Hi, you're listening to the New Yorker Poetry Podcast. I'm Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker magazine.

On this program, we invite a poet to choose a poem from the New Yorker Archive to read and discuss.

Then they read a poem of their own that's been published in a magazine.

Today, my guest is Raymond Antrobus, who's received the Rathbone's

Folio Prize, the Ted Hughes Award from the Poetry Society, the Sunday Times

Young Writer of the Year Award, the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, and a Somerset

Mom Award, among other honors.

Raymond, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

An honor to be here, Kevin.

So the first poem you've selected to read is a protactile version of Tintor and Abbey by John Lee Clark.

Tell us, what was it about this particular poem that caught your attention?

So John Lee Clark is a poet that I've been following for a long time now, specifically his mode as a deaf-blind poet,

his philosophy around disability in poetry or disabled poetics is something he often talks about.

He's a poet I personally have been taking quite a few cues from in my own work.

He uses erasure.

He references the syntax of sign language and how that's different to the syntax of written English.

Because I am also educated in a deaf school, learns sign languages as a kid.

And this is something that I've had to contend with, especially, you know, thinking about canons and

literature canons, poetry canons, and how John Lee Clark's own words, he calls it the hearing canon,

you know, with all of these poets are like able-bodied, who use disability often as like a metaphor,

you know, and it's even kind of baked into the english language

...