ONLINE
June to November, 2020
Online poets-in residence
Vahni Capildeo
(Trinidad/UK)
Vahni Capildeo FRSL is a Trinidadian Scottish writer of non-fiction and poetry. Capildeo’s work includes seven books and several pamphlets. These range from the polyvocal autobiography focused through everyone except the author – including monsters – of No Traveller Returns (Salt, 2003), to the ekphrastic and animal poems exploring ‘itness’ in Venus as a Bear (Carcanet, 2018). Capildeo won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection for Measures of Expatriation (Carcanet, 2016), where lyric and prose tussle with how ‘identity’ is imposed on embodied selves that experience themselves as far more various; where Henry VIII woos Anne Boleyn with the gift of a falconry glove, and hounds of truth are loosed in a language of warring strikethroughs. Capildeo enjoys collaborative and interdisciplinary work, for example in an ongoing photometry project with Andre Bagoo, the latest iteration of which, http://www.lightsitepoetry.com, accompanies a pamphlet of expanded translations, Light Site (Periplum, forthcoming 2020). Islands inform Capildeo’s poetry, from their birthplace in Trinidad to Iceland, Inishbofin, and Lindisfarne. Capildeo has held the Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellowship at the University of Cambridge and the Harper-Wood Studentship at St John’s College, Cambridge, a Douglas Caster Cultural Fellowship at the University of Leeds, and the post of Writer in Residence at the University of the West Indies (St Augustine). They write a regular report for PN Review, and are a contributing adviser for Blackbox Manifold. Capildeo is Writer in Residence at the University of York, and a Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast.
Yeow Kai Chai
(Singapore)
Yeow Kai Chai is a poet, fiction writer, and editor from Singapore. He has two poetry collections, Pretend I’m Not Here (2006), and Secret Manta (2001), which was adapted from an entry shortlisted for the 1995 Singapore Literature Prize. He graduated with a Master of Arts in English from the National University of Singapore where he won top prizes in poetry and creative prose for two years in the Literary Society’s annual competition. He co-wrote a collection of short stories, The Adopted: Stories from Angkor (2015) and a collection of verse, Lost Bodies: Poems Between Portugal and Home (2016), with three other authors. His writing has appeared in journals like Sweden’s Ars Interpres and France’s La Traductiere as well as anthologies like the W.W. Norton & Co.’s Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (2008). He co-edited Reflecting On The Merlion: An Anthology Of Poems (2009). He was the deputy editor of the Life! section, The Straits Times, where he reviewed music and wrote on pop culture. He later became the editor of My Paper, a bilingual free-sheet. He curated the multi-sensory performance, Modern: Resonance, which was commissioned by Goethe-Institut Singapore, as part of the Bauhaus centenary, in 2019. A co-editor of Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, he served as Festival Director of the Singapore Writers Festival from 2015 to 2018, and helped launch the nationwide music platform, Hear65, for Singapore’s National Arts Council, in 2018.
Lisa Brockwell lives near Byron Bay. Her poems have been published in The Spectator, The Canberra Times, The Weekend Australian, Meanjin and Best Australian Poems. She was runner-up in the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize in 2015 and highly commended in the Bridport Prize in the UK. Earth Girls was published by Pitt Street Poetry in 2016 and commended in the Anne Elder Award. Her next collection is forthcoming from Pitt Street Poetry in 2021. www.lisabrockwell.com
Lisa Brockwell
(Australia)
2020’s outbreak of COVID-19 has meant many of us have been forced into an extended period of being ‘at home’. Well-Known Corners asks a group of international and Australian poets to respond to this concept of ‘home’ during this time. Is it a period of mourning, of endurance, of restraint? Or is it a chance to chart the familiar, the forgotten – to re-establish connections with the self and others in our immediate circle? Are there routines to follow, objects to ponder, new discoveries to be made.
Through the rest of 2020, we'll be posting videos of the poets' responses.
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Do you have a poem on the theme of 'Well-known Corners'?
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Submit a poem in writing to potm@canberra.edu.au.
Each month we'll post a selection of these poems here to join readings from our curated poets.
A new series of the Poetry on the Move podcast features panels and discussions from 2019's Poetry on the Move festival Small Leaps. Giant Steps.
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Now in it's fifth year, Poetry on the Move is a podcast on contemporary poetry and poetics from IPSI, the International Poetry Studies Institute. It includes interviews and readings of contemporary poetry and panel discussions from the Poetry on the Move Festival.
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