Ira Math­ur

This week’s WE con­tin­ues the ex­plo­ration of the po­et and prose writer An­tho­ny (Vah­ni) Capildeo’s work. The pro­lif­ic Trinidad-born po­et (writer in Res­i­dence and Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of York, Vis­it­ing Schol­ar at Pem­broke Col­lege, Cam­bridge, and Hon­orary Stu­dent of Christ Church, Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty) won the pres­ti­gious For­ward Prize (2016) for their col­lec­tion “Mea­sures of Ex­pa­tri­a­tion”.

The fol­low­ing are ex­cerpts from the prize-win­ning col­lec­tion. The first two are sit­u­at­ed in Trinidad, show­cas­ing the Capildeos trade­mark style, where the per­son­al is po­et­ic yet in­tense­ly po­lit­i­cal, bristling with the in­tegri­ty of bru­tal­ly hon­est ex­ca­vat­ed ob­ser­va­tions.

Fire & Dark­ness:

And Al­so/No Join/Like

“We brought few friends home who were not al­ready part of at least a two-gen­er­a­tion fam­i­ly cir­cle. We brought few friends home. This time my broth­er had in­tro­duced a soft and brown and tall­ish young man in his ear­ly twen­ties, who weighed not much more than a hun­dred pounds. By his­tor­i­cal pat­tern, not per­son­al choice, in our sec­u­lar Hin­du house­hold, this was the first Mus­lim friend our age. Per­haps it has changed; but non-In­do-Caribbeans used not to be aware that ‘Ali’ and ‘Mo­hammed’ are not ‘In­di­an’ names. And in that un­aware­ness they are lin­guis­ti­cal­ly wrong, but more pro­found­ly right: for our an­ces­tors brought over a shared In­di­an vil­lage cul­ture, over a cen­tu­ry be­fore the cre­ation of Pak­istan in the In­dus area made such a dif­fer­ence. And in that Trinidad re­mote from Trinidad’s Trinidad, and nonethe­less most mixed and Trinida­di­an, a lu­natic re­ver­ber­a­tion was set up by the 1947 Par­ti­tion–some third-gen­er­a­tion im­mi­grant fam­i­lies briefly fought ac­cord­ing to the lines of what had not been a di­vi­sion. In lands far away, cur­rent events were in­di­rect­ly re­gen­er­at­ing or in­vent­ing this part of Trinidad’s past al­so. By 1990, we knew that there must be some dif­fer­ence.”

Too Sol­id Flesh

“So much of cloth. An old­er woman’s voice whis­pers dis­ap­proval in my ear. Why so much of cloth, when dress­es would not be frowned on by the guardians of good be­hav­iour? My grand­moth­er’s gen­er­a­tion was al­ready per­mit­ted to wear colo­nial-ex­port chal­lis cot­ton or geor­gette print, fas­tened with cov­ered but­tons like those on liv­ing room fur­ni­ture. The knees would not quite be ex­posed. The un­cov­ered legs might be stur­dy, twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry vari­cose orig­i­nals of the limbs adored in bronze or sand­stone by pre-Chris­t­ian-era sculp­tors. The un­cov­ered legs might be spindly, kin to those that bend again and again among the leaves of some labour-in­ten­sive crop on its way to­wards the air­tight hold of a fra­grant des­tiny. The part­ly ra­zored legs might be sleek with co­coa but­ter or co­conut oil, rubbed in by the hands of grand­chil­dren who learn the mys­ter­ies of pain and age from the ques­tion-com­mand, ‘Come and rub your Ajee’s legs!’ If you see the pic­tures like Aun­tie Sati had–you re­mem­ber the batik pic­tures?–we nev­er cov­ered our­selves up. Cov­er­ing our­selves up, that is a new thing. Maybe it is a Mus­lim thing, maybe it is a West­ern thing. Those women in the pic­tures, some of them are not even wear­ing a choli. They tie their sari across their bare chest.”

I love You

‘I love you,’ he wouldn’t say: it was against his phi­los­o­phy; I-love-you didn’t mean what it meant, plus the ver­ray con­struc­tion of the phrase caused bad-old-con­crete-law­man-van­dal-ver­bal-mildew-up­on-the-grape­har­vest-and-war-for-rare-min­er­als-re­quired-to-man­u­fac­ture-com­mu­ni­ca­tions-de­vices dam­age; say­ing I-love-you dam­aged love, sub­ject and ob­ject; plus he could prove this in two dense and del­ph­ic lan­guages suit­able for phi­los­o­phy, opera, curs­ing, and rack­ing the nerves of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence ma­chines that per­haps could love but would be hard-wired gi­ammai to dare say so. So what moved him to not-say I-love-you? What wake-up-and-spoil-the-cof­fee ash­tray-lick­ing djinn? I have to start to agree. The verb­ness of it im­pro­pri­ety (eyes glob up the sy­ringe when you’re giv­ing blood: semi­sol­id spi­ralling); per­haps too ac­tive … I-love-you, I sand you, I drill you, I hon­ey and set you for wasps, crim­son you like a stolen to­ga, add val­ue ap­ply­ing dye, fight own­er­ship, I cite you to jus­ti­fy skilled out­rage, put your name as guar­an­tor on an as­tro­nom­i­cal mort­gage, I ad­mit de­ser­ti­fi­ca­tion comes as a re­lief, from I to O, O my oa­sis, O my mi­rage. Maybe the verb is a tend­ing-to­wards? A tightrope? A tro­pism? A sta­tion? But that’s meet­ing him on his own ground; plus I can’t dis­prove en­tire lan­guages; plus those three lit­tle words aren’t meant as say­ing.”

The pre­ced­ing ex­cerpts are from An­tho­ny (Vah­ni) Capildeos’s For­ward Prize Win­ning col­lec­tion (2016), Mea­sures of Ex­pa­tri­a­tion.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian colum­nist and the win­ner of the non-fic­tion OCM Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture 2023.