Trinbagonian-British writer Anthony Vahni Capildeo. Photo by Casa de América on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Trinidad and Tobago-born, UK-based poet Anthony Vahni Capildeo, who hails from the family that produced Nobel Laureate VS Naipaul, has been awarded the 2025 Windham-Campbell Prize for poetry, a prestigious literary accolade that recognises eight international writers — two from four different genres — each year.

One of the factors that makes this award special is that none of the chosen writers know that they are even nominated, so once the news breaks, they are as surprised as the rest of the literary world. Capildeo's reaction to the award? “That's unbelievable and actually life changing in these circumstances […] I feel absolutely overjoyed! The idea that people would enjoy or even love your poetry is a huge encouragement …”

The prize, which comes with a cash award of USD 175,000 (TTD 1,190,000), was born out of the understanding that writers need a certain level of financial freedom in order to create their best work, and a belief that “art should not be compromised by commerce.”

The 2025 recipients will be awarded at a formal ceremony to be held at Yale this September, with the bonus of their work being featured in a special issue of The Yale Review, the oldest literary magazine in the United States.

On Capildeo's profile page on the award's website, their poetry is described as “immersed equally in narrative and lyric, querying forms with an insistent playfulness and a radical political consciousness”:

One finds a sacred wonder and delight in language in every poem in each of their nine collections and eight chapbooks. In Utter’s (2013) titular poem, beauty is everywhere. […]

Capildeo’s poems have a sense of roaming curiosity: think of a determined and sensuous leap, rather than an automatic movement to get from A to B. It’s this rare quality that gives readers the sense that they are dancing alongside Capildeo when engaging with their poetry.

Though perhaps the most significant of their career thus far, the Windham-Campbell Prize is by no means Capildeo's first literary recognition. They won the Forward Prize in 2016 for “Measures of Expatriation,” which chair of the judges Malika Booker dubbed “a book you will forever be opening,” having successfully blurred the lines between poetry and prose. The work also secured a T.S. Eliot Prize nomination that year.

In 2018, Capildeo won the Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors. They have also been the recipient of several fellowships and residencies, and were elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2019.

Capildeo's other collections include “Like a Tree, Walking” (2022), shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour; “Utter” (2013); “Venus as a Bear” (2018); and “Skin Can Hold” (2019). As established by their first book, “No Traveller Returns” (2003), Capildeo has always been interested in crossing genres, incorporating linguistic diversity with emotive memory, and anchoring them in a sense of place that draws the reader in. Adept in an array of genres, they have also written several sterling pieces of non-fiction.

The UK Guardian recently highlighted Capildeo’s latest poetry collection, “Polkadot Wounds” (2024), as among the best of the year. On April 6, Bocas Lit Fest announced that Capildeo's latest offering, which reads as a conversation with loved ones both alive and deceased, has won the poetry category of the annual OCM Bocas Prize, the region’s most distinguished literary award. They are now up against fiction author Myriam J.A. Chancy and Canadian-Trinidadian writer Dionne Brand for the overall prize, which will be announced at the 2025 festival, taking place in Port of Spain from May 1-4.

“Polkadot Wounds,” the judges wrote, “transforms form”:

Here the cemetery is a sanctuary is a playground is a coastal retreat. Capildeo’s facility with form lets them play in language in a way that makes new spaces for our imaginations. These poems make it seem like an easy feat to hold millennia in one image and then another, moving inside of time with grace […] It is in fact a miracle only made possible by bringing a depth of precision and an openness of sound together again and again until resonance and surprise reveal their kinship.

It is work like this that continues to impact so many readers, making Capildeo one of the most exciting poets of our time. As Facebook user Christine Roseeta Walker wrote upon hearing of Capildeo's award of the Windham-Campbell Prize, “Congratulations to Anthony Vahni Capildeo for achieving such a magnificent honour. You deserve every moment of it for being a truly brilliant poet and human being.”

Brilliant and humble — in a piece for Poetry Nation Review (PNR) entitled “Water Poetics,” they wrote, “Every one of us could find the springs of our poetics if we chart our lived experience with a mind of water. Reading the sea for rip tides is a habit I acquired early and naturally, around the same time and in similar ways to reading ‘dog ears’ in the cloth of an unevenly hemmed dress.”