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Thursday, May 29, 2025

Anthony Vahni Capildeo coming home

by

Ira Mathur
31 days ago
20250427

Win­ner of the 2025 Bo­cas Prize for Po­et­ry and now in con­tention for the over­all award, An­tho­ny Vah­ni Capildeo re­turns to Trinidad for a fes­ti­val apt­ly themed “Al­ways Com­ing Home”—bring­ing with them a po­et­ics forged in ex­ile, re­sis­tance, and the be­lief that “No in­di­vid­ual has true free­dom till all are free.”

In March 2025, An­tho­ny Vah­ni Capildeo—Trinida­di­an-born, UK-based po­et, es­say­ist, and schol­ar—was award­ed the Wind­ham-Camp­bell Prize for Po­et­ry, one of the 21st cen­tu­ry’s most sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­na­tion­al lit­er­ary ho­n­ours.

Ad­min­is­tered by Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, the prize mon­ey car­ries an un­re­strict­ed grant and recog­nis­es writ­ers whose work shows “ex­cep­tion­al lit­er­ary achieve­ment and promise”.

At the 2025 Bo­cas Lit Fest, Capildeo’s Polka­dot Wounds will be in con­tention for the over­all OCM Bo­cas Prize, along­side Dionne Brand’s non-fic­tion and Myr­i­am J A Chancy’s fic­tion. Yet the sig­nif­i­cance of Bo­cas here lies not in com­pe­ti­tion but in re­turn.

Capildeo has long main­tained con­nec­tions with the fes­ti­val and with Trinidad’s cul­tur­al life, in­clud­ing an as­so­ci­a­tion with the Bel­mont Ex­ot­ic Styl­ish Sailors, a tra­di­tion­al mas band whose de­fi­ant aes­thet­ics echo Capildeo’s po­et­ics: for­mal, root­ed, un­colonised.

Capildeo’s se­lec­tion for both prizes is not a sur­prise, though it is long over­due.

Their po­et­ry—span­ning nine full-length col­lec­tions and nu­mer­ous pam­phlets—has, for over two decades, chal­lenged the for­mal, na­tion­al, and even gram­mat­i­cal bound­aries of the An­glo­phone canon.

With the 2025 Wind­ham-Camp­bell and the con­cur­rent award in the Po­et­ry cat­e­go­ry of the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture (for Polka­dot Wounds), a re­gion­al and glob­al con­sen­sus ap­pears to have formed around a sin­gu­lar propo­si­tion: that Capildeo is one of the most orig­i­nal and in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly rig­or­ous po­ets writ­ing to­day.

Their lat­est col­lec­tion, Polka­dot Wounds (Car­canet, 2024), is pre­oc­cu­pied with scale: the in­ti­ma­cy of bod­i­ly pain against the vast­ness of his­to­ry and land­scape. The ti­tle is de­cep­tive in its soft­ness; the po­ems are filled with son­ic, lin­guis­tic, and his­tor­i­cal rup­tures. They do not co­here; they re­sist. Their re­la­tion­ship with lan­guage is both in­ti­mate and his­tor­i­cal. Their po­ems are not struc­tured around anec­dote or af­fect but around syn­tax, et­y­mol­o­gy, drift.

Their 2016 col­lec­tion Mea­sures of Ex­pa­tri­a­tion (Car­canet) won the For­ward Prize for Best Col­lec­tion, a rare achieve­ment for a Caribbean writer based in Britain who is writ­ing in a hy­brid form that blurs lyric, es­say, and philo­soph­i­cal med­i­ta­tion.

Still, in­sti­tu­tion­al recog­ni­tion has lagged—per­haps due to the com­plex­i­ty of their out­put—work of­ten seen as “dif­fi­cult” by those who re­main con­di­tioned to ex­pect clar­i­ty as com­fort and iden­ti­ty as a con­fes­sion.

Capildeo has al­ways writ­ten in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances—emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly—in a cre­ative mo­men­tum that al­most dis­as­so­ci­ates it­self from the writer’s physcial life.. The Wind­ham-Camp­bell Prize is not, then, a coro­na­tion. It is a re­lief.

“I have been liv­ing a small and pre­car­i­ous per­son­al life—work­ing part-time part­ly to have cre­ative flex­i­bil­i­ty, part­ly to be free to care for fam­i­ly in Trinidad and stay con­nect­ed, and part­ly be­cause of chron­ic ill health.

“The Wind­ham-Camp­bell prize takes away a lot of prac­ti­cal con­cerns I had about grow­ing old­er. For me the work of writ­ing is an end­less quest for truth and con­nex­ion, both in lan­guage, be­tween lan­guages, and be­tween peo­ple.”

