"Dark and unaccustomed...."

In today's Newsday, Andre Bagoo profiles Trinidadian poet Vahni Capildeo:

“What is dark and unaccustomed in one context is clear and bright in another,” Capildeo explains of her newest collection’s title.

The book is a dazzling display of Capildeo’s poetic process, which grounds itself in formalism but not pedantically so. Her analysis of images and ideas is rigorous, but this is accompanied by an elegant and musical use of metre and form which opens each piece to syncopated emotional effects.

The poems aim to crystallise relationships of all kinds: between human beings and their masters, between man and the environment and between society and history. But it is the self, and its relationship with that vexing theme of the meaning of “home,” which dominates....

Don't forget, readers, the CRB will host a reading and discussion of Vahni's work tomorrow evening--more information here.