Violent Triage (excerpt)
violent triage / do you have smart goals / scared / measurable / achievable / reproductive / televisual / violent triage / whether in pastel / rose-gold / or electric blue / is viral in our minds / crowning that other virus / natural / to ask / who is dead / who’s as good as / violent triage / plan accordingly / did Google translate you / as disponible / or disposable / cross yourself when you pass a burial ground / what about when you see / a smartphone / but you were indigo / you can’t be expected to see cobalt / did Google translate you / as available / or valuable / bow your head when you pass a cemetery / but you have venus in aquarius and are more likely to keep it cool / let me do your chart / let me pull a card / violent triage / dream of a tidy resurrection / because the angels can’t be left wing / from rows of graves we’ll pop / like municipal tulips / don’t imagine they’ll rise up then / citizens of everywhere / the vast unmarked / in what eschatology does death lead to decolonization / the sea will push up too many timbered heads / violent triage / stories of how it all ends / what is the critical faculty / what kind of sickness / we all suffer from / something / violent triage / a new poetics / silence of the heart
Feature Date
- February 19, 2022
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Excerpted from “Violent Triage” from LIKE A TREE, WALKING: by Vahni Capildeo.
Published by Carcanet Press January 27th, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by Vahni Capildeo.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by kind permission of Carcanet Press, Manchester, UK
Hayley Madden
Vahni (Anthony Ezekiel) Capildeo FRSL is a Trinidadian Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction. Capildeo’s eight books and eight pamphlets include Like a Tree, Walking (Carcanet, November 2021) and The Dusty Angel (Oystercatcher, 2021). Their interests include plurilingualism, traditional masquerade, and multidisciplinary collaboration. They are Writer in Residence and Professor at the University of York, a Visiting Scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and an Honorary Student of Christ Church, Oxford.
"Vahni Capildeo is an astonishingly prolific and inventive poet, and Like a Tree, Walking, showcases the full range of their imagination...Capildeo's touch is light, their meaning never forced, yet even their longer poems maintain a quick pace and a clear sense of rhythm...Much of the collection is imbued with this spirit of natural connection and wonder, and Capildeo's ability to read nature, and to identify its presence in the midst of human society, makes their latest collection a thought-provoking read."
—Maggie Wang, Poetry School
"The poems here are just as striking as their collection's cover: Like a Tree, Walking is both playful and challenging...Capildeo's linguistic wit is very much to the fore from the start...[a] highly imaginative and literary collection."
—Sarah Law, Stride Magazine
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