The Perseverance

In the wake of his father's death, the speaker in Raymond Antrobus' The Perseverance travels to Barcelona. In Gaudi's Cathedral, he meditates on the idea of silence and sound, wondering whether acoustics really can bring us closer to God. Receiving information through his hearing aid technology, he considers how deaf people are included in this idea. "Even though," he says, "I have not heard / the golden decibel of angels, / I have been living in a noiseless / palace where the doorbell is pulsating / light and I am able to answer."

The Perseverance is a collection of poems examining a d/Deaf experience alongside meditations on loss, grief, education, and language, both spoken and signed. It is a book about communication and connection, about cultural inheritance, about identity in a hearing world that takes everything for granted, about the dangers we may find (both individually and as a society) if we fail to understand each other.

Author: Raymond Antrobus
Publisher: Tin House Books
Published: 03/30/2021
Pages: 96
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781951142421

About the Author
Antrobus, Raymond: - Raymond Antrobus was born in London to an English mother and Jamaican father. He was awarded the 2017 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, judged by Ocean Vuong, as well as the 2019 Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award. His second full-length collection of poems, All The Names Given, is forthcoming from Tin House and Picador in 2021. Raymond is currently based between London and Oklahoma City.