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.
| ISBN: | 9781035020850 |
| Publication date: | 12th September 2024 |
| Author: | Raymond Antrobus |
| Publisher: | Picador an imprint of Pan Macmillan |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 80 pages |
| Genres: |
Poetry by individual poets Modern and contemporary poetry (c 1900 onwards) |