All The Names Given: Poems

by Raymond Antrobus

Overview

A Guardian Best Book of the Year

Finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Costa Poetry Award

“Exquisite.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Brave, tender and generous. . . . A haunting study of what we can find in the silences of history when history is recognized as more than a noun, when recognized as something alive and kinetic.” —Camonghne Felix, author of Build Yourself a Boat

On the heels of his much-lauded debut collection, Raymond Antrobus continues his essential investigation into language, miscommunication, place, and memory in All The Names Given, while simultaneously breaking new ground in both form and content. 

The collection opens with poems about the author’s surname—one that shouldn’t have survived into modernity—and examines the rich and fraught history carried within it. As Antrobus outlines a childhood caught between intimacy and brutality, sound and silence, and conflicting racial and cultural identities, the poem becomes a space in which the poet reckons with his own ancestry, and bears witness to the indelible violence of the legacy wrought by colonialism. The poems travel through space—shifting fluidly between England, South Africa, Jamaica, and the American South—and brilliantly move from an examination of family history into the wandering lust of adolescence and finally, vividly, into a complex array of marriage poems—matured, wiser, and more accepting of love’s fragility. Throughout, All The Names Given is punctuated with [Caption Poems] partially inspired by Deaf sound artist Christine Sun Kim, in which the art of writing captions attempts to fill in the silences and transitions between the poems as well as moments inside and outside of them. 

Formally sophisticated, with a weighty perception and startling directness, All The Names Given is a timely, tender book full of humanity and remembrance from one of the most important young poets of our generation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781951142933
Publisher:	Tin House Books
Publication date:	11/30/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	2 MB

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.

Table of Contents

The Acceptance 5

Antrobus or Land of Angels 7

Language Signs 10

On Touch 12

Her Taste 14

Text and Image 16

Death of Sir E. Antrobus (4th Baronet) Owner and Guardian of Stonehenge 17

My Mother Skimming Her Scrapbook 21

Every Black Man 22

Plantation Paint 25

Heartless Humour Blues 28

A Short Speech Written On Receipts 30

It Was Cold Under My Breath 32

On Vanity 34

Text and Image 35

On Desperation 37

And That 38

Maybe It Was Our Dark 40

For Cousin John 42

The Royal Opera House (with Stage Captions) 45

Horror Scene as Black English Royal (Captioned) 48

The Rebellious 49

Claude McKay 51

At Every Edge 52

A Paper Shrine 53

Upwards (For Ty Chijioke) 55

Text and Image 56

Captions & A Dream For John T. Williams of the Nuu-chah-nukh tribe 57

For Tyrone Givans 62

I Ran Away from Home to See How Long It'd Take My Mother to Notice 64

Bredrin 65

Sutton Road Cemetery 66

In Law 67

Arose 68

On Being A Son 69

Outside the marriage registry in Jefferson Parish there's a 10-foot statue of Thomas Jefferson 71

Article III 72

Ruler of My Heart by Irma Thomas is the first song on our wedding playlist 73

Loveable 75

Closer Captions 76

Notes on the Poems 79

Acknowledgements 83

Further Reading 84

Editorial Reviews

09/20/2021

British poet Antrobus (The Perseverance) dedicates his powerful second collection to his mother, who supplied his surname, a name "so anciently English (Norse) that it has become foreign to itself." The rich complication present in these poems is that while his mother is white, descended from the titled Antrobus clan that enslaved Jamaicans, his father was Jamaican: "Tell me if I'm closer/ to the white painter/ with my name than I am/ to the black preacher,/ his hands wide to the sky," he writes in "Plantation Paint." Antrobus, who grew up deaf then was given hearing aids in late childhood, weaves his experiences negotiating language, race, and family, skillfully pairing love with anger. Of his mother, he recalls, in "It Was Cold Under My Breath": "You said I don't think/ I heard anything and left the room,/ and I hated you for not/ belting the brat out of me." Several single-line "" are inspired by Deaf sound artist Christine Sun Kim, providing a formally ambitious and visually captivating "silence" on the page. Antrobus beautifully pays witness to the legacy of colonialism while providing another gripping meditation on language and communication. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"What a beautiful book Raymond Antrobus has written! I love it. So much pain, so much tenderness, so much music and invention and passion in All The Names Given. Truly, it is terrific. Antrobus has a special gift of making music from stories and giving his lyrics gravity and urgency that’s inimitable."

Ilya Kaminsky

"Deaf poet Raymond Antrobus's powerful collection winds readers between text and image, sound and silence, while tackling questions about identity, family and trauma. . . . bold and direct, these poems are stunning in their generosity: two hands open, offering abundance."

Starred Review Shelf Awareness

"Deeply personal, emotionally striking, with memorable turns of phrase."

Chicago Review of Books

"[Antrobus] reckons with his own ancestry, conflicting racial and cultural identities, and chronicles the damages of colonialism."

CITY Magazine

"This collection is a brave, tender and generous piece of music, where family is a cord forever troubled by the process of being named. With a knife-like precision, All the Names Given manages to caption the speaker’s dance with the ghosts of his bloodline, offering us a haunting study on what we can find in the silences of history when history is recognized as more than a noun, when recognized as something alive and kinetic, something constantly in conversation with the present. I can’t wait to see how this timely book ripples through our world."

Camoghne Felix

"In All The Names Given, the essential tension is knowledge. Knowledge of self, knowledge of others. These poems make the sublime leap or union of witness to ‘with-ness,’ so their knowledge is not speculative but holds together, beautiful and fraught, the broken burden of honesty: love. Antrobus is a phenomenal poet."

Ishion Hutchinson

"Raymond Antrobus [has a] depth of awareness, originality, and empathy—all turned inside out and refracted into prism-like hues of insight."

Foreword Reviews

"Exquisite. "

The New York Times Book Review

"Bold and tender. . . . These voice and narrative-driven poems bear witness to the gaps in language, speaking, and understanding—moving seamlessly through new poetic and visual forms in the pursuit of bridging and speaking to these gaps."

The Arkansas International

"These poems are revelations. This collection is so obviously at the forefront of a new canon whose singular and evocative approach to lyricism and imagistic play demonstrates not only the necessity of our multilingual and multimodal realities, but ‘the volume of their power,’ too."

Meg Day

"Intriguing and moving."

The Times Literary Supplement (UK)

"Antrobus never sits inside darkness. It’s not so much that he is overly sentimental or naively optimistic. Rather, Antrobus is able to juxtapose the most troubling moments with vignettes of wonder and wisdom. . . . Antrobus burst onto the scene with two incredible collections this year. Do yourself a favor and get a copy of both The Perseverance and All The Names Given. This is a poet you’re going to want to follow."

The Poetry Question

★ 11/01/2021

Following up his Ted Hughes Award-winning debut, The Perseverance (published in the United States just this year), British Jamaican poet Antrobus deepens his exploration of identity by plumbing family stories that say something larger. From his parents' meeting to a final good-bye to his dead father ("I met your brothers./ Losing you made me need them"), these stories open to the ancestral "Sir Edmund Antrobus (3rd baronet)/ slaver" and the ongoing weight of colonialism ("The barman's eyes in The Antrobus Arms/ become sharp gates when I claim to be English"). Traveling from England to the Caribbean to the United States, the poet unfurls many small, aching moments and explores his Deafness. VERDICT A fluidly written understanding of self, history, and oppression from a fast-rising poet.

Library Journal