SHORTLISTED FOR THE T.S. ELIOT PRIZE FOR POETRY
POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE
‘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 lyric poems on imminent fatherhood and the birth of a child, Signs, Music is a 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!)’.
Charting the ways parenthood disrupts the poet’s sense of self, and how the pain of the past triggers fears of ‘fatherly failure’, Signs, Music is a staggeringly profound collection from one of Britain’s most adept poets writing today.
'This is transformative writing creating a new cultural landscape. Antrobus makes us hear between the lines through poems well-crafted with emotional intelligence' – Linton Kwesi Johnson, Mark Oakley and Clare Shaw, judges of the 2018 Ted Hughes Prize.
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Signs, Music 9781035020850 Paperback
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- Publication Date:
- 12/09/2024
- Authors:
- Antrobus, Raymond
- Year Published:
- 2024
- Country of Publication:
- United Kingdom
- Format:
- Paperback
- ISBN:
- 9781035020850
- Number of Pages:
- 96
- Publisher:
- Pan Macmillan
- Place of Publication:
- London
- Language:
- English
- SKU:
- 9781035020850