If the in­ten­tion of the prize was to en­cour­age great work in dif­fi­cult phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al spaces, it will do that.

Capildeo says, “With the Wind­ham-Camp­bell prize, I shall be able to ‘give back’ a lit­tle, shore my­self up. I am in­cred­i­bly grate­ful to Don­ald Wind­ham and Sandy Camp­bell for cre­at­ing ground where fu­ture po­ets can flour­ish.”

Capildeo, a Fel­low of the Roy­al So­ci­ety of Lit­er­a­ture and Writer in Res­i­dence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of York, trained as a me­dieval­ist at Ox­ford.

An­tho­ny Vah­ni Capildeo was born in 1973 in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­to the dis­tin­guished Capildeo fam­i­ly, which in­cludes No­bel Lau­re­ate V S Naipaul. They moved to the Unit­ed King­dom in 1991 to study at Christ Church, Ox­ford, where they earned a DPhil in Old Norse lit­er­a­ture and trans­la­tion the­o­ry as a Rhodes Schol­ar.

Their colo­nial ed­u­ca­tion may be sound, but their re­fusal to con­form ex­tends be­yond form. They re­ject the mythol­o­gy of soli­tary ge­nius.

“There is no such thing as The Au­thor (ex­cept the au­thor of cre­ation).

“The soon­er we get away from the myth of hero­ic in­di­vid­u­als or the yearn­ing for god­like men­tors, the bet­ter. As a child, I did not have words for this be­lief. I was sur­round­ed by ex­cel­lent word­craft: my moth­er, mak­ing up sto­ries; my fa­ther, teach­ing me by his ob­ser­va­tion of na­ture and the ex­am­ple of his po­et­ry, de­spite his per­son­al ill­ness and the fam­i­ly cru­el­ty he faced.”

In this, Capildeo de­parts from their rel­a­tive V S Naipaul, whose work (while for­mal, mas­ter­ful) of­ten sus­tained a vi­sion of the au­thor as om­ni­scient ob­serv­er.

Capildeo, by con­trast, dis­as­sem­bles the premise of the self-con­tained writer.

“I have been able to write on­ly be­cause peo­ple kept me alive; many Trinida­di­an women.

“Give thanks for the woman who spent days and nights tend­ing me when ter­ri­ble work­ing con­di­tions in Brex­it Britain floored me. My walk­ing com­pan­ions, ex­chang­ing miles of wis­dom in sun and rain. The ones with­out ‘ed­u­ca­tion’ have in­sight sharp­er than a two-edged sword. To­geth­er, they col­lec­tive­ly au­thor our sto­ry–ways of mak­ing sense out of our en­tan­gle­ment in his­to­ries that text­books ig­nore; our liv­ing her­itage that em­bar­rass­es mu­se­ums.”

Work root­ed in ac­tivism and com­mit­ment to so­cial jus­tice

Capildeo’s work is deeply root­ed in ac­tivism and a com­mit­ment to so­cial jus­tice. In 2023, they joined over 2,000 artists in sign­ing an open let­ter call­ing for a cease­fire in Gaza, con­demn­ing the col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment of Pales­tini­ans, and urg­ing gov­ern­ments to end mil­i­tary sup­port for Is­rael.

In 2024, they en­dorsed an open let­ter de­mand­ing that the in­vest­ment firm Bail­lie Gif­ford di­vest from fos­sil fu­els and com­pa­nies prof­it­ing from Is­raeli oc­cu­pa­tion. The let­ter, signed by nu­mer­ous writ­ers and lit­er­ary pro­fes­sion­als, called for lit­er­ary or­gan­i­sa­tions to sev­er ties with Bail­lie Gif­ford un­til such di­vest­ments oc­curred.

Capildeo has al­so sup­port­ed the rights of pre­car­i­ous aca­d­e­m­ic work­ers, li­brar­i­ans, and in­de­pen­dent book­sellers. They have pub­licly backed strike ac­tions by the Uni­ver­si­ty and Col­lege Union (UCU) in the UK and of­ten fore­ground the work of trade union­ists and book work­ers as “es­sen­tial to any se­ri­ous cul­ture of lit­er­a­ture.”

Through these ac­tions, Capildeo ex­em­pli­fies a form of lit­er­ary ac­tivism that is both deeply per­son­al and uni­ver­sal­ly res­o­nant, em­body­ing a po­et­ics that re­fus­es to sep­a­rate the aes­thet­ic from the eth­i­cal—all en­cap­su­lat­ed in their be­lief that “No in­di­vid­ual has true free­dom till all are free.”

