All The Names Given

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan / Picador for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Having attended an online event where I heard Raymond perform poetry from this collection I knew I had to read it. Now, I'm not a poetry person, I'm one of those readers that will just say 'I don't get it' or 'it's not for me', and while I still think both of those statements are true (poetry is seriously hit or miss for me) this collection is poignant and beautiful, moving and touching, and it is brimming with passion.

While I didn't 'get' them all, I didn't expect to (my failing entirely), I CAN appreciate their beauty in a way I rarely connect with poetry. There is something about the writing here that speaks to me, even if I don't understand how.

Even if you don't normally read poetry I urge you to give this collection a try, you might be surprised by how much there is to enjoy here, and just how much you connect with it.

5 moving stars

An amazing book of poetry. Loved the way he picks his words and gives us something to think about even after we have finished reading them. He's truly a great poet.

Anyone worrying that Raymond Antrobus had mellowed after his debut book of poetry, “The Perseverance”, would do well to consider this extract from “Language Signs”, the third poem in his second collecton “”All The Names Given”,

“All the men who raised me are dead, those bastards. I’m one self-pitying prick of a son.”

Yes, these are angry poems, but they are often tinged with tenderness and hope.
The book begins with poems exploring people through the ages who have shared the surname Antrobus, from slavers to painters, and their legacy, Achingly personal at all times, there are snapshots of Antrobus’ turbulent upbringing exploring themes of race, cultural identity and his own deafness, though the latter not to the same extent as in the previous book. It is always there in the subtext of his poems, though, as he relates awkward moments of miscommunication. The poems take us through Raymond’s life from difficult adolescence right up to his marriage. Many of the poems appear almost prose-like in structure, so much so that it has the feel of an autobiography at times and can be a tad overwhelming, but maybe that’s deliberate. The poetry of Raymond Antrobus is brutally direct and requires, even demands rereading.
Having been blown away by “The Perseverance”, this new work doesn’t disappoint but it impresses in a different way. Antrobus experiments with poetic forms in order to tell his stories, something which is never less than thrilling. While I feel that this collection is maybe not quite as immediate as “The Perseverance”, it is still a raging, beautiful volume from one of the most important poets of his generation. Reading the poetry of Raymond Antrobus is a visceral experience that will leave you shaken.

"All the Names Given" is the new collection from poet Raymond Antrobus, and is an exploration of identity, race, culture, and love, among other things. The poet explores colonialism and racial identity, often within a short, tight framework, lending the poems an intensity that longer pieces may well have lost.

A beautifully written collection, and one I look forward to rereading.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher, who granted me a free ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My first book by Raymond Antrobus, and I am delighted I have read it: many thanks to Picador via NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review it. I shall buy a paper copy in due course as this merits rereading and on paper it will make even more sense. I am still mulling it over.

The collection of poems (free rhyme, full of quotes, very narrative and pictorial) wanted to be read in one go, as an actual story, from cover to cover. I totally engaged with the writing, which is syncopated, varied, funny, poignant. I loved the use of quotations by other writers - it clearly set the idea of lineage also in the writing, the confrontations, the explanations... Antrobus explores family, identity, living here and now, past stories and histories, the arts... (I loved his poem-review of an actual performance at the ROH of Jonny Steinberg´s A Man of Good Hope by the South African Isango Ensemble. So many questions dealt with so much acuity!!) These are timely explorations of universals and present issues all of them seem to throw a new light brought about by a very personal perspective which I found deeply engaging. Never pretentious but intelligent, accessible and allusive - demanding rereading in the best possible way. Recommended!

Antrobus’ first full-length collection The Perseverance, was a stunning collection of poems about his experience of deafness, racism, the loss of his father, and appalling treatment of D/deaf people from famous names in history. His poems felt visceral and angry, drawing attention to a daring new voice in British poetry. This second collection feels mellower in tone than his first, but he continues his exploration of some of the same themes.

He begins with a focus on his last name, Antrobus, which is associated with a town in England. He explores how the name has been linked with slavers and artists, and his maternal grandfather, a clergyman. He explores the complicated identity of himself, the son of a white Englishwoman and a Black Jamaican, having a last name that’s so connected with white Englishness. The exploration of colonial history through the idea of a name is interesting and well done. It carries through the collection to a later discussion of Thomas Jefferson and his Black descendants.

The collection is also focused on love, with Antrobus writing about meeting and falling in love with his wife. While his first collection focused a lot on loss, there is a stronger sense of hope in this collection, which blends with the more serious or heavy topics Antrobus is covering.

There isn’t as much focus on deafness in this collection as in his first, but it’s definitely there in the miscommunications he has with people he encounters. There’s also a formally interesting element in the inclusion of [caption poems], inspired by the Deaf sound artist Christine Sun Kim (and taking inspiration from other D/deaf artists is a feature of Antrobus’ previous collection too). These captions appear between poems, and attempt to fill in silences and transitions. They also, perhaps, attempt to say something that the other poems aren’t saying.

I enjoyed this collection quite a lot, though I felt that it didn’t have the power that Antrobus’ first collection did. These are wonderful poems, though, worth experiencing, and I look forward to more of Antrobus’ work in the future.