Field Ramble with Raymond Antrobus

On this episode we speak to poet Raymond Antrobus about his recently published collection Signs, Music. Comprised of two extended sequences Signs, Music centres on both the imminence and the realisation of a new and overwhelming love. At times compulsive, at others reflective it captures the trepidation and courage of early parenthood.

But, more than that, Signs, Music asks us to consider the worlds we create for each other, to question the conditions we place on the love that we offer and to somehow re-find the wonder we once had for the world when we were children ourselves.

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Transcript

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Raymond, I wanted to, I wanted to start by asking you about the line that opens the book poetry is music from the place that we are born, and you draw an immediate connection between poetry and birth. Can you talk about that connection? Yes. So that opening epigraph is from it's my line, but it's a riff of a Seamus Heaney line in which he says, poetry is the beat of my tribe. And I lived with that line for so long. I love that the implication of beat as in rhythm, tribe, as in community, as in lineage, as in tradition. But I guess I was thinking about literal music as well. And I'm from Hackney, where so much of particularly black British music, has kind of spawned from Hackney from East London, from like the Jamaicans that flock there in the 70s and the 60s, with their sound systems and the Dubs and to you Know, more contemporary the offspring of many of those people that came from the Caribbean, and also people that came over from West Africa, places like Gambia and Nigeria and Ghana. You know, there's a, you know, thinking of grime, thinking of drill, trap, all these, all these other kind of genres, sounds, musics, beats, rhythms that have become part of this kind of diasporic British, you know, aesthetic. So I thought of the line of music or poetry is music from the place we are born, just because it also says something about the way in which we acquire language, the way in which we build our vocabulary, our rhythm, our cadence. My son has an American mother,and so it's interesting, like even that, like hearing her say, Wow, our son is so British, and we had this moment of whether we were gonna raise him in the States. There was a point where we thought we were gonna do that, and I was the same way. There was a point where my parents thought about raising me in Jamaica, and just that, you know, that decision can just literally shape an entire life. You know, it's a it's almost like a parallel universe, a different person. So that place where you, where you are born, is, I think, a seed in which our language and our experience grows from, and I think of poetry as a place, actually,as something that is intrinsic to your you know, internal sound, internal rhythm.And you know, and if you happen to be a poet, then that's gonna feed into into your lines, you know, into your way of being. I wanted to ask you about separation. Separation felt a big part of the first part of the text. There's parts where you're talking into the belly of your partner. There's parts where you're watching things happening behind glass. Can you talk about separations, role, or its presence within the text? That's a good observation. In terms of writing and process that kind of separation between the two, the two spaces, it speaks to the experience of, again, writing poetry, because poetry can often be a very internal experience. You're in your head a lot, you're thinking a lot,whereas people who are watching you be internal are going to think you're crazy, because it's lots of like muttering, looking to the sky, shaking your head sometimes because you're so moved by something. It's all internal, and it's interesting living with someone, living with my partner at the time, who was watching a lot of that, and being like, you're insane. But actually drive it drove her even more crazy, because I she needed me present, you know, while she was pregnant. And anyway, that's a different thing, different kind of tension there. But yeah, those two spaces also spoke to the, you know, the actual esthetic and structure of the book, and that is that before after, it's like inside and outside of the world, inside and outside of the head and the mind of the page and the voice. So there were kind of lots of dualities that wereat play and that I wanted, I wanted to speak to, and I also wanted toenjoy those spaces and not feel like they're so conflicted, like I have to be internal or I have to be external. I wanted to embrace simultaneously, that like the need for both. No offense, says my faithful friend sitting by the large Cafe window. But why have children when the world is endingoutside? Four men sit around a table, and when a dog passes them, they lean over and ruffle its fur and ears, one of them skinning a roll up.No no one asks the dog's name, but smoke. When the man's cigarette wafts into the cafebehind the glass, I hold my The first part of the book is titled towards naming. It made breath. me think of a line from Alejandro Zambros Childish literature where he writes last names of prose and first names of poetry. Can you reflect on Signs, Music through that line? I'm a big fan of Alejandro Zambra and I just finished reading that book. So this is a good time to be asked that. Talking about the word marinating, that is something I'd use to describe how I feel after just, literally just finished reading that book this morning, and I'm kind of marinating on that. It's a very nourishing book for me, First names, which, when I read that line, I did actually underline I man, yeah, first names are poetry and second names surnames it. are prose. Yeah, I can see that because I guess the surname goes back further right. The surname is the family name. It's the name of the tree. You know the family tree, in a way. So you're gonna need longer line for that,literally and figuratively. It's a