\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hen Raymond Antrobus was a child, he writes in his new book, The Quiet Ear, his father would call him \u201cwhite\u201d when he was drunk, and \u201cblack\u201d when he was sober. \u201cWhite\u201d was meant as an insult, the author explains over tea in his flat in Margate, where a pile of toys indicate the recent presence of his own young son. In his cruellest moments, it was a way for Antrobus\u2019s black father, who died in 2014, to say \u201cI don\u2019t understand you. I don\u2019t love you. You don\u2019t understand my pain.\u201d<\/p>\n Antrobus, 38, is calm and reflective when he talks about this. As a deaf person who relies on hearing aids and lip-reading to communicate, he says he has long had to \u201cmake sense of myself for other people\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI got to this point where I was like: what would happen if I didn\u2019t have to do that? What does freedom look like for me?\u201d It was writing poetry that got him to that place, and with that has come a great deal of critical acclaim: his first collection, The Perseverance, published in 2018, won the Rathbones Folio prize (now the Writers\u2019 prize), the Sunday Times young writer of the year award and the Ted Hughes award. That last felt somewhat ironic, given that The Perseverance contains a redacted version of Hughes\u2019s poem Deaf School, along with Antrobus\u2019s response, which grapples with its hurtful depiction of deaf children. In Hughes\u2019s poem, the students \u201clacked a subtle wavering aura of sound\u201d and are \u201calert and simple\u201d; Antrobus\u2019s poem After Reading Deaf School by the Mississippi River flips it: \u201cTed is alert<\/em> and simple<\/em>. \/ Ted lacked a subtle wavering aura of sound\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n Antrobus is driven by the desire to understand people and their motivations. His father\u2019s \u201cwhite\u201d insult came from a projection of his insecurities about his own identity, he believes now. Born in rural Jamaica, the darkest-skinned of seven brothers, his father developed an \u201cugly duckling\u201d complex from a young age, and was sent to live with an aunt in Kingston when he was three. As a young adult, after his own father had moved to England, he was sent for, moving first to Wolverhampton and later London, where he met Antrobus\u2019s mother at a squatters\u2019 party. Both the poet\u2019s parents had other partners initially, and their relationship was marked by his father\u2019s disappearances, but it lasted in some way or another until Antrobus was four or five. At that point, the writer\u2019s grandmother stepped in to help look after him and his older sister. Even as a child, Antrobus could sense his father\u2019s complicated relationship with his homeland \u2013 after a visit to Jamaica 15 years after he had left, his father <\/strong>\u201cfound that the place had changed so much and he couldn\u2019t relate to people in the same way. And then they started calling him white because he\u2019d been away\u00a0so long.\u201d<\/p>\n As well as being a second-generation Jamaican immigrant, on his white mother\u2019s side the writer is related to Sir Edmund Antrobus, an enslaver who owned plantations in Jamaica, British Guiana and St Kitts. \u201cIt\u00a0gives me this perspective, of my nation, of my language, which is always slightly like one foot on the land and one foot in the sea,\u201d he says. He has researched the Antrobus lineage and visited the Cheshire village from which the name hails. \u201cEdmund Antrobus\u2019s wealth did not trickle down to my family or to the Antrobuses that are living there in Antrobus village. The wealth has been extracted\u201d \u2013 those descendants are in South Africa and have been made even richer by \u201cdiamond mine stuff\u201d, he says. \u201cIt\u2019s just weird. Should I feel complicit in that?\u201d<\/p>\n The only way he has found to reckon with his own identity is through creativity. \u201cI\u2019ve fought through it, I\u2019ve felt through it,\u201d he says, which led him to think: \u201cHow can I bring other people into that?\u201d His teaching work \u2013 Antrobus is a freelance poetry teacher and editor, and a board member at the Poetry School \u2013 was one way he has been able to help others. It has been a source of guilt that he hasn\u2019t been able to take on as much of that kind of work of late. He puts a lot of pressure on himself to \u201cgive back\u201d.