Synopses & Reviews
Structured as a two-part sequence poem, Signs,
Music explores the before and after of becoming a father with
tenderness and care — the cognitive and emotional dissonances between the
"hypothetical" and the "real" of fatherhood, the ways our own parents
shape the parents we become, and how fraught with emotion, curiosity,
and recollection this irreversible transition to fatherhood makes one's
inner landscape.
At once searching and bright, deeply rooted and buoyant, Raymond Antrobus's Signs,
Music is a moving record of the changes and challenges
encompassing new parenthood and the inevitable cycles of life, death,
birth, renewal, and legacy — a testament to the joy, uncertainty, and
incredible love that come with bringing new life into the world.
Review
"Reading Raymond Antrobus's
Signs, Music, was an exhilarating (re)ride into the wonders and
terrors of becoming a new parent. It's hard to explain how much
parenting can change a person, but Antrobus succeeds: 'I broke up/with
announcing my convictions and good news/on the internet I broke up with
talking to myself/as if I'm not there I broke up with
people-pleasing/and the trembling boundary between life and still life.' Here is a beautiful mapping of a journey of this life that becomes this
life in all of its anaphoric radiance. Each letter in these poems is
bursting at the seams." Victoria Chang, author of With My Back to the
World
Review
"In this honest, witty and humane book, Antrobus brilliantly pins down
the before and after of parenthood — and the uncrossable gap between the
two. These poems manage to look both backwards and forwards: at who we
were, who we are and who we hope to be." Joe Dunthorne, author of O
Positive
Review
"Signs,
Music wades devotedly through weathers of joy, grief,
wonderment and terror — all of which arise as fleetingly on the page as
they do in the throes of new parenthood. Vulnerable and hopeful, though
never expectant of certainty or utopia, Signs, Music is a prayer for a world that might yet look tenderly upon young black life." Victoria Adukwei Bulley, author of Quiet
About the Author
Raymond Antrobus was born in London, Hackney, to an English mother and Jamaican father. He is the author of two other poetry collections,
The Perseverance and
All The Names Given. He is a recipient of the Ted Hughes Award,
the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, a Sunday Times Young Writer of the
Year Award, and was shortlisted for the T.S Eliot Prize, Griffin Prize
and the Forward Prize. In 2018 he was awarded The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize
(judged by Ocean Vuong) for his poem
Sound Machine. He has also published two children's picture books,
Can Bears Ski? and
Terrible Horses and hosted a number of award-winning radio
documentaries including "Inventions In Sound" (BBC Radio 4, 2021). He is
a Cave Canem graduate in the US, a Fellow of The Royal Society of
Literature in the UK, and divides his time between England and New
Orleans.