longer line, right? So the first names, being poetry, is still significant. It's still significant because you're it's this kind of idea, this you're given this short time, this short space, to give your child a name that they're going to carry through the rest of their lives. But they don't just carry in that name. They're also carrying that longer name, that kind of prose name, as it were, the family name. And then, of course, the here that the heritage, in my particular case, the heritage which is Caribbean, which is Creolefrom his mom's side, which is English and French. And the French is interesting because it comes in both of me and his mom, ancho bois, ancho bus.Normandy French between the woods is what it means. And then his mum, being from New Orleans, this Creole is French, African, place mixture. You know, I can't even unpack everything that's there because it's so much, yeah, so much texture, so much history, but also so many things that line up as well. It's when thinking of thinking of Europe and Africa in particular, and England and America. So yeah, I mean, I do think to be able to unpack everything I just said there about the name, but the root of those names and how far they go, I probably would need prose, which I can say that I have written, like my next book is a book of prose, and I have actually written them. I've made an attempt to write about some of this in my in my in my own name, though not my son's, but it's still connected, isn't it? One One of the things that I wanted to ask you about Raymond there's there's a tension at the heart of Signs, Music between relinquishing control and and the demands of writing. Can you talk about how those two things met? Oh, that's a really good question. Yeah, because the first, the first sequence, I do actually lean in part in another form, which is auto fiction. Some of it is kind of auto fiction, e kind of talking about Alejandro Zambra. I would classify some of his work is also fiction. So, yeah, but then the second half, there is less of that, and it becomes some more traditional poems in there for sonnets. In the second half, there's a villanelle so, yeah, there's more. It's a bit more construction in that second half is the first half. It's a lot more kind of, I guess, I guess, woozy, and because, you know, because you're hit with this thing, you're going to be a dad, and it's like, what's that mean? What does that mean? So my, the way my mind took that was to reflect on my own dad, which is not a unique thing. But also, it also made me a bit more future orientated, like, what, what kind of world is he going to be born into? And there were, I've got many friends who, I mean, including some people to me, like, you know that that are in the book, people who were like, Why I have children when the world is ending, I don't think my child is going to be a good person. You know, these are things lifted from real conversations I had after I tell you someone, oh, I'm gonna be a dad. You know, that was their response, like, oh, it's almost like some people seem to be disappointed, almost not, not, not because of me. I think they projecting their own, you know, stuff, because it's a big question, you know, do you have children, or do you not? Do you want children, or do you not? And I, yeah, I never had any kind of strong Inkling towards procreation. But I found, I did find myself when being told I was going to be a dad. I did feel like I was instantly taking that seriously. Oh, actually, that is what I want, that, you know, I don't think I'd consciously thought that. I think about this a bit in the in the second part of of science music, where you write about breaking up, yeah, and that, I think that's what, when you're talking there, that really reminds me of that part of the book, but it's just redefining Exactly, yeah, So redefine you, redefining, redefining your use everything. of time reading, redefining what it is that you're moving from and to and yeah, it's just like. Yeah, I remember writing that poem. AndI wrote that poem really quickly. We're all in a quick draft, and you might relate to this when you write something really quickly and it feels good and it's like, yeah, this is, this is, this is a rhythm, but you almost can't trust it, because it came so quickly. So I remember I sent it to Gboyega Odubanjo just, just to tell me what he thought. And he was, and he was like, Yeah, decent, yeah, good, good. Like, you know, kind of, like, no notes, like, yeah, yeah, good. I said, All right, cool. Well, you know that it'sso, it's so it, so it, it stayed in there. So, you know, it's, um, yeah, it was important to have those kind of sounding boards that we all, we all need, and that whole idea of, like, Yes, I'm going to be a dad. And I'm, you know, the idea of raising a village, you know, it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a village to write a book, you know, like so there are, I, there are quite a lot of parallels, actually, between writing and parenthood, fatherhood and beginning of the book as a Lucille Clifton quote. May you, in all your innocence, sail through this to that. And luso Clifton is a poet who I leaned on because her poetics were very much parenting poetics. She had six children. Her poems are very, very short, sparse and she even said in interviews like the only reason that poems are short is because she has so many kids. So I'm like, wow, you know, if I'm struggling to find time with one, imagine having six. Imagine what that would do to my poems. But again, like, you know, having a poet like that, like with that experience and that esthetic and that poetic to be, to draw from is, again, Lucille Clifton is part of the village you know, of helping me write and helping me step into the role of parenthood. One of the things that I think I was struck by when I was reading Signs Music is that although it's a book that's about parenthood, and it's about looking outward towards the child, ostensibly, actually, there's much more with parenthood that's about looking back at