An Evening of Poetry with Scottish Carcanet

We are over the moon to be hosting a special collaborative event between three Scottish Carcanet poets: Anthony V. Capildeo, Jay Gao and Colin Bramwell.

They join us to celebrate their latest bodies of work, ranging from a book-length sequence told in the language of trees, to a bold reimagining of Fernando Pessoa's poetry in Scots, to finally a vibrant selection of essays that explore a life in poetry. It is sure to be an evening of brilliant readings and discussion!

Event vouchers are fully redeemable against copies of Masqueraders: Selected Essays by Anthony V. Capildeo, The Dead One, The Unconscious One, Thundering in Your Ear, Thriving Slumber by Jay Gao, and Fower Pessoas by Colin Bramwell.

Anthony V. Capildeo FRSL is a Trinidadian Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction. Currently Professor and Writer in Residence at the University of York, their site-specific word and visual art includes responses to Cornwall’s former capital, Launceston, as the Causley Trust Poet in Residence (2022) and to the Ubatuba granite of the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds (2023), as well as to Scottish, Irish, and Caribbean built and natural environments. Their work has been recognized with the Cholmondeley Award (Society of Authors), the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection, the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, the Windham-Campbell Prize, and the Saltire National Poetry Award.

About Masqueraders: Anthony V. Capildeo’s new book brings together a selection of their brilliant essays, letters and columns, many of them published in the leading poetry journal PN Review. The essays are, almost by default, an account of the life of a poet, charting Capildeo’s journeys to and experiences of events, conferences and commissions, showing how poets live now.

What is a poet’s prose, if not precarity in action? But Capildeo’s writings – which begin by taking us into the Christmastime bustle of an independent bookshop – land fleet and sure, even when dropped from mid-travel, arriving from sick rooms, or catching a moment during a festival or protest. These vignettes will take you stargazing, invite you onto the road with stilt walkers, pause on questions of touch and mourning, and delight in conversing with writers new and old.

Jay Gao is a poet from Edinburgh, Scotland, living in New York City. His debut poetry collection Imperium (Carcanet, 2022) was a winner of the 2023 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. He is also the author of five poetry chapbooks and pamