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Raymond Antrobus was born in Hackney, London, England to an English mother and a Jamaican father. He is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Complete Works III, and Jerwood Compton Poetry. He is one of the world’s first recipients of an MA in Spoken Word Education from Goldsmiths, University of London. Antrobus is a founding member of Chill Pill and the Keats House Poets Forum. He has had multiple residencies in deaf and hearing schools around London, as well as Pupil Referral Units. In 2018 he was awarded the Geoffrey Dearmer Award by the Poetry Society.

In addition to being shortlisted for the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize, The Perseverance won the Ted Hughes Award, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and more.


Since The Perseverance, Raymond Antrobus has published, through Picador and Tin House, All The Names Given, a finalist for the 2020 T. S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Poetry Award, and Signs, Music, a finalist for the 2024 T. S. Eliot Prize. He lives in London, England.

The Perseverance 2019 Shortlist

Judges’ Citation

‘The truth is I’m not /a fist fighter,’ writes Raymond Antrobus, ‘I’m all heart, no technique.

‘The truth is I’m not /a fist fighter,’ writes Raymond Antrobus, ‘I’m all heart, no technique.’ Readers who fall for this streetwise feint may miss out on the subtle technique – from the pantoum and sestina to dramatic monologue and erasure – of The Perseverance. But this literary debut is all heart, too. Heart plus technique. All delivered in a voice that resists over-simple categorization. As a poet of d/Deaf experience, his verse gestures toward a world beyond sound. As a Jamaican/British poet, he deconstructs the racialized empire of signs from within. Perhaps that slash between verses and signs is where the truth is.


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