yourself. And when you were talking there about the parallel between writing and parenthood, I was thinking about the parallel between editing and parenthood, about how we edit ourselves back, I think, in parenthood. And I was wondering if you could talk about, in that regard, re-learning maleness in fatherhood, because I think again, that comes up in Zambra's book, about we're taught to be men, but we're not taught to be fathers. And I think that that came through a lot in Signs, Music too. That was one of my first big revelations. I was told I was going to be a dad. I mean, I was like, no one's coming. No one's going to knock on my door and make sure I'm prepared, you know, I mean, like, there's no infrastructure here. It's like, just .. Do it Do it.Exactly. Okay? Cool, you can do that. Or, you know, you have the tool to create that we'll go and do. And obviously the work itself, the emotional work and the physical work of parenthood, I mean, it's just, oh, there's, you know, I'm three years in. My son is now three, and there's just so much I wish I could say now to that person who was told he was going to be a dad, that there's so much I would have, I would have been like, Get your shit together, mate.The stuff I know now in comparison is insane, but you can't know. I've always been this way. I've always been someone who kind of learns on the job.I was terrible at school. I was a terrible student. My Grades really reflected that. But then when I found when I got involved in something that I had some investment in, I would, I would get better. It's like often, so often, had to fail at something before I was able to build on it. And I mean, the same is true with poetry. All of my all of the first things I submitted for publication, all of them rejected. The first slam I ever did. I didn't win. And I was a bit show boaty, bit too a bit too loud and angsty,but, you know, like I stuck with it and Iand I kept like, you know, it became, I became a craft. It became something that I was trying to get better at. But, yeah, you only get one chance to be a father for the first time,and I'm doing a lot of emotional work now. I'm actually part of an online community ofdads and CO parents who, and that's it's just it's been so good for me,and in terms of the work,of where we are, again, you just pointed out another line which I underlined from that Zambra book as well. I remember he says that, doesn't heabout the kind of the almost the non tradition of fathers not having, like a great,yeah, models to look, to look at for how to do this, even in children's books, I've noticed a lot of lot of dads are sad, sad dad or not there, Yeah, sad or not there. That's pretty much it. So I think I've looked attheis this sounds this sounds sad to say, but to be honest, I had to look at a lot of the things that my dad did and be like, cool. Do the opposite of that. That's, that's the, that's the best model I've got, like, the opposite of what he did. Okay, cool, yeah, don't, don't get drunk and terrorize your family. The bar is so low. Oh my god, it's so low.For me. So, you know,yeah, and I'm still learning that I'm still on the go with that. I was thinking about the the opening lines to the new father, where you write the new father didn't want to be called father, so he raised the bridge to protect the borders of fatherhood. And there's the elusiveness of poetry there, where it's a wreck full recognition, but you have to find it in exactly what we're talking about. Find it for yourself. That's exactly it. That's a great, generous reading of that line, because that is, that was, yeah, that was me generally doing that rattling from my own tradition, because you've got different kinds of fathers now.Maggie Nelson'sbook, The Argonauts like was revelatory to me, because it's a book about parenthood, but also about trans people becoming trans man stepping into the role of a father.There has to be fluidity and flexibility within that. I even think about the idea that when we think ofmasculinity, I feel like so much of our best academic writing about masculinity and maleness comes from feminism. It comes from women. Oftenpeople identified as womenlooking at men,Bell Hooks, texts on love, it's amazing. It is so I would say it's very it's hyper critical. You know of the father of the menin her life. But I think, I think it's fair. It's fair, criticism for the most part, because I feel like sometimes there are feminist texts which I've read and got and felt defensive over because I'm like, Oh no, I don't feel like you really understand what it is to be a man, or you're not giving us, giving men credit for some of the journeys, some of the like, again, that the fact that we, so many of us, had no models that, going back to that zambre line, about like, no real tradition, stable, healthy, nourishing, tradition of fatherhood. And we, and so many of us, have to have to work it out, you know, in real time on the job, you know. So sometimes I'm like, Oh, I wish there was a bit more grace for that. But other times it's like, no, no, no, we need, we need to be better. You know, we need to be better. And so there's often a lot of a lot of frustration, but with men, which I think is valid, and again, is at its best, it's like, it's tough love. Can I draw a, I guess, a parallel between that maleness that we're talking about, and the wider Britain that is present in science music, there's a kind of reticence throughout the text to look out into the world, because it's so ugly, and when you've got something so wonderful happening so close to you, and I was wondering If you could talk about the way that the personal and the political meet in the book, The penultimate Poem of the book in the second the second sequence has a kind of an incident in it, in which the speaker calls a gardener. Raymond reads from Signs, Music for a second time Because I didn't know much about gardening when we first rented the house, I called a gardener who drove miles to tend our plot, to dig a path and tame the green that swayed as if to celebrate