Venus as a Bear

Venus as a Bear by Vahni Capildeo was shortlisted for The 2018 Forward Prize for Best Collection. It explores the nature of animal, art, language, the sea, thinghood, metaphor, description, and dance, focusing on the inanimate and non-human. The poems respond to real places, objects, and people, inviting ardent, open forms of reading.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 112 pages
Publication date: 26 April 2018
Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd

The Poetry Book Society Summer 2018 Choice

Shortlisted for The 2018 Forward Prize for Best Collection.

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.

Weight: 150g
Dimension: 217 x 152 x 9 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781784105549