Raymond Antrobus
The New Father
didn’t want to be called father
so he raised the bridge to protect the borders
of fatherhood. He shouted over the water.
The harshness of his voice was hereditary.
Why is he a monument when he could be
a yoga stretch? There can be no dispensation
for the father. He’s gone through life pretending
it was the house shivering and not his father.
Look. His father never said he wanted
to be his father, and here he is wanting to be
his father. He wants to be warm as midnight cups
and running car engines and the man in Freetown
who rowed him across the river and asked him
to name the countries he’s been to
before he told him he’s never been anywhere
but motherland, fatherland. Amen.
Raymond Antrobus MBE FRSL was born in Hackney, London, to an English mother and Jamaican father. He is the author of Shapes & Disfigurements; To Sweeten Bitter; The Perseverance; All The Names Given; and Signs, Music (Picador/Tin House, 2024). 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, Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, PBS Winter Choice, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Somerset Maugham Award, and The Guardian Poetry Book of the Year 2018. Antrobus was awarded the 2018 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, judged by Ocean Vuong, for his poem “Sound Machine.”