Description
Vahni Capildeo’s Venus as a Bear collects poems on animals, art, language, the sea, thinghood, metaphor, description, and dance. They tend toward, and tend to, the inanimate and non-human, tenderly disclosing their forms of sentience. We have feelings for creatures, objects and places, but where do these affinities come from? How do things, as things, affect us, remain mysterious while making themselves known?
For Capildeo answers formed at their own pace, while waiting for lambing at a friend’s farm; exploring the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford; criss-crossing the British Isles with the Out of Bounds poetry project; or hearing of Africa and the Romans in Scotland, of Guyana and Shakespeare, while standing over-the-boots deep in a freezing sea off the coast of Wales.
Many of the poems respond to real places, objects and people, as investigations, meditations, or dedications. They dwell on bodies and dwell in the body, inviting ardent, open forms of reading, in the spirit of their composition.
It was such a treat to have Vahni with us at VERVE 2019 and she took the Saturday headline event by storrn as well as workshopping for us! A real legend who made a legend’s impact!
Price £9.99
ISBN: 9781784105549
Date: 26th Apr 2018
Format: Paperback
Extent: 112 pp
POETRY
