Trinidadian poet Vahni Capildeo has won the 2016 Forward prize for best poetry collection, making it three years in a row that a Caribbean poet has won one of the most prestigious poetry awards in the UK and Ireland, says the Guardian UK.
A prize for first collection was also awarded to a Caribbean writer, Tiphanie Yanique, who was born in the Virgin Islands.
Capildeo’s collection, Measures of Expatriation, explores ideas of belonging and home. Her award follows two Jamaican-born poets, Kei Miller and Claudia Rankine, who took the main prize respectively in 2014 and 2015.
Capildeo received the £15,000 prize at a ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Tuesday night. A professor at the University of Glasgow, Capildeo previously worked as an OED lexicographer and has an Oxford DPhil in Old Norse. She comes from a well-known Trinidadian family of politicians and writers, including her distant cousin VS Naipaul.