Best collection of poems I’ve ever read!!!! Most prominent themes are disability and blackness, written in the cleverest, most moving, gripping manner. I refused to take a break and read it in one sitting, but I’ve dog-eared my favourites to revisit with a fresh mind. Raymond Antrobus is so so so intelligent and creative - I have a new favourite poet. I loved this

The Perserverance is a master-work of poetic and literary reflection. Raymond Antrobus brings experience and emotion to light in these verses.

Own voice to the max. I absolutely loved the representation of life as a deaf person in this collection. It it raw, vulnerable, sometimes uncomfortable, but fantastic to say the least. So many topics are coverEd in gorgeous heartfelt words that flow so easily. Just wonderful poetry that is one of a kind. Adding the pictures of signs is everything. I would read this again and again. Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is an insightful window into d/Deaf culture and how that intersects with family, cultures, and identities. I especially enjoyed the interview at the end, and would have loved a 2021 update or commentary.
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I received an advanced review copy of #ThePerseverance from #NetGalley

What an amazing book of poetry, focused on the Deaf (dealing with hearing loss since birth) and deaf (dealing with hearing loss later in life) experience. The poems are intensely emotional and intensely intelligent, and are not only about conversation and it's difficulties, but are also in conversation with each other, with past poems (what were you thinking, Ted Hughes?), history, and society's treatment of the d/Deaf. Just look at these lines from the middle of 'I Move through London Like a Hotep' and not be impressed:

Tabitha’s aunt is all mumble. She either said Do you want a pancake? or You look melancholic. The less I hear the bigger the swamp, so I smile and nod while my head becomes a faint foghorn, a lost river. Why wasn’t I asking her to microphone? When you tell someone you read lips you become a mysterious captain. You watch their brains navigate channels with BSL interpreters in the 
corner of night TV. Sometimes it’s hard to get back the smooth sailing and you go down with the whole conversation. I’m a haze of broken jars, a purple bucket and only I know there’s a hole in it. On Twitter @justnoxy tweets I can’t watch TV / movies / without subtitles. It’s just too hard to follow. I’m just sitting there pretending and it’s just not worth it. I tweet back you not being able to follow is not your failure. It’s weird, giving the advice you need to someone else, weird as thinking my American friend said I move through London like a Hotep when she actually said I’m used to London life with no sales tax.

Brilliant, startling poems. This is a book about the complexities of translation--between verbal and nonverbal languages, between different ways of speaking, between cultures, between identities. Powerful and beautiful.

An outstanding debut! Antrobus utilizes his intersecting identities as Jamaican & British and as a deaf person to write masterful poems on identity, cultural expectations, and history. His poem about Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller was particularly moving.