Venus as a Bear

by Vahni Capildeo

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.

Genres: Poetry, 21st Century

101 pages, Paperback

First published April 26, 2018

Reviews

[Natalie (CuriousReader) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the way Vahni Capildeo plays with the physicality of poetry; the sounds the words make when they're spoken - not a single rhyming melody but stumbling, rumbling, tumbling down as it were. In a word - they're enjoyable to speak and to hear. Aside from the obvious play with form and touch, there's, I'm sure, a multitude of imagery like the sea, animals, identity and language, love - among others, but I don't tend to feel a strong grasp on any of these things. I loved the occasional poem like "Trinidad Sugar" and "Björk", but mostly I felt like I couldn't reach beyond the playful structure and fragmented objects at display.

Trinidad Sugar
Like winged seeds, ashes glide and settle;
the air multiform, populated,
a bright puzzle, ten thousand pieces,
a busy mezzanine above the gardens,
the capital, the hills, the highway;
the ashy air seeded with leaf trash.

The child has gone into the house.
The fields have been set on fire.
The snakes escape like wilder roots.
Only the serried cane stands, proofed by its juice;
having arrowed, not flowered.
Few clearing processes are fiercer.

A Murano swan sails from Venezuela.
A spun sugar eagle sails from Florida.
An emerald fortress sails from Demerara.
Field having been levelled from housing,
snakes seeking rebirth in old drainpipes,
and a different white powder taking fire.

The child has grown taller than the table.
Sieved through incinerated bones of cattle,
sugar sails for export from America.
Slavery days are over.
In the heritage-industry kitchen,
a web-linked grandmother makes fudge.

[Shivanee Ramlochan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've written about Venus as a Bear for Caribbean Beat Magazine:

https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-...

{Rawr!}

[Zoe Thorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

extraordinary

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is clever poetry, but do I enjoy it? As a writer, yes I do. As a reader, no, not really. Enjoyment isn't the right word. I read the whole collection; wanted to read it, but it wasn't because I was enjoying it. Capildeo's word play is admirable, just not always for me. I find it quite alienating. I also found the poems about certain objects very alienating if you didn't know them. It can be fun to look them up, but not all the time, for the majority of the collection. I did really like 'Day, with Hawk', 'Leaves/Feuilles/Falls', 'Moss, for Maya' and 'Heirloom Rose, for Maya'. I have read both of Capildeo's collections now, and she is definitely a writer I will always be interested to see what she does next.

[Krys]

Only really got into this in the second half of the book, which acknowledges its debt towards Gertrude Stein & Emily Dickinson. Much of it, especially in the ekphrastic sections on archaeology and Old Norse myths, was like listening to an extremely esoteric strain of jazz, unmistakable in its technical virtuosity and in the cerebral somersaults of language it performs, but which ultimately proved to be too difficult to grasp other than the objective fact of its poetic acrobatics. Once in a while though, I would hear the music: 'Brant Geese', 'Day With A Hawk', 'Heirloom Rose, For Maya', 'Bjork / Birch Tree', 'The Magnificent Pigs of Thetford', and my favourite of all, 'Crossing Borders: Assuming the Habits of the Day and Night'.

[Alarie]

Taste in poetry is subjective, so I’m not giving any rating to pull down Capildeo’s average. I suppose the title lead me to expect a more playful collection of poetry. Most of the poems were the dry, esoteric sort that don’t appeal to me. Yes, Capildeo does use word play at times, but she has worked as an Oxford English Dictionary Lexicographer, which explains why what is playful to her is not my idea of fun. I do enjoy word play in “Jabberwocky” and in e e cummings’ or Gerard Manley Hopkins’ work. But poems like this don’t speak to me

From “They (May Forget (Their Names (If Let Out)))”

“petcitement incitement of a pet to excitement
petcitement incitement into the excitement
of being a pet petcitement incitement to be
a pet a fed pet a fleece pet incitement to be
a floorpet a fleapit a carpet a polkadot…”

Nevertheless, I did enjoy a few poems of the more conventional sort.

[Margaryta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Capildeo's collection is my kind of thoughtful and clever. Her poetic and linguistic experimentation guide the reader along but make sure that they don't breeze through the collection. Instead, "Venus as a Bear" leaves a trail of historical and artistic references that one is encouraged to consult, although that did not feel entirely necessary in order to enjoy the wonder that is Capildeo's language. One of my utmost favourites in a while.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

this is a poet wading into their own & Vahni's talent on all displays here. Sharper, stronger, abstractery in the Steinian sense and that makes it not for everyone but they're doing What they do in some of the crispest lights in this collection.

Love,
this is; no poem. What is the term
for the gathering of one falcon?
An embarrassment of poets.
An adoration. An abyss.

[Brigitte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these poems merely left me scratching my head; they were a bit too experimental for me, but about half of the poems in the collection blew me away with their insights and emotion.

[Kitty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Handful of bangers vs a lot of odd word experiments