Congratulations to Trinidadian Scottish poet Anthony V. Capildeo on winning two renowned literary prizes: the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the Windham Campbell Prize (both poetry)!
Windham Campbell Prize
“Anthony V. Capildeo’s poems are immersed equally in narrative and lyric, querying forms with an insistent playfulness and a radical political consciousness.” – Windham Campbell Prize
Anthony says of the Windham Campbell Prize…
It’s the most wonderful thing to feel connected to people (living and dead) who cared so much for the freedom of creative expression as to found and administer this prize; it gives me courage, and also the means to be more consistently present to my communities. Winning the Windham-Campbell Prize has lifted weights that I didn’t even know were oppressing me internally; it’s beyond anything I looked for in my ordinary writer’s life. First it Knocked me Flat, but Now I’m Bouncing!
OCM Bocas Prize
“Here the cemetery is a sanctuary is a playground is a coastal retreat. Capildeo’s facility with form lets them play in language in a way that makes new spaces for our imaginations. These poems make it seem like an easy feat to hold millennia in one image and then another, moving inside of time with grace … It is in fact a miracle only made possible by bringing a depth of precision and an openness of sound together again and again until resonance and surprise reveal their kinship.” – OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature
Anthony’s poetry collections
Anthony V. Capildeo FRSL is a Trinidadian Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction. Currently Professor and Writer in Residence at the University of York, their site-specific word and visual art includes responses to Cornwall’s former capital, Launceston, as the Causley Trust Poet in Residence (2022) and to the Ubatuba granite of the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds (2023), as well as to Scottish, Irish, and Caribbean built and natural environments. Their numerous books and pamphlets, from No Traveller Returns (Salt, 2003), Person Animal Figure (Landfill, 2005) onwards, are distinguished by deliberate engagement with independent and small presses. Their work has been recognized with the Cholmondeley Award (Society of Authors) and the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection. Their publications include Like a Tree, Walking (Carcanet, 2021) (Poetry Book Society Choice), and A Happiness (Intergraphia, 2022). Their interests include silence, translation theory, medieval reworkings, plurilingualism, collaborative work, and traditional masquerade. Recent commissions include research-based Windrush poems for Poet in the City and for the Royal Society of Literature. Capildeo served as a judge for the Jhalak Prize (2023).