Arts
Suzannah spoke with Vahni Capildeo ahead of her Centre Stage reading at the StAnza poetry festival. They discussed growing up in a multilingual culture, thinking in things other than language, constructing prose poems, and the different kinds of audiences that a poet might encounter. Vahni also read her poems 'Louise Bourgeois: Insomnia Drawings' (at 9m53s) and 'Slaughterer' (at 13m14s). Vahni Capildeo is a Trinidadian British writer whose five books and two pamphlets include Measures of Expatriation (Carcanet, 2016), Simple Complex Shapes (Shearsman, 2015) and Utter (Peepal Tree, 2013). She holds a PhD in Old Norse and is interested in multilingualism, creative reworkings, and the boundaries between the human and the natural. Her collaborative work on performance and installation includes responses to Euripides' Bacchae, 'Radical Shakespeare', and Martin Carter's revolutionary writings from Guyana. The Harper-Wood Studentship (St John's College, Cambridge) supported her travel for research during 2015-16. Capildeo was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Collection for Measures of Expatriation in 2016. Suzannah V. Evans was born in London and studied at the universities of St Andrews and York. She has worked in publishing and recently as a sound technician, translator, and interpreter for StAnza poetry festival in St Andrews. Her poetry and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Eborakon, The North, New Welsh Review, Tears in the Fence, and RAUM. Photo Credit: Suzannah V. Evans