Name: Quay Words presents: Raymond Antrobus: The Quiet Ear
Start: 2026-05-07T18:30:00+01:00
End: 2026-05-07T19:30:00+01:00
Location: Exeter Custom House

Quay Words presents: Raymond Antrobus: The Quiet Ear

We’re pleased to welcome Raymond Antrobus back to Exeter Custom House, after kicking off our pilot season in 2019 we’re thrilled he can return for our final week of celebrations. We’ll be talking to Raymond about his memoir The Quiet Ear.
The Quiet Ear tells the story of Raymond’s upbringing at the intersection of race and disability. Growing up in East London to an English mother and Jamaican father, educated in both mainstream and deaf schooling systems, Raymond explores the shame of miscommunication, the joy of finding community and shines a light on the decline of deaf education in Britain.
This event will be BSL interpreted.
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About the author:
Raymond Antrobus is the author of four poetry collections — To Sweeten Bitter, The Perseverance, All The Names Given, and Signs, Music — as well as two children’s books: Can Bears Ski? and Terrible Horses.
Widely celebrated, his poetry has earned the Ted Hughes Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.
In 2019, he became the first poet to win the Rathbones Folio Prize for best work of literature in any genre. His poems have been added to the GCSE syllabus in the UK, and his children’s book Can Bears Ski? was the first book to be read using BSL on the BBC, by Rose Ayling-Ellis.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020 and appointed an MBE in 2021. The Quiet Ear, his first work of prose, is a groundbreaking memoir and cultural history of deafness. Raymond currently lives and works in Margate, UK.
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This event will be in-person at Exeter Custom House. You can find out more about the accessibility of the Custom House here: https://quaywords.org.uk/about/access/
If you have any access needs you’d like to discuss with us before the event you can contact us on [email protected]. We can offer free carer tickets if you need help to support you to attend.