All the Names Given: Poems - Softcover

Antrobus, Raymond

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1951142926 ISBN 13: 9781951142926

Publisher: Tin House Books, 2021

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Raymond Antrobus was born in Hackney, London, to an English mother and Jamaican father. He is the author of To Sweeten Bitter, The Perseverance, and All The Names Given. He was awarded the 2017 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize (judged by Ocean Vuong) for his poem 'Sound Machine'. In 2019 he became the first poet to be awarded the Rathbones Folio Prize for best work of literature in any genre. Other accolades include the Ted Hughes Award, the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, and a Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award. All The Names Given was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize, and several of his poems were added to the GCSE syllabus in 2022. His picture books for children are published by Walker Books (UK) and Candlewick Press (US). Antrobus is an advocate for several D/deaf charities, including DeafKidz International and the National Deaf Children's Society. He divides his time between England and New Orleans.

Edition details

• Publisher: Tin House Books
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1951142926
• ISBN 13: 9781951142926
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96