Poem with captions

Raymond Antrobus

How might we translate sound to make it more accessible to the eye? In order to ensure that people across a spectrum of hearing can experience not just the words that are being said in a podcast or radio programme, but also the weave of sound and music, and the feeling that sits at the heart of the listening experience. We asked the poet Raymond Antrobus to explore his experience of sound in translation - here he offers what he describes as 'a ‘found poem’ after Christine Sun Kim

[sound of time passing]

[air pauses at night]

[unstoppable singing]

[sound of separation]

[music of urgent kindness]

[radio of unsettled frequencies]

[fragmented sermon]

[sound of belief intensifying]

[sound of eventual forgiveness]

[ripens quietly]


Raymond Antrobus

Raymond Antrobus was born in London, Hackney to an English mother and Jamaican father. In 2019 he was a recipient of the Ted Hughes Award and won the Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award. He became the first poet to be awarded the Rathbone Folio Prize. His next publications are children’s picture book ‘Can Bears Ski?’ published by Walkers Books and illustrated by Polly Dunbar, and poetry collection, 'All The Names Given' published by Picador in 2021.