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been visiting deaf schools for a decade now, and I\u2019m still yet to see provision that matched the care I got<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m carrying survivor\u2019s guilt,\u201d he says. Born in Hackney in 1986, he grew up attending a mixture of deaf and hearing schools, and was given specialised support in order to learn to speak, write, sign and lip-read effectively. \u201cI\u2019ve been visiting deaf schools for a decade now, and I\u2019m still yet to see provision that matched the care I got,\u201d he says. Given the closures of deaf schools and cuts to provisions for deaf pupils made over the last three decades, to get the same level of support now \u201cI would have to be the child of an aristocrat\u201d. And without that support, he probably wouldn\u2019t have been able to write. \u201cIt blows my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say that Antrobus had an easy ride: for a long while, in order to fit in, he resisted anything that would make him look more deaf. His parents \u2013 both hearing \u2013 never learned sign language, which his mother still feels guilty about. \u201cBut it wasn\u2019t really just her fault,\u201d the writer says. \u201cIt was also me refusing it.\u201d As a child, he was constantly trying to minimise the fact that he was deaf, whipping out his hearing aids whenever photos were taken and refusing to use the British Sign Language (BSL) he learned at school in front of the hearing children \u201cout of self-consciousness\u201d. He learned ways to avoid bullying, joining both the deaf and hearing teams for football, athletics and swimming. \u201cThat\u2019s what kind of saved me,\u201d he says: the social status he was afforded by being good at sport gave him a free pass from the bullying he saw other, non-sporty deaf children experience.<\/p>\n Having written three acclaimed poetry collections and two children\u2019s books \u2013 the first of which, Can Bears Ski?, became the first ever CBeebies bedtime story to be read in sign language, by deaf actor Rose Ayling-Ellis \u2013 Antrobus has now turned to writing adult prose. The Quiet Ear pays homage to Antrobus\u2019s teachers of the deaf, and sets out to show why deaf children deserve so much more support than they are currently receiving. The author describes it as \u201cmemoir as advocacy\u201d, charting events in his own life while weaving in deaf history and a call to arms.<\/p>\n It feels like a timely book, in an era when healthcare is in crisis and diversity and inclusion measures are under threat across the globe. Antrobus has firsthand experience of contending with \u201canti-woke\u201d culture in the US, having lived in Oklahoma with his then wife, who is American, for three years. It was ultimately the cost of private healthcare that drew the couple back to the UK when they were expecting their son, having been \u201chit with a crazy bill\u201d. They had initially planned to return after their son\u2019s birth, but worries about the US approach to \u201chealthcare, DEI, all of that stuff which sounds like science fiction\u201d convinced them to stay in the UK, and though they have since separated, they continue to co-parent in Margate.<\/p>\n Yet, though a preferable place to raise a child in some ways, the UK is still at \u201cprimary school level\u201d when thinking about disability in general, Antrobus says. He has been pleased to see some positive developments when it comes to deaf rights and awareness, such as Ayling-Ellis winning Strictly Come Dancing in 2021 and becoming a well-known public figure (\u201cShe is going to have an impact on the culture in the UK for ever\u201d) and the passing of the British Sign Language Act in 2022, which put BSL on course to become a recognised language. But he is disheartened by the government\u2019s proposed cuts to personal independence payments (Pips) for disabled people and the continued closure of deaf schools.<\/p>\n Margate, where he has been living for the last year, has a \u201csignificant deaf history\u201d, but the Royal School for Deaf Children in Margate, one of the oldest deaf schools in the UK, closed in 2015 with no replacement, and the Margate Deaf Club is no longer running. \u201cI\u00a0haven\u2019t been able to access the deaf community here. It\u2019s dissipated. And that, I think, is an example of what is happening all over the country,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s more separation, isolation, hurdles to jump through.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n I haven\u2019t been able to access the deaf community here. It has dissipated \u2013 it\u2019s the\u00a0same all over the country<\/p>\n Such isolation can be fatal \u2013 as the author demonstrates in The Quiet Ear when he writes about a former classmate. Tyrone had worn bright blue hearing aids that he would sometimes pimp up with drawings and stickers, emboldening Antrobus to be more open about his own deafness, since \u201cthe girls still really fancied\u201d Tyrone. After leaving school, though, Tyrone lost contact with his deaf friends, struggled to assimilate into the hearing world, developed alcoholism and was arrested on domestic abuse charges. In prison, he did not have his hearing aids and was not referred for new ones after a counsellor deemed his communication to be \u201cfine without them\u201d; he ultimately died by suicide in his cell.