Raymond Antrobus was born in Hackney, London, to a Jamaican immigrant father and an English mother, both lovers of literature who frequently read poetry to him. Antrobus began writing at age six, the same year his deafness was discovered. One of the first recipients of a master’s in spoken word education from Goldsmiths, University of London, Antrobus’s primary career focus was teaching until he attended a U.S. literary event and realized the merit of his own writing. Determined to pursue a life as a poet, he connected with London’s slam and open mic poetry scene, finding both mentorship and camaraderie. He started performing his poetry and co-founded spoken word collective Chill Pill and the Keats House Poets Forum, where he hosted poets such as Anthony Anaxagorou, Hannah Lowe, Warsan Shire, and Kayo Chingonyi.
Antrobus’ debut full-length collection, The Perseverance (Penned in the Margins, 2018), is a critically acclaimed exploration of loss, masculinity, family, and deafness that won him the Ted Hughes Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award, and other accolades, as well as being chosen as Poetry Book of the Year by The Guardian and The Sunday Times and Book of the Year by the Poetry Society. He also became the first-ever poet to be awarded the Rathbones Folio Prize for the best work of literature in any genre. His follow-up, 2021’s All the Names Given (Tin House/Picador), was named a Guardian Best Book of the Year. Antrobus has also published two chapbooks, Shapes & Disfigurements of Raymond Antrobus (Burning Eye Books, 2012), and To Sweeten Bitter (Outspoken Press, 2017), and two children’s picture books, Can Bears Ski? (Walker Books, 2020) and Terrible Horses (Walker, 2024).
Antrobus was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020 and appointed an MBE in 2021. He is a winner of the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award and the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Complete Works III, and Jerwood Compton. He was shortlisted for Young Poet Laureate of London in 2015, and in 2019 he was Poet of the Fair at the London Book Fair. He is the winner of multiple poetry slams and has held residencies at Warwick University, University of East Anglia, and Swansea University. He hosted the 2021 BBC Radio 4 Documentary Inventions in Sounds, winner of the Best Documentary Award at the 2021 Third Coast International Audio Festival.
Poetry by Antrobus has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, Poetry Review, The Guardian, and New Statesman and on BBC 2, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, and Channel 4, among many other places. His poems “The Perseverance,” “Jamaican British,” and “Happy Birthday Moon” are on the UK’s OCR GCSE syllabus. He is married to photographer and art conservator Tabitha, with whom he has a son.
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More Raymond Antrobus
Audio: Antrobus's poem "Miami Airport" appears on On Being's Poetry Unbound
Text: Read poems by Antrobus at the Poetry Foundation
Video: Antrobus reads his poem "Dear Hearing World" for the Griffin Poetry Prize