#vahni capildeo

[metaphrasis]

“Language is my home. It is alive other than in speech. It is beyond a thing to be carried with me. It is ineluctable, variegated and muscular. A flicker and drag emanates from the idea of it. Language seems capable of girding the oceanic earth, like the world-serpent of Norse legend. It is as if language places a shaping pressure upon our territories of habitation and voyage; thrashing, independent, threatening to rive our known world apart."

— Vahni Capildeo, excerpt of "Going Nowhere, Getting Somewhere"

[violettesiren]

for K.M. Grant

Here among witch-hazels I miss the peregrine we met just once. Like the fire from bare twigs that twists a floral kiss on winter’s neck, He stunned me so I’m hanging on to language by its clichés, pushed to singer-songwrite fingernails down a tumbling slate precipice. I would call Him chestnut-stippled, light on the arm, I want to say, the non-urgent flexing of chest muscles making a snow-champion’s balance; and bad old hierarchy doffs its executioner’s garb to rise with the word, princely. Love, this is; no poem. What is the term for the gathering of one falcon? An embarrassment of poets. An adoration. An abyss.

Day, with Hawk by Vahni Capildeo

[alliwanttodoiscollectpoetry]

Vahni Capildeo

[kneelbeforeyourdogbabylon]

Niche

I signed up for poem-a-day from poets.org and they sent me this gorgeous erasure-poetry poem this morning, written by Anthony Vahni Capildeo.

Below the cut: how it looks when you highlight and copy and paste ❤️

Niche

Anthony Vahni Capildeo

I sing for joy: 

Your whole body is composed of nesting places  Your whole body is composed of nesting places Your whole body is composed of nesting places  Your whole body is composed of nesting places Your whole body is composed of nesting places  Your whole body is composed of nesting places Your whole body is composed of nesting places  Your whole body is composed of nesting places Keep me under the shadow of your wings  Keep me under the shadow of your wings Keep me under the shadow of your wings  Keep me under the shadow of your wings Keep me under the shadow of your wings Keep me under the shadow of your wings 

Copyright © 2024 by Anthony Vahni Capildeo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 25, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

[bunnybisexual]

anthony vahni capildeo, niche

[ilmeplait]

II. Plague Fidelity

You may kiss me as much as you like. I wish you would. I always wish you would. I wish you always would. You're the only one allowed to kiss me. The science is, lack of touch can make you ill, even physically. Sometimes when you breathe, I start breathing just like you. Do you remember grandmothers, poems about grandmothers? You said life's not like that. Could be. Remember asking, laughing, why I write — used to — about the sea? Kiss me. Tell me where you are. Vahni Capildeo (2021)

[othernotebooksareavailable]

From Like a Tree, Walking by Vahni Capildeo

[jasmynblogs]

Poetic License

For this assignment I chose the poem "I Love You" written by Vahni Capildeo because it caught my attention with the certain words used. The lyrics poke around into the speakers reflection on the refusal of their partner to utter the phrase "I love you," attributing the potential damage caused by the verbalization of love. It goes on to examine the profound implications of love and the ways in which language and action intersect. The opening lines, "I love you; he wouldn't say: it was against his philosophy; I-Love-You / didn't mean what it meant," quickly establish the central conflict. This touched me personally because getting a man to say I love you has been hard for me and I think this is a great way to express where a man is coming from. Through intricate wordplay, vivid imagery, and philosophical musings, the lyrics embrace individuality within the realm of love. This poem portrays a lot for me and reminds me of self love because three words can be difficult. This poem is the freedom to express oneself authentically and fully that brings joy and a sense of fresh air. I don't read many poems on my own however a see the sense behind them and if you truly take the time to break it down and understand the lyrics then you can find a piece of art to connect to. Im always up for giving new things a try, just like men should try expressing themselves better.

[allegrasloman]

How was it that till questioned, till displaced in the attempt to answer, I had scarcely thought of myself as having a country, or indeed as having left a country?

Vahni Capildeo, ‘Going Nowhere, Getting Somewhere’

[haze]

Vahni Capildeo, from For Love Of Things Invisible

[lifeinpoetry]

Trauma talk just sounds violent or distorted, or gabbling, which is like what happens when someone wants to report a rape. They can’t tell you, ‘Well at six o’clock this happened,’ then ‘At eight o’clock this happened,’ then, ‘At eight o’clock the next day I thought this and I felt that so at nine o’clock I rang you’. If they don’t present a sort of linear narrative they often get punished because the amount of violence and fragmentation they convey is something that doesn’t fit in people’s idea of a fluent witness.

