Stalker
by Vahni Capildeo
For K.M. Grant
He waits. Without knowing me,
he waits. The tips of branches,
edible and winey, bring
spring by suggestion to him
who in autumn dawn, eager,
with wet knees, disregards me,
being drawn by me. He waits
and in me he waits. I branch,
the form is branching, it bounds
like sight from dark to bright, back
again. The form is from me:
it is him, poem, stag, first sight
and most known. In him I wait:
(when he falls) needs must (hot heap),
nothing left over (treelike
no longer) nor forlorn: we’re
totalled.
From Measures of Expatriation (Carcanet).
Forward Prizes for Poetry
Winner Best Collection 2016
Measures of Expatriation
Vahni Capildeo
About Vahni Capildeo
Vahni Capildeo (b.1973, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) won the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2016 with Measures of Expatriation. Asked about future projects in a subsequent interview, Capildeo spoke of writing ‘thing-like poems which did not belong in any of the recent books: moss, glass, lizard words’. Some of these have found their way into Venus as a Bear, a collection that explores the strange affinities humans have for creatures, objects and places.
Capildeo’s poetry deliberately resists purely biographical interpretation: the author elects to be identified as ‘they/them’ in the context of their work. They came to the UK in 1991 to study Old Norse at Christ Church in Oxford, and to work for the Oxford English Dictionary. Their advice for anyone starting out in poetry today is simple: ‘Delete Facebook. Go outdoors’.
Forward Prizes History:
- 2018 Forward Prizes for Best Collection, shortlisted for Venus as a Bear (Carcanet)
