Prose Interviews London Poet Raymond Antrobus

We are pleased as punch to bring you an exclusive interview with talented Brit Raymond Antrobus, who was kind enough to take time out from his busy schedule to tell us all about himself and what he’s involved with. If you had yet to come across him, Raymond is a poet, performer and hearing aid user, born and bred in East London.

His poems have been published in magazines and literary journals such as The Rialto, Magma Poetry, Oxford Diaspora’s Programme, British Council Literature, Shooter Literary Journal, The Missing Slate, Morning Star, Media Diversified and University Of Arkansas Press.

Raymond has read and performed at festivals (Glastonbury, Latitude, Bestival etc) touniversities (Oxford, Goldsmiths, Warrick etc), and has also read internationally (South Africa, Kenya, North America, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Switzerland etc).

He is co-curator of popular London poetry events Chill Pill (Soho Theatre and The Albany) and Keats House Poets. His work has appeared on BBC Radio 4, The Big Issue, The Guardian and at TedxEastEnd. Sky Arts and Ideas Tap listed Raymond in the top 20 promising young artists in the UK.

P: You are proud to explain that you were born and bred in East London. Do you still live there?

R: Yes, I often have to make a point of being born and bred in East London (Hackney) because now it’s so heavily gentrified. To an extent I feel I have more of a right to be here because people like me are disappearing. Hackney is a place I grew up in around a street culture that lured me into certain negative things. I survived that. To see it become a place that certain people now claim as their own makes me feel anger. Having said that, while growing up Hackney was a place I wanted to escape so I am a hypocrite for wanting to claim it now everyone wants to be here. It’s complicated.

P: What is your relationship with writing and how has it evolved?

R: Someone said “I don’t know what I think until I write it down” and this is true for me because when emotion takes the controls in my brain, it can lead to reckless words and actions. I feel lucky to be a writer and poet, it’s funny how when something difficult happens, people say “well at least you’ve got something to write now” and they’re right. The writer / poet brain is curious, it explores; and this has deeply enhanced the way I move through life. It’s a lifelong development. I’m writing at 29 what I couldn’t have written at 18 or 25, I’m looking forward to seeing what I’ll be writing in my 30’s and beyond.

P: I saw the piece about your hearing aid and speech therapy. It resonated with me as I overcame a terrible stutter by turning words from enemies into friends. Is that how you perceive the spoken word aided you?

R: Yes, Spoken Word poetry is an art form that fits me well because it enables me to bring all the layers of who I am into one space — A reader, writer, and performer. I also speak BSL (British Sign Language) and that’s interesting because it’s a language the body performs, it relies on presence.

P: You are one of six Poet Laureates for London. That’s pretty darn cool. What process leads to that?

R: Titles are funny things. Since London Laureate became a badge I wear it’s made it easier to speak to the kinds of people that weren’t looking my way a year ago, but I’m no more talented now; it’s like I just put on a hat that was a bit more fancy and more heads wanted to look at me. I applied for it last year. It included two interviews, a slam and submitting poetry on the page. Imtiaz Dharker was one of the judges.

P: Would you please tell us about Chill Pill?

R: Chill Pill is run by four other London based poets and we put on one show a month. We set it up because we wanted to created a space for poets and musicians who wanted to try new material. In 2010 we had Ed Sheeran and Kate Tempest pass through, as well as more literary poets like Kayo Chingonyi and Jasmin Cooray. It became so popular we began putting on shows at Soho Theatre. We’re now based at The Albany in Deptford, Qbic Hotel and every now and then we tour festivals. We’re at Wilderness and Camp Bestival this summer.

P: What value does reading add to both your personal and professional life?

R: I was a reader before I was a writer. As a writer, reading has given me more to respond to. It excises ideas and feelings beyond my own world. It can get quite intense in my head, so all that reading I did was and is to take me away from that. As a teacher it is where I really saw the value and power of reading. The way I could tell which students were regular readers based on the quality of their writing was very interesting.

P: We see you have two collections out, can you tell us about them, please?

