A re­view byShiv­a­nee Ram­lochan

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Who owns po­et­ry? This con­tem­pla­tion, among oth­ers, be­comes cen­tral to the work­ing out of the mys­ter­ies imbed­ded in Vah­ni Capildeo's po­ems. The po­et's fourth col­lec­tion, Dark and Un­ac­cus­tomed Words, pub­lished by Egg Box Pub­lish­ing in 2011, was longlist­ed for the 2013 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture. Her pre­vi­ous col­lec­tions are No Trav­eller Re­turns (2003); Per­son An­i­mal Fig­ure (2005); and Undrain­ing Sea (2009).

The col­lec­tion de­rives its ti­tle from an ex­cerpt of 16th-cen­tu­ry lit­er­ary crit­ic George Put­ten­ham's The Arte of Poe­sie (1589), a canon­i­cal hand­book on po­et­ry and rhetoric. In it, Put­ten­ham re­flects on the lack of pow­er that "darke and un­ac­cus­tomed wordes" wield in the are­na of writ­ing con­se­crat­ed to "Princes [and] great es­tates," sug­gest­ing an open­ness of pos­si­bil­i­ty re­gard­ing po­et­ic states, and the peo­ple al­lowed to in­hab­it them.

It's ev­i­dent that Dark and Un­ac­cus­tomed Words is no sopho­moric idyll or self-serv­ing jaunt of ex­pres­sion­ism. From read­ings and reread­ings of these po­ems, crisp de­no­ta­tions of frac­tured, mul­ti­va­lent emo­tion­al states emerge: how one feels, and how the world around one re­sponds, seem to be fre­quent­ly at war with each oth­er. This war, as sev­er­al of Capildeo's po­ems sus­tain, may mark it­self out in both be­nign and dis­as­trous ways.

For in­stance, in The Dri­ving Les­son: 1. a pas­sive dri­ving class with a bel­liger­ent, frac­tious dri­ving in­struc­tor me­an­ders along un­til a sharply vi­o­lent act: "I re­ceive a sting­ing blow to the wrist. He says that's been the best les­son yet." The po­em's sub­ject ex­its the learn­er's ve­hi­cle, and fin­ish­es her jour­ney on foot: em­blem­at­ic of the pow­er of a per­sis­tent au­ton­o­my, even (or es­pe­cial­ly) when threat­ened by the dan­gers of those charged with in­struct­ing us well.

The sug­ges­tion that Na­ture will have us, no mat­ter what we have to say in the mat­ter, peers over the edge of sev­er­al pieces in the col­lec­tion. Leaves, trees and the sub­tle to force­ful sug­ges­tions of green­ery wink from the pages: in the col­lec­tion's first po­em, Fram­boy�n, the first lines an­nounce "That trees had evolved to eat oth­er trees. That this hap­pened at the end of a gar­den." Na­ture goes be­yond a rudi­men­ta­ry hu­man­is­ing in Capildeo's pieces: it would be more ac­cu­rate to say that the earth speaks with its own qual­i­ties that are un­bor­rowed from men and women.

The ge­o­graph­i­cal ter­ri­to­ries in these po­ems are al­lowed to be both in­nocu­ous and weight­ed with the sig­nif­i­cance we be­stow up­on them. In the arch­ly-ti­tled On Not Writ­ing as a West In­di­an Woman, the po­et speaks of a She em­bod­i­ment who does not con­tain oceans, "nor a spice tri­an­gle, won't boast that cin­na­mon could launch femme an­nounce­ments over the bound­ing main." There is a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of ways in which one can write in­te­ri­or­ly, this writ­ing seems to sug­gest, and none of them ought be wrong.

These po­ems chal­lenge, con­found and tit­il­late our ex­pec­ta­tions of what makes a good po­em: and, in­deed, of what a good po­em makes, in us. They serve as of­ten-gid­dy, re­flec­tive re­minders that the dark and un­ac­cus­tomed words of one woman, writer or cit­i­zen may well be the lilt­ing, light over­tones of some­one else.

At this year's Bo­cas Lit Fest, Vah­ni Capildeo will form part of the Ed­in­burgh World Writ­ers' Con­fer­ence pan­el on "Should Lit­er­a­ture Be Po­lit­i­cal?"

For more in­for­ma­tion, you can ac­cess the full 2013 NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest pro­gramme at www.bo­caslit­fest.com.