Signs, Music

Description

SHORTLISTED FOR THE T.S. ELIOT PRIZE FOR POETRYPOETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE?I became fatherless at 26 and a fatherat 35 and whenever I look outthe living room window I feel myselfbecome the child left alone in the house?Centred around two lyric poems on imminent fatherhood and the birth of a child, Signs, Music is a book about masculinity, fatherhood, and love. The speaker, looking backwards to his late father and forwards to his new son, prepares to become a parent for the first time.

Meditating on the cognitive and emotional dissonances between the ?hypothetical? and the ?real? of becoming a father, this irreversible transition causes the poet?s ?lines [to] lead towards my father (again!)?. Charting the ways parenthood disrupts the poet?s sense of self, and how the pain of the past triggers fears of ?fatherly failure?, Signs, Music is a staggeringly profound collection from one of Britain?s most adept poets writing today. ‘This is transformative writing creating a new cultural landscape.

Antrobus makes us hear between the lines through poems well-crafted with emotional intelligence’ ? Linton Kwesi Johnson, Mark Oakley and Clare Shaw, judges of the 2018 Ted Hughes Prize.