'Signs, Music' is a poetry book that explores themes of fatherhood, masculinity, and love, with two lyric poems on imminent fatherhood and the birth of a child. It examines the cognitive and emotional dissonances between the hypothetical and the real of becoming a father, disrupting the poet's sense of self and triggering fears of fatherly failure. The collection is praised for its transformative writing and emotional intelligence, with judges of the 2018 Ted Hughes Prize describing it as a new cultural landscape.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 96 pages
Publication date: 12 September 2024
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE

I became fatherless at 26 and a father at 35, and whenever I look out the living room window, I feel myself become 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.

Weight: 138g
Dimension: 197 x 152 x 7 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781035020850