Featured on NPR's Morning Edition
A Poetry Book of the Year at The Guardian, The Sunday Times, and Poetry School
Winner of the Ted Hughes Award, Rathbones Folio Prize, and Somerset Maugham Award; shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize
In the wake of his father’s death, the speaker in Raymond Antrobus’ The Perseverance travels to Barcelona. In Gaudi’s Cathedral, he meditates on the idea of silence and sound, wondering whether acoustics really can bring us closer to God. Receiving information through his hearing aid technology, he considers how deaf people are included in this idea. “Even though,” he says, “I have not heard / the golden decibel of angels, / I have been living in a noiseless / palace where the doorbell is pulsating / light and I am able to answer.”