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Raymond Antrobus (born 1986) is a British poet, educator and writer who has been performing poetry since 2007. "Deaf Poets Society", BBC, 26 May 2017. "Ray Antrobus" at Write Angle. In March 2019, he won the Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry. "Deaf poet Raymond Antrobus wins Ted Hughes award", BBC News, 28 March 2019. In May 2019, Antrobus became the first poet to win the Rathbones Folio Prize for his collection The Perseverance, praised by chair of the judges as "an immensely moving book of poetry which uses his deaf experience, bereavement and Jamaican-British heritage to consider the ways we all communicate with each other."Press Association, "Poet Raymond Antrobus wins Rathbones Folio Prize", York Press, 20 May 2019. Antrobus was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020.
Antrobus's father had been born in rural Jamaica, one of seven brothers, and at the age of three had been sent to live with an aunt in Kingston, then after his own father had moved to England, he was sent for and settled there, meeting Antrobus's mother at a squatters' party in London. Though separating from her early on, Antrobus's father remained living locally.
Interviewed in 2016, he said: "I've had many jobs working in removals, gyms, swimming pools, security, etc, but now I make my living off teaching and touring my poetry... and I've never felt more useful working in education as a Jamaican British poet." Of his beginnings as a poet, he says: "When I realised that I wanted to pursue poetry as a career I started looking for a community. At first I came across the London Slam and Open Mic scene, which to me is more of a community than it is a genre. ... and once I found that community I felt very nurtured by it. So for me, certainly there were people like Karen McCarthy Woolf, Jacob Sam-La Rose, and Roger Robinson who were doing a lot of mentoring at the time, but really my first poetry mentor was Malika Booker, which must have been when I was about 21."
From 2010 to 2018, Antrobus was a founding member of Chill Pill at Albany Theatre in Deptford "Chill Pill" ("We showcase Spoken Word at Soho Theatre & The Albany Theatre. Hosted by Deanna Rodger, Raymond Antrobus, Simon Mole, Adam Kammerling & BBC poet Mista Gee"), Shapes And Disfigurements Of Raymond Antrobus: Dedicated to Poetry, Spoken Word & Social Commentary. as well as of the Keats House Poets Forum, "Keats House Forum", Shapes And Disfigurements Of Raymond Antrobus. and co-curated shows featuring such people as Kae Tempest, Sabrina Mahfouz, Inua Ellams, Kayo Chingonyi, Warsan Shire, Anthony Anaxagorou and Hannah Lowe. "Next Gen Poet, Hannah Lowe – 'Poetry Is The First Place I Claimed A Mixed Race Identity, Shapes And Disfigurements Of Raymond Antrobus, 16 June 2015. Antrobus has read and performed at major UK festivals and internationally, including in South Africa, Kenya, North America, Sweden, Italy, Germany and Switzerland, "Prose Interviews London Poet Raymond Antrobus", Prose Matters, Medium, 30 March 2016. and has held multiple residencies in schools, as well as at Pupil Referral Units. "Meet Raymond Antrobus: The PBS Winter Choice", Poetry Book Society, 12 October 2018.
His work has been widely published in many literary magazines, journals and other outlets, among them BBC 2, BBC Radio 4, Poetry Review, New Statesman, Poetry, The Deaf Poets Society, The Big Issue, The Jamaica Gleaner and The Guardian. "In Conversation with Raymond Antrobus", FourHubs, 2 October 2018. "New Book: 'To Sweeten Bitter'", Repeating Islands, 12 April 2017. In 2019, he headlined the London Book Fair as "Poet of the Fair". "The London Book Fair Unveils 2019 Seminar Line-Up", The London Book Fair, 25 February 2019.
In April 2022, Antrobus featured (alongside Margaret Busby) in a Backlisted podcast about Jamaican writer Andrew Salkey and his 1960 novel Escape to An Autumn Pavement.
Antrobus's debut book, The Perseverance, was published by Penned in the Margins in 2018, going on to many accolades and critical acclaim. Among those who gave positive reviews of The Perseverance, Kaveh Akbar said: "It's magic, the way this poet is able to bring together so much — deafness, race, masculinity, a mother's dementia, a father's demise — with such dexterity. Raymond Antrobus is as searching a poet as you're likely to find writing today. Describing the book as "an insightful, frank and intimate rumination on language, identity, heritage, loss and the art of communication", Malika Booker writes: "These colloquial, historical and conversational poems plunder the space of missing, and absence in speech/ our conversations — between what we hear and what we do not say. ... Thought-provoking and eloquent monologues explore the poet's Jamaican/ British heritage with such compassion, where the spirit and rhythm of each speaker dominates. These are courageous autobiographical poems of praise, difficulties, testimony and love.'"
The collection was a Poetry Book Society Choice, and won the Ted Hughes Award (judged by Linton Kwesi Johnson, Mark Oakley and Clare Shaw) in March 2019, followed in May 2019 by the Rathbones Folio Prize, awarded for the first time to a poet. The Perseverance was also shortlisted for the Griffin Prize, the Jhalak Prize, and the Somerset Maugham Award, and was chosen as Poetry Book of the Year by both The Guardian and The Sunday Times, and Book of the Year by the Poetry School. The Perseverance at Penned in the Margins. Also in May 2019, Antrobus was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Poetry. "2019 Forward Prizes", Forward Arts Foundation. In December 2019, The Perseverance was awarded the Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award.
Antrobus wrote his first picture book, Can Bears Ski? (2020), after being unable to find any children's titles with a deaf protagonist.
His first non-fiction book, The Quiet Ear: An Investigation of Missing Sound: A Memoir, was published in 2025, receiving widely positive critical attention.. Colin Grant noted in The Observer: " The Quiet Ear is dark and often heart-rending. But it is a testament to Antrobus's creativity and mirrors his poetry." Voice Magazine concluded: "Antrobus writes with lyrical precision and honesty, offering a narrative that is both personal and universally resonant. His exploration of sound and silence lingers on the page, urging readers to rethink how they experience the world and the people within it. The Quiet Ear is a book that listens to the past while shaping how we imagine the future." The book was described in The New York Times as "an insightful, bighearted memoir ... a nuanced discussion of the ways that race and deafness intersect", with the reviewer stating: The Quiet Ear' is a transformative story for all readers, offering an opportunity to discover the missing sounds and misunderstandings of their own experience — and begin to comprehend what it means to truly listen."
In June 2022, Antrobus's poems "The Perseverance" and "Happy Birthday Moon" were added to the UK's OCR GCSE syllabus.
In April 2022, Rose Ayling-Ellis, deaf actress and winner of Strictly Come Dancing, made history by signing a BSL version of Antrobus's children's picture book Can Bears Ski? on CBeebies – the first airing of a story told entirely in British Sign Language. That same month Ayling-Ellis signed and performed Antrobus's poem "Dear Hearing World" at the BSL rally on Trafalgar Square in support of the BSL Act.
Antrobus was on the 2023 PEN Pinter Prize judging panel, alongside Ruth Borthwick and Amber Massie-Blomfield, when the award was won by Michael Rosen.
Antrobus was nominated for the 2024 T. S. Eliot Prize, alongside Karen McCarthy Woolf, Carl Phillips, Gboyega Odubanjo, Rachel Mann and others.
In April 2019, Antrobus married Tabitha, a photographer and art conservator from New Orleans, with whom he collaborates. Their son was born in 2021.
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