In 2017, poet Raymond Antrobus stepped into a Durham classroom and met Thomas, an 11-year-old with silver hearing aids whose curiosity changed the writer’s life. Their brief exchange now anchors Antrobus’s forthcoming memoir, The Quiet Ear: An Investigation of Missing Sound, an exploration of deafness, poetry, and the search for meaning.
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What’s Good? Raymond Antrobus on Deafness, Poetry and Finding Your Purpose
Photo by Literary Hub
Key Takeaways:
- A 2017 school visit introduced Antrobus to Thomas, a boy who embodies the intersection of deafness and language.
- The encounter prompted deeper reflection that informs Antrobus’s memoir, The Quiet Ear.
- Poetry serves as Antrobus’s medium for bridging sound and silence.
- The Quiet Ear will be published by Hogarth, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
- Themes of health, relationships, and purpose thread through Antrobus’s narrative.
The Durham Assembly
In 2017, Raymond Antrobus stood before “a packed hall of eleven-to-sixteen-year-olds,” delivering an assembly on poetry. Minutes after the applause faded, teachers “whisked” him into a quieter room where a single student waited.
Meeting Thomas
The boy was “hazel-haired, round-headed,” and “had two large silver hearing aids in his ears.” Thomas’s presence—equal parts curiosity and quiet—immediately focused the poet’s attention. Though the details of their dialogue remain private, the moment signaled a turning point: poetry, Antrobus realized, could resonate even where sound itself is partial or missing.
From Classroom to Manuscript
Keywords from the original story reveal the next step: The Quiet Ear: An Investigation of Missing Sound. Slated for publication by Hogarth, an imprint of Penguin Random House, the book expands the questions first posed in that Durham room, weaving memoir, health, and relationships into a wider meditation on deafness.
Why Poetry Listens
For Antrobus, verse is both amplifier and interpreter. The rhythms of a line, the spaces between words, and the silences that follow them become tools “to sit with” the complexities of hearing loss. By tracing Thomas’s influence, Antrobus illustrates how literature can honor voices that mainstream sound often overlooks.
Purpose in the Quiet
The encounter with Thomas clarified a mission: to ensure that poetry makes room for every kind of listener. As The Quiet Ear approaches publication, Antrobus’s story reminds readers that purpose sometimes arrives in a whisper—if we are willing to hear it.
