To Sweeten Bitter, Chapbook from Outspoken Press
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Foreword by Margret Busby
From the very title of this affecting poetry collection, to its final lines, where well-chosen spaces speak loudly what cannot be said, it is clear that Raymond Antrobus knows the value of words that are too precious to squander.
These are poems that are unafraid to be tender, yet are free from sentimentality. These are poems aching with the loss of a father, to dementia even before death, and Raymond Antrobus in these pages moves skilfully between the reclaiming and letting go of memory, transforming intimate hurt into anger and vulnerability and strength and laughter and compassion. Long after I had read the whole collection, resonances of the title poem, “To Sweeten Bitter”, with its poignant opening, remained with me:
My father had four children
and three sugars in his coffee
and every birthday he bought me
a dictionary, which got thicker
and thicker and because his word
is not dead, I carry it like sugar
The magic of good poetry has to do with what it is able to say also between the lines, and Raymond Antrobus succeeds in conjuring up a lexicon of emotions evoked by the experiences, observations and history that craft his identity, drawn from a world that may as naturally includes a classroom in Kenya, a boat trip down Jamaica’s Black River, a confrontation at Miami airport, as familiar home life in Hackney, east London.
Plantation lineage, World War service, how do I serve Jamaican British?
When knowing how to war is Jamaican
British.
Occasional light references to other writers - from Louise Bennett, James Berry to Binyavanga Wainaina and Derek Walcott - give me confidence that here is someone who knows what it takes to follow this literary vocation. Having begun my career as a publisher with poetry, decades ago, I rejoice that Out-spoken have taken on Raymond Antrobus, a poet so obviously destined for greater things.
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