ashleycmms's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Physical abuse, Slavery, Ableism, Racism, Violence, Death, Murder, Domestic abuse, Police brutality, and Gun violence
foggy_rosamund's review against another edition
4.0
Antrobus's second collection, following the ground-breaking and award-winning, The Perseverance. Antrobus builds on similar themes as in his first collection: being Deaf, being mixed race, while also delving into his family history, including the history of his surname (a very old English name), and his relationship to racism. It deals with complex themes lightly and with clarity, while also touching on tender emotions, such as love, both familial and romantic. I was particularly moved by Antrobus's poems about disability, and the intersection of racism and ableism, "For Tyrone Givans" and "Captions & A Dream for John T Williams of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth tribe". However, I wanted Antrobus to expand on some of his themes. But he's an important writer and this is an accomplished collection.
lokster71's review against another edition
4.0
This is the second collection of poems from Raymond Antrobus, after The Perseverance, which I read in June 2021.
There are similar themes in both collections: deafness, race, memory, language and our place in the world. It begins with a section that focuses on the authors surname and the way it intertwines with history and the present. Poems talk about his childhood and its complexities. His mother and his father. His grandparents. The personal as the universal.
Then there are poems about deafness. Two in particular stick in my mind that focus on how law enforcement treats the deaf - "For Tyrone Givans" and "Captions & A Dream for John T Williams of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth tribe."
As I always say when I write my reviews of poetry I wish I had the vocabulary that would allow me to analyse these poems from a technical point of view. But then again, perhaps I don't. All I have is knowing how a poem affects me emotional and those emotions stick.
One interesting thing in this collection are the captions that punctuate the poems. These, as Antrobus notes, were inspired by the work of a Deaf artist, Christine Sun Kim. Sun Kim is a deaf artist working with sound. One of her exhibitions, "The Sound Of / Closer Captions", takes captioned text from films and flips the experience from hearing focused to deaf focused. To quote from the Notes on the poems:
"When thinking about captions and subtitles, Sun Kim asks, 'Does sound itself have to be a sound? Could it be a feeling, emotion or an object? Could time itself become a sound?'" (p77)
[sound of mirrors breaking inside mirrors]
[p31]
This makes for a reading experience where inside and between poems one must stop and think.
I enjoyed this collection, like I enjoyed The Perseverance. Antrobus is a powerful poet.
[ripens quietly]
[p18]
There are similar themes in both collections: deafness, race, memory, language and our place in the world. It begins with a section that focuses on the authors surname and the way it intertwines with history and the present. Poems talk about his childhood and its complexities. His mother and his father. His grandparents. The personal as the universal.
Then there are poems about deafness. Two in particular stick in my mind that focus on how law enforcement treats the deaf - "For Tyrone Givans" and "Captions & A Dream for John T Williams of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth tribe."
As I always say when I write my reviews of poetry I wish I had the vocabulary that would allow me to analyse these poems from a technical point of view. But then again, perhaps I don't. All I have is knowing how a poem affects me emotional and those emotions stick.
One interesting thing in this collection are the captions that punctuate the poems. These, as Antrobus notes, were inspired by the work of a Deaf artist, Christine Sun Kim. Sun Kim is a deaf artist working with sound. One of her exhibitions, "The Sound Of / Closer Captions", takes captioned text from films and flips the experience from hearing focused to deaf focused. To quote from the Notes on the poems:
"When thinking about captions and subtitles, Sun Kim asks, 'Does sound itself have to be a sound? Could it be a feeling, emotion or an object? Could time itself become a sound?'" (p77)
[sound of mirrors breaking inside mirrors]
[p31]
This makes for a reading experience where inside and between poems one must stop and think.
I enjoyed this collection, like I enjoyed The Perseverance. Antrobus is a powerful poet.
[ripens quietly]
[p18]
kit_kate's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
4.5
I had heard good things about this poetry collection and when I found a copy in my local library I decided to give it a go. I consider myself as quite a novice when it comes to poetry. I am slow, usually reading each page more than once, trying to digest the words as best I can but often with a feeling like I'm missing something.
With this collection I feel like I have read something special, with poems highlighting identity, the legacies of slavery, growing up in Hackney and deafness. On a first read some of the poems resonated with me more than others. When I found the notes pages in the back I looked up many of the references and read the poems again and I feel like I got so much more from them the second time around.
I would recommend this wholeheartedly. Raymond Antrobus shares his experience and perspective in such an honest, thought-provoking and direct way. Those poems that I feel will particularly stick in my mind include, Plantation Paint, For Tyrone Givans and Arose.