what wind brushed through it. I realized the gardener can't refuse to work. Blades will always present themselves in these transactions. Kindness doesn't come into it really, but when my partner and I open the blinds, smiling as we prepare breakfast for ourselves and the toddler whose feet bumble the ground around the bed towards the mirror to see the dance of what can be done with muscles in the legs and arms and face. It seems Earth is not here for us, but with us. And how would we get from one place to another without the kindness of paths of seeding and mowing? I know that some people don't like this term, but I'm going to use it out of sheer laziness. But the metaphysical poets, or the so called metaphysical poets, of them Andrew Marvell is my favorite, and he often wrote about trees and grass and mowing lawns and gardens and birdsand also another poet that I wanted to draw on was Philip Larkin, but I wanted to completely dispel, or not be the obvious Philip Larkin, which is, you know, I didn't do the they fuck you up, your mum and dad, I did the I did the more, again, metaphysical,Buddhist, humanist element of Larkin, which isthe the idea of kindness in his poem The Mower, whichwas about mowing a lawn and accidentally killing a hedgehog and asking for forgiveness in a way, for this,for this, for harming a creature,kindness to the to your to your natural to your natural environment, to your own nature.And then there's kindness toyou know your Yeah, yourself. This is this whole idea of like, howlike can you really, should we really be privatizing our kindness? By that? I mean, are the only things worth caring for the things that we call our own, or is, or you know whatyou know, trying to make our care and our love kind of unbounded. So it leaves the lawn, it leaves just the things inside your house, and it's given to the world. That's such agreat idea, but it's really hard to do to make your love and your care and your compassion unbounded. I don't there was,I, you know, there's, there's got to be so few people even capable of that kind of empathetic, imaginative work, of that of like boundless love. I think my final question that I wanted to ask you kind of relating to that, was about the final poem and about your changing relationship with language in that poem. one One of the most kind of literal ways in which my language changed is I wish that I was given sign language from infancy.I was given it from 11 years old, and even then, I struggled to embrace it and to integrate it into my identity, into my sense of self. And so I've been giving my son some sign, and he can do some basic signs. And there was this point when I had when I noticed more signs through communication with my son than than speech. And it was amazing to me how, again, how kind of generous the language of gesture, of sign, the language of the face can be because he did get his knees met through the through what we would call it like limited language. But you know, he was saying what he needs, and he had a relationship, an outward relationship, with the world. As we go to the park and he's responding to everything around him, the trees, the birds, the caterpillars. you know, just actually sorry. I had a bit of a emotional moment this morning, and I dropped off my son, and he he was on the back of my bike, and I cycled to him, cycling him to his nursery, and he was pointing at a park as I was passing, okay, we got 10 minutes. We're gonna go to the park. So I stopped, and I took him down, and I thought he wants to go in the swing, so I, like, went running towards the swing. He's like, Okay, let's go in the swing. But he didn't. He ran towards the very edge of the park where there was this little bin. I. And there were these lady birds and caterpillars around the bin, and he just wanted to stare at them for 10 minutes. He didn't go on the swing or decide nothing. Just Just wanted to spend some time with his lady birds and caterpillars. And then he took a caterpillar on onto his hand, on his and It crawled up his finger and stuff. And then I then he said, Okay, nursery. So, okay, you want to take the caterpillar to nursery? When I suffered him to nursery, and his friend was outside, and he's like, look, look, look. And and they met, and they had this very moving, I know they're both three year olds, and they're both just staring at this caterpillar and sharing it. And I'm just watching them like in there, in that world, you know, where that was enough, that was enough for them, just share a moment with a caterpillar. You know, I didn't need all of these more elaborate technologies. I didn't need the swing. Didn't need the phone, didn't you? Then, just that are and that quality of presence and joy that they had with that I'm, yeah, it's such a blessing. I know, look, I know it sounds uh cheesy to non parents, because I'm saying this like I've done a few readings where people have come up to me and have said, I'm not buying science music because I don't have children, and I just cringe every time I hear someone writing about their children, and as someone with no children, and I totally understand that. I really, I really do, although my hope is that someone you don't need children, to appreciate this book, my hope is that it will, we've all been parented, and it will reflect on, maybe for you, it will help or evoke something about what it was to be parented, you know, not just what it could be to be a parent, you know. And there's a whole lineage of I know, like, again, I'm calling on Wordsworth a lot, who had a daughter, Dorothy, who ended up in his work and his poems in really quite interesting ways. And I've already mentioned lucelle Clifton. So again, it's part of the territory, you know, the parent, but also that kind of in a more, even more fundamental way, the childlike gaze, the childlike play, the childlike mind, always has a place in poetry. I think it's an important place in poetry. So there's me trying to sell the book to all the non parents out there and sell the ideas. That's perfect. Yeah.