T&T-born po­et An­tho­ny V Capildeo is among eight writ­ers award­ed $175,000 by Wind­ham-Camp­bell prizes to sup­port their work and al­low them to fo­cus on their cre­ative prac­tice in­de­pen­dent of fi­nan­cial con­cerns.

The Wind­ham-Camp­bell prizes are a ma­jor glob­al prize that recog­nis­es eight writ­ers each year for lit­er­ary achieve­ment across four cat­e­gories—fic­tion, non-fic­tion, po­et­ry, and dra­ma. With an­nu­al prize mon­ey ex­ceed­ing US$1.4 mil­lion and to­tal prize mon­ey award­ed over the past decade at over US$19 mil­lion, they are one of the most sig­nif­i­cant prizes in the world.

Michael Kelle­her, di­rec­tor of the Wind­ham-Camp­bell Prizes, said: “It was the late Don­ald Wind­ham’s wish in es­tab­lish­ing these prizes to call at­ten­tion to lit­er­ary achieve­ment and pro­vide writ­ers with time, space and free­dom. This mis­sion re­mains at the heart of the Wind­ham-Camp­bell prizes, and in to­day’s world it is more vi­tal than ever to recog­nise and sup­port the cru­cial work and wis­dom that writ­ers share with us all.”

In po­et­ry, the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly pro­lif­ic Capildeo, who is based in Scot­land, was recog­nised for com­plex and pre­cise writ­ing—in­clud­ing the For­ward Prize-win­ning and TS Eliot Prize-short­list­ed Mea­sures of Ex­pa­tri­a­tion—that deeply en­gages and cap­tures the nu­ances of be­long­ing, iden­ti­ty and gen­der.

The Wind­ham-Camp­bell Prize 2025 se­lec­tion com­mit­tee—which re­mains anony­mous—has giv­en the fol­low­ing ci­ta­tion for Capildeo:

“An­tho­ny V Capildeo’s po­ems are im­mersed equal­ly in nar­ra­tive and lyric, query­ing forms with an in­sis­tent play­ful­ness and a rad­i­cal po­lit­i­cal con­scious­ness.”

Pre­vi­ous Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian writ­ers that have been award­ed a Wind­ham-Camp­bell Prize in­clude m. nourbeSe philip (Po­et­ry, 2024), Dionne Brand (Fic­tion, 2021) and An­dré Alex­is (Fic­tion, 2017).

The prizes were the brain­child of life­long part­ners Don­ald Wind­ham and Sandy M Camp­bell. The cou­ple were deeply in­volved in lit­er­ary cir­cles, col­lect­ed books avid­ly, read vo­ra­cious­ly as well as pen­ning var­i­ous works. For years they had dis­cussed the idea of cre­at­ing an award to high­light lit­er­ary achieve­ment and pro­vide writ­ers with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fo­cus on their work in­de­pen­dent of fi­nan­cial con­cerns.

When Camp­bell passed away un­ex­pect­ed­ly in 1988, Wind­ham took on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for mak­ing this shared dream a re­al­i­ty. The first prizes were an­nounced in 2013.

The Prizes are ad­min­is­tered by Yale Uni­ver­si­ty’s Bei­necke Rare Book & Man­u­script Li­brary, and nom­i­nees for the Prizes are con­sid­ered by judges who re­main anony­mous be­fore and af­ter the prize an­nounce­ment. Re­cip­i­ents write in the Eng­lish lan­guage and may live in any part of the world.

Re­spond­ing to the news of the award, Capildeo said: “It’s the most won­der­ful thing to feel con­nect­ed to peo­ple (liv­ing and dead) who cared so much for the free­dom of cre­ative ex­pres­sion as to found and ad­min­is­ter this prize; it gives me courage, and al­so the means to be more con­sis­tent­ly present to my com­mu­ni­ties.

“Win­ning the Wind­ham-Camp­bell Prize has lift­ed weights that I didn’t even know were op­press­ing me in­ter­nal­ly; it’s be­yond any­thing I looked for in my or­di­nary writer’s life. First it Knocked me Flat, but Now I’m Bounc­ing!”

Capildeo’s po­ems have a sense of roam­ing cu­rios­i­ty: think of a de­ter­mined and sen­su­ous leap, rather than an au­to­mat­ic move­ment to get from A to B. It’s this rare qual­i­ty that gives read­ers the sense that they are danc­ing along­side Capildeo when en­gag­ing with their po­et­ry.

Se­lect­ed by The Guardian as among the best in re­cent po­et­ry, Capildeo’s lat­est po­et­ry col­lec­tion, Polka­dot Wounds (2024), finds the po­et in con­ver­sa­tion with beloveds, both liv­ing and passed.

With an ear for time­less lan­guage, it’s no sur­prise to learn that Capildeo stud­ied Old Norse and trans­la­tion while earn­ing their DPhil at Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. The re­cip­i­ent of many awards in­clud­ing For­ward Prize for Best Col­lec­tion for Mea­sures of Ex­pa­tri­a­tion (2016) and the Ju­dith E. Wil­son Po­et­ry Fel­low­ship (2014), Capildeo is a Fel­low of the Roy­al So­ci­ety of Lit­er­a­ture and is cur­rent­ly a pro­fes­sor and writer-in-res­i­dence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of York.