Capildeo’s bib­li­og­ra­phy is vast and var­ied. It in­cludes Skin Can Hold (2019), Venus as a Bear (2018), Ut­ter (2013), and Per­son An­i­mal Fig­ure (2005), among oth­ers. They al­so pro­duce pam­phlets—lim­it­ed-run, small press, of­ten col­lab­o­ra­tive—such as Odyssey Call­ing (Sad Press, 2020) and Light Site (Periplum Po­et­ry, 2020).

The tone of their work shifts from foren­sic to in­can­ta­to­ry, from deeply in­te­ri­or to out­ward-fac­ing and polem­i­cal. But what re­mains con­stant is the com­mit­ment to lis­ten­ing. Capildeo writes not to pro­nounce but to ab­sorb the gran­u­lar truth of be­ing hu­man.

Polka­dot Wounds, their ninth col­lec­tion, ex­pands that tra­jec­to­ry. Com­posed part­ly dur­ing a res­i­den­cy in Corn­wall, the po­ems ad­dress the af­ter­life of em­pire, en­vi­ron­men­tal col­lapse, and the in­ti­ma­cy of care. There is lit­tle res­o­lu­tion. In­stead, the work puls­es with un­cer­tain­ty, dis­lo­ca­tion, and phys­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

Capildeo’s po­et­ry ex­ists with­in a rich Caribbean lin­eage. Derek Wal­cott, Ka­mau Brath­waite, Lor­na Good­i­son, and Mar­tin Carter each forged po­et­ic vo­cab­u­lar­ies for the post-colo­nial con­di­tion. Wal­cott laboured for decades to graft clas­si­cal form on­to Caribbean land­scapes. Brath­waite shat­tered the line, priv­i­leg­ing what he called “na­tion lan­guage.” Carter spoke of the need to “write a hap­pi­er al­pha­bet.” Capildeo car­ries this tra­di­tion for­ward with deep re­sis­tance to com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion. Their po­et­ry re­fus­es the spec­ta­cle of iden­ti­ty.

This makes their work nec­es­sary—not on­ly for Caribbean lit­er­a­ture but al­so for con­tem­po­rary let­ters more broad­ly. It ex­ists in the gaps oth­ers pre­fer not to name: be­tween care and col­lapse, be­tween breath and syn­tax, be­tween the in­di­vid­ual and the col­lec­tive.

What Capildeo of­fers is not a voice. It is a struc­ture of feel­ing. A scaf­fold­ing. A way to sur­vive while re­main­ing close to the truth of one­self and the world.

In their own words: “The book is part of a glob­al ecol­o­gy of ma­te­r­i­al and ideas. In this, let us choose life.”

Re­turn­ing to Bo­cas Lit Fest

This May, Capildeo re­turns to the Bo­cas Lit Fest in Port-of-Spain, not sim­ply as a lau­re­ate but as a teacher, col­lab­o­ra­tor, and cel­e­brant of lan­guage. On Sat­ur­day, May 3, they will speak with Lawrence Scott and Michael Kelle­her in a pan­el on po­et­ry, mem­o­ry, and long­ing. On Sun­day, May 4, Capildeo leads a po­et­ry work­shop ti­tled “If Free­dom Writes No Hap­pi­er Al­pha­bet”, in­spired by Mar­tin Carter’s po­et­ic call to reimag­ine lan­guage in the name of lib­er­a­tion. No pri­or ex­pe­ri­ence is re­quired. On­ly at­ten­tion.

SE­LECT­ED BIB­LI­OG­RA­PHY—AN­THO­NY VAH­NI CAPILDEO

• Polka­dot Wounds (2024, Car­canet)

• A Hap­pi­ness (2022, In­ter­graphia)

• Like a Tree, Walk­ing (2021, Car­canet)

• Skin Can Hold (2019, Car­canet)

• Venus as a Bear (2018, Car­canet)

• Mea­sures of Ex­pa­tri­a­tion (2016, Car­canet)—For­ward Prize Win­ner

• Ut­ter (2013, Peepal Tree Press)

• Per­son An­i­mal Fig­ure (2005, Land­fill Press)

• No Trav­eller Re­turns (2003, Salt Pub­lish­ing)

BO­CAS LIT FEST—15 YEARS OF HOME

Cel­e­brat­ing its 15th year, the 2025 Bo­cas Lit Fest is themed “Al­ways Com­ing Home”, with a pro­gramme of free read­ings, pan­els, book launch­es, open mics, chil­dren’s events, and the 15-year com­mem­o­ra­tion of the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture.

Full pro­gramme at bo­caslit­fest.com

@bo­caslit­fest on Face­book, In­sta­gram, and X

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the 2023 Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days. Web­site: www.iras­room.org. Au­thor in­quiries: iras­room@gmail.com


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