— Vahni Capildeo, from ‘Vahni Capildeo’, Scottish Poetry Library Podcast, 26 January 2017 (as quoted in Joanna Walsh’s Girl Online)

[catilinas]

Vahni Capildeo, from Odyssey Response in Like a Tree, Walking

[yourdailyqueer]

Vahni Capildeo

Gender: Agender (they/them)

Sexuality: Queer

DOB: Born 1973  

Ethnicity: Trinidadian

Nationality: British

Occupation: Writer

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

Close reading - Vahni Anthony Ezekiel Capildeo - Revolution Time

Revolution Time

Revolution time is a turn  and a turn is a crisis and maybe how you spell crisis is where Christ is - maybe not Revolution time is a turn about a time not taken because taken for granted for given - were you taken through Revolution Time Wordsearch looking for LOVE - were you given EVIL when you wanted to LIVE - Revolution is not a spell. Time is now. Time is devalued, time is monetized, misgendered, is nothing if not now.                        Time is revolution you don’t see. Revolution time happening inside.                You can’t tell by testing if someone is Revolution Positive. One-thirty-second Revolution.                Who is turning Inwardly? The man cutting grass turns into a voter. The child from Venezuela turns into a Moko. The lady squatting down the road, you call her crazy, then you turn a little inward and call her hungry, take the time to turn and call her family. Call her family. I am wrong in every structure I take down. Everything we can sing to hope walls fall, we sing colonially.

Also this. Click off. Also that. Click off. Revolution time is reflection and reflex action refusing to react. Revolution time: when you love to kill your neighbour, but you click off. Revolution time is thinking again. Think again.

What is it?

Revolution Time is an unrhymed poem featuring a cacophony of voices, a riotous mix of Dante, Sean Bonney, Public Enemy – the clash of ‘crisis/christ’ reminds me of Chuck D “wondering / where Christ is in all this crisis” – carnival characters and Vahni Anthony Ezekiel Capildeo. The loudest voice on the track is Capildeo’s, their booming, bonny sloganeering bouncing from phrase to phrase like a butterfly:

Time is now. Time is devalued, time is monetized, misgendered, is nothing if not now.

Capildeo zooms in and out, clicks on and off. The poem quivers under self-imposed pressure, a beautiful mind dancing through characters and phrases with powder puff punches of manic pixie energy and a hint of violence, undercut by enchantment, like Ariel from Shakespeare's most well-rounded play on a date with Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Why it works

What works in Revolution Time is Capildeo’s quality of mind; just as their thoughts settle, they switch: ‘ Who is turning / inwardly?’ Capildeo predicts the readers inward turn through hyper sensitivity to mood. Hyper sensitivity is a key to their machinery, it gives Revolution Time richer, more evocative, pantomime play:  

               The man cutting grass turns into a voter. The child from Venezuela turns into a Moko.

Revolution Time is playful, alive to the fun in profundity, I love the palindrome: ‘EVIL when you wanted to LIVE’ (their capitals). Capildeo’s is a poet to read for pure pleasure, we all need a little more Capildeo on our bookshelves, a little more pleasure in our lives.

Anything else?

Capildep started writing at the age of two, and credits her Hindu heritage as an early inspiration: “hearing my father chant the Ramayana’s beautiful slokas assured me that illiteracy was not our fate” (interview by Zannab Sheikh)

Capildeo is a close friend of Jeremy Noel-Tod, influential poetry critic and senior lecturer at UEA. In 1998 Noel-Tod published a poem by Capildeo in the magazine Zero, a student led creative writing publication at Oxford.

From the poet:

“Revolution Time' was commissioned by the Bocas Litfest when it went online during the strict lockdown in Trinidad. This was for the Revolution Time event (I'm at about 32 minutes in). It deliberately uses repetition and wordplay, in a way that's influenced by traditional masquerade characters such as the Robber and the Pierrot.

My poem was partly inspired by hearing the Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon preach on metanoia, as well as seeing him take a very direct approach to poverty relief, integration of migrants, and education around hygiene and encouragement of vaccination; partly inspired in delivery by my Midnight Robber character, Stranger Invader.”

_________________________________

Revolution Time is from the collection ‘Like a Tree, Walking’.

[alwaysalreadyangry]

Vahni Capildeo, from The Dusty Angel

[tasavvur]

...and another thing (magnolia’s rival (candelabra)), like any memory whose (constancy is inconsistency (constancy is ingathering)) constancy is outpouring (tu joues? (Toujours))...

Vahni Capildeo, from ‘Blackbox Testing’, published in Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry. Published by Ignota Press, 2018.