This event will be BSL-interpreted.

Raymond Antrobus is a British educator, poet and investigator of missing sounds, of Jamaican heritage, who as a deaf spoken-word artist has been performing poetry since 2007. In March 2019 he won the Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry.

In this event Raymond Antrobus will read from his debut book The Perserverence. Ranging across history and continents, these poems operate in the spaces in between, their haunting lyrics creating new, hybrid territories. The Perseverance is a book of loss, contested language and praise, where elegies for the poet’s father sit alongside meditations on the d/Deaf experience.

Winner of the Ted Hughes Award and Rathbones Folio Prize. Guardian and Sunday Times Poetry Book of the Year.

Raymond Antrobus was born in London, Hackney to an English mother and Jamaican father, he is the author of Shapes & Disfigurements, To Sweeten Bitter and The Perseverance. In 2019 he became the first ever poet to be awarded the Rathbone Folio Prize for best work of literature in any genre.

Other accolades include the Ted Hughes award, PBS Winter Choice, A Sunday Times & The Guardian Poetry Book Of The Year 2018 and a Griffin Prize shortlist. He is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Complete Works 3 and Jerwood Compton. He is also one of the world’s first recipients of an MA in Spoken Word education from Goldsmiths University.

Raymond is a founding member of Chill Pill and Keats House Poets Forum and is an Ambassador for The Poetry School.  His poems have been published in POETRY, Poetry Review, News Statesman, The Deaf Poets Society, as well as in anthologies from Bloodaxe, Peepal Tree Press and Nine Arches.

Raymond has read and performed his poetry at festivals (Glastonbury, Latitude, BOCAS etc) to universities (Oxford, Goldsmiths, Warick etc). He has won numerous slams (Farrago International Slam Champion 2010, The Canterbury Slam 2013 and was joint winner at the Open Calabash Slam in 2016).

His poetry has appeared on BBC 2, BBC Radio 4, The Big Issue, The Jamaica Gleaner, The Guardian and at TedxEastEnd.

This event has been curated by Chester Literature Festival 2019 Guest Director and Artist-in-Residence Imtiaz Dharker.

Photo credit: Tenee Attoh