R: Yeah, Shapes & Disfigurements is a chapbook of poems I wrote while I was touring around the UK, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland. A press called Burning Eye approached me about publishing something of mine so I gave them that and they put it out. This was a while ago, (2012). I have my first full collection of poems coming out in November 2016 on Outspoken Press.

P: We have an ongoing BBYD piece whereby people recommend the book we should ALL read before we shuffle off our mortal coil. Is there one book that you would recommend everybody should read?

R: Books come to people at the right time, like when I was 18 there was no book that reached into me like Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and The Famished Road by Ben Okri, but I recently picked up these books again and they did nothing for me at 29 like what they did at 18. Our reading life changes and evolves with us. One book is hard to say, but two books I’d put on any reading curriculum is The Ghost Of Capitalism by Arhundati Roy and Citizen by Claudia Rankine.

P: Do you have an unsung hero who got you into reading and/or writing?

R: My Dad. He wasn’t a big reader, but he valued language so much he bought me a new and updated dictionary on every one of my birthdays. I have a poem about that published in the latest edition of Magma Poetry.

P: We love your work on your own, but you also gel extremely well performing with others. Is there a difference between the writing process with that?

R: Thank you, I appreciate that. The idea that writing has to be solitary is problematic, hardly anyone notable does it alone. I have two people who read my poems before anyone, if they give it a pass, I’ll put it out. I love writing with others because it challenges your thinking and pushes you to areas outside your normal process. Once I write a series of Rengas with Simon Mole and we actually started arguing about what we should be writing about and then the argument became the poem, the opening line was “Ray just wants to write / I tell him we need a plan/ his plan is to write” — it developed into a piece that people loved to see live.

P: We notice you get behind many causes, as do we. Our users tend to be a caring bunch, and we wondered if there were any issues that you would like to make our Prosers aware of?

R: Issues, there’s so many of them, but for the last four years I’ve been working in education and the changes to the curriculum have ensured poetry will continue to make another generation of young people groan and sigh as loudly as I did at school. I actually hated it and came to poetry on my own terms outside of school. The Tory government plans to make every UK school an academy. This is deeply disturbing to me and we need to vigorously ensure that doesn’t go ahead. If schools are run as businesses, money becomes prioritised over the rights of teachers and the science of learning.

P: We watched your ‘N Word in the classroom’ piece with much interest. We are based both in America as well as the UK. How do you feel racial issues are here compared to the US?

R: Well… It’s a different culture shaped by a different history in the US but we’re closer to it than we acknowledge. The idea that the British Empire is something we should have unquestionable pride for is outdated. Among the liberal left there is a push for us as British people to re-evaluate our national identities and I think the visibility of Black Lives Matter in the US inspired a lot of that. The British Empire is built on the premise that slavery was good because it served the Queen and God… It’s so absurd and inhumane when you look at it through the lens of valuing the life of black, brown and poor people.

P: Prose are collaborating with Peterborough Prison to incorporate Creative Writing into the rehabilitation process. Do you have any inspiring words for those trying to better themselves?

R: Authenticity looks the same on everyone. You don’t need to try to be the writer you are.

P: You’ve performed in front of American and UK audiences (among others). How do they differ?

R: Haha! There are many ways I could answer this. I find it interesting how segregated most audiences are. I’m finding the more “successful” I get the whiter the audience is. This is even true in places I’ve read like Kenya and South Africa. Every audience is different and has its own feel and expectation.

P: What do you love about the UK?

R: Diversity in London and The NHS.

P: What are you reading right now?

R: One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina and Voyage Of The Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis.

P: If there is anything else you would like to let us know about, projects, schemes, books or events?

R: Check out Outspoken Press, I think they’ll be playing an important role in publishing British poetry in the coming decade.

P: Aside from yourself, are there any people or collectives we should know about or be listening to?

R: My sister co-runs The Bechdel Test, which is a feminist film festival, with a team of young forward thinking women. Check them out (click the link).

Thanks to Ray for the generosity with his time, also for his honesty and passion in answering our large list of questions — mostly while on a bus! You can follow him on Twitter as well as Chill Pill. He also has a YouTube Channel and raymondantrobus.com. Click the links and lose yourselves.

Related

Originally published at blog.theprose.com on March 30, 2016.