Review: To Sweeten Bitter by Raymond AntrobusPosted in Articles, Book/Video Reviews, Media Archive, United Kingdom on 2017-12-26 03:11Z by Steven |
Review: To Sweeten Bitter by Raymond Antrobus
Estruch Notebook: Website of Sarala Estruch, Writer and Poet
2017-11-02
Sarala Estruch
London, England
To Sweeten Bitter by Raymond Antrobus
Published by Outspoken Press, London, 2017
49pp. £8.
To Sweeten Bitter, Raymond Antrobus’ third pamphlet, is a deeply moving and important collection. Within these twenty-one poems, Antrobus deftly interweaves personal grief and the individual struggle to reclaim a sense of identity after his father’s death with postcolonial grief and the continued struggle for a sense of identity among persons of dual heritage living in a postcolonial world.
‘In the Supermarket’ describes the poet attempting to reclaim his deceased father by purchasing ‘everything [he] used to see in his house’. In this poem, inanimate objects are deployed to simultaneously conjure up the character of the deceased father, the character of the bereaved son, and the nature of grief itself.
I would be holding
on too hard
to my humming father
who is wind and mirror
and West Indian Hot Pepper Sauce…
Read the entire review here.