In our second Poetry and Poetics reading series event of this term, the Department of English at Maynooth University is delighted to welcome Vahni Capildeo to read from and discuss their work.

Hosted by Dr Karl O'Hanlon and Dr Catherine Gander, this event will take place via Zoom and there will be time for an audience Q&A.

About the poet:

Vahni Capildeo FRSL is Writer in Residence at the University of York and Contributing Editor at PN Review, developing interests in silence, plurilingualism, and place. Recent work includes a seventh book, Skin Can Hold (Carcanet, 2019), which offers itself to be read in participatory and kinetic ways, drawing on various performance traditions, and three pamphlets, Odyssey Calling (Sad Press, 2020), Light Site (Periplum Poetry, 2020), a pamphlet of expanded translations, and The Dusty Angel (Oystercatcher, 2021), based on a year's worth of real, imaginary and haunted walks taken with a friend. Capildeo's prose includes quarantine dispatches for Poetry on the Move (Canberra).

About the work:

It has a sense of purpose, and its playfulness is infectious... There is a sharpness to the observations and a bold specificity to their articulation, often presented with an eye for humour. Capildeo's delight in this experiment is evident'

Chrissy Williams, Poetry London

'Vahni Capildeo's Measures of Expatriation is a work that amazes. We found a vertiginous excitement in the way in which the book grasps its subject: the sense of never quite being at home. This is poetry that transforms. When people in the future seek to know what it's like to live between places, traditions, habits and cultures, they will read this. Here is the language for what expatriation feels like.'

Malika Booker, Chair of the 2016 Forward Prize judging panel

'A bald enumeration of Capildeo's influences, subjects, travel destinations and poetic forms might give an impression of dizzying multifariousness.... But the essential remains the same throughout. Capildeo, it is only fair to acknowledge, is a demanding writer, someone who stretches the conventions of the lyric poem in unprecedented ways... a direct and sensual poet, warmly intimate and very funny.'

David Wheatley, The Guardian