<\/p>\n It is no wonder, then, that Antrobus feels so indebted to his teachers, to his mum, his mentors \u2013 to everyone who kept him off a path similar to Tyrone\u2019s. Now, when he meets people who don\u2019t feel \u201cproperly deaf\u201d, he\u00a0encourages them to embrace their identity and find\u00a0a\u00a0community \u2013 as when he was walking near his home recently and approached a man with a cochlear\u00a0implant.<\/p>\n After Antrobus said, \u201cOh, my deaf friend, how are you doing?\u201d and started signing to him, the man became \u201cstiff and anxious\u201d, explaining that he didn\u2019t know sign language. Exclusionary attitudes from signing deaf people had made this man feel that he wasn\u2019t welcome in deaf communities. Traditionally, there was an emphasis on what Antrobus refers to as \u201ccapital \u2018D\u2019 Deaf people\u201d, who are culturally Deaf, \u201csign as a first language and are engaged in deaf history and identity\u201d. When the writer explained to this man that the deaf world is very open now, \u201che started crying, and said, \u2018Thank you so much. I needed permission to be a deaf\u00a0person.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Antrobus\u2019s hope is that The Quiet Ear will give more deaf people that permission, and educate hearing people about what the community needs. When it comes to deaf and disability rights, \u201cwe are at quite an interesting and, I hope, transitional, point\u201d, he says. He is encouraged by how many people are speaking out against the proposed changes to Pips and learning more about disability justice. \u201cIt\u2019s good, it\u2019s giving people energy.\u201d<\/p>\n There will be a follow-up to The Quiet Ear, Antrobus says, \u201cabout language, about voice, about class\u201d \u2013 but not about deafness. In the meantime, he\u2019s hoping to work more in the art world, having been commissioned to create work for the Guggenheim and the Barbican. \u201cIt challenges me to think in a new dimension,\u201d he says. When we speak, he is just about to travel to Italy for a month-long residency at the esteemed Civitella Ranieri Foundation for artists and writers. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting,\u201d but there\u2019s also a part of him that is sad and anxious \u2013 this is the longest he has been away from his son.<\/p>\n Antrobus clearly loves being a parent \u2013 at any mention of his three-year-old he becomes warmer, softer. But \u201cit is difficult, balancing work and parenting,\u201d he says, acknowledging that by asking their son\u2019s mother to take care of him while Antrobus goes away for work he is \u201cgiving her a weight\u201d.<\/p>\n He tries not to give too much time to other parenting worries, about how his son\u2019s sense of identity will be shaped by social media, or him growing up as a black child in a country that has recently had race riots. \u201cIf I was to lean too much into that, I would go mad,\u201d he says, but he hopes that his son will have \u201ca lot more certainty and grounding\u201d about who he is than Antrobus had as a child.<\/p>\n His son is hearing, though is learning to sign, and Antrobus \u201cwould put money on him doing the BSL GCSE\u201d when he is older. Antrobus himself is able to communicate better than ever, using SSE (sign supported English) and the help of hi-tech hearing aids that connect to his phone (he switched to a private audiology clinic after winning the Ted Hughes award). As a champion of the NHS \u201cgoing private was a guilt thing\u201d, yet having access to the latest models via private healthcare has meant he \u201ccan relax a bit more\u201d, no longer having to rely on lip-reading as much.<\/p>\n Antrobus is determined to make use of everything he has been given, to make work like The Quiet Ear, to keep advocating for better resources for deaf people. \u201cI\u2019ve probably been given more than I\u2019ve given back,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I owe the world a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n The Quiet Ear by Raymond Antrobus is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. To support the Guardian order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Raymond Antrobus was a child, he writes in his new book, The Quiet Ear, his father would call him \u201cwhite\u201d when he was drunk, and \u201cblack\u201d when he was sober. \u201cWhite\u201d was meant as an insult, the author explains over tea in his flat in Margate, where a pile of toys indicate the recent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[8426,5867,7801,2266,8424,4680,8425,354],"class_list":{"0":"post-14828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-antrobus","9":"tag-carrying","10":"tag-deaf","11":"tag-growing","12":"tag-guilt","13":"tag-poetry","14":"tag-raymond","15":"tag-survivors"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}