their mutual use of autobiography and physical experience without sentimentality.

Where should a new reader start with Antrobus's work?

*The Perseverance* serves as the logical entry point: it is the collection that established his reputation and encapsulates the range of themes and forms present in his work. For insights into the spoken-word and community aspects of his practice, readers should also seek recordings of his performance of 'Dear Hearing World,' which circulated widely before being published.