Poets & Players | Organising free events in Manchester since 2004 (founded by Linda Chase)
Sarala Estruch Vahni, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. I am so excited to talk to you about your new collection, Venus as a Bear, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I particularly loved how you brought animals, objects and ‘things’ to life in this collection, giving ‘voice to the voiceless’ in a more literal way than we usually mean when we use that expression. Can you tell me a bit about this? What drove you to write about ‘things’ in this way?
Vahni Capildeo The drama between an ‘I’ and a ‘you’ in poetry is always accompanied by the drama between an ‘I’ and an ‘it’, or an ‘us’ and a ‘that’. Even in an intense love lyric or solipsistic monologue, human speakers often call on, or decry, the non-human elements of their environment: stars, aeroplanes, grains of sand, guns. I became fascinated with the notion of these elements deserving and having poems of their own. Personally, I also experience non-human animals, objects, and places as having overwh
SE I also felt that many of these poems contained political messages, particularly about those who are silenced – I am thinking especially of ‘Novena Body Parts’. Can you tell me more about the thinking behind this poem in particular?
Poets & Players | Organising free events in Manchester since 2004 (founded by Linda Chase)