Raymond Antrobus: Signs, Music
The acclaimed poet and author launches his new collection, exploring masculinity and fatherhood through lyric sequences.
‘I became fatherless at 26 and a father
at 35 and whenever I look out
the living room window I feel myself
become the child left alone in the house’
Centred around two poetic sequences about imminent fatherhood and the birth of a child, Signs, Music is a profound book about masculinity, fatherhood, and love.
The speaker, looking backwards to his late father and forwards to his new son, prepares to become a parent for the first time. Meditating on the cognitive and emotional dissonances between the ‘hypothetical’ and the ‘real’ of becoming a father, this irreversible transition causes the poet’s ‘lines [to] lead towards my father (again!)’.
Raymond Antrobus was born in Hackney to an English mother and Jamaican father. He is the author of To Sweeten Bitter, The Perseverance, All The Names Given and the children’s picture books Can Bears Ski? and Terrible Horses. A number of his poems were added to the UK’s GCSE syllabus in 2022.
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Times & tickets
Dates, times and prices
Dates & times
04 Sep 2024, 7.45pm
Run time
1 hour (approx)
Run times may vary by up to 20 minutes as they can be affected by last-minute programme changes, intervals and encores.
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from £12.00*
* Excludes £3.50 booking fee.
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