All the names given

British poet Antrobus (The Perseverance) dedicates his powerful second collection to his mother, who supplied his surname, a name "so anciently English (Norse) that it has become foreign to itself." The rich complication present in these poems is that while his mother is white, descended from the titled Antrobus clan that enslaved Jamaicans, his father was Jamaican: "Tell me if I'm closer/ to the white painter/ with my name than I am/ to the black preacher,/ his hands wide to the sky," he writes in "Plantation Paint." Antrobus, who grew up deaf then was given hearing aids in late childhood, weaves his experiences negotiating language, race, and family, skillfully pairing love with anger. Of his mother, he recalls, in "It Was Cold Under My Breath": "You said I don't think/ I heard anything and left the room,/ and I hated you for not/ belting the brat out of me." Several single-line "" are inspired by Deaf sound artist Christine Sun Kim, providing a formally ambitious and visually captivating "silence" on the page. Antrobus beautifully pays witness to the legacy of colonialism while providing another gripping meditation on language and communication. (Nov.)

Following up his Ted Hughes Award-winning debut, The Perseverance (published in the United States just this year), British Jamaican poet Antrobus deepens his exploration of identity by plumbing family stories that say something larger. From his parents' meeting to a final good-bye to his dead father ("I met your brothers./ Losing you made me need them"), these stories open to the ancestral "Sir Edmund Antrobus (3rd baronet)/ slaver" and the ongoing weight of colonialism ("The barman's eyes in The Antrobus Arms/ become sharp gates when I claim to be English"). Traveling from England to the Caribbean to the United States, the poet unfurls many small, aching moments and explores his Deafness. VERDICT A fluidly written understanding of self, history, and oppression from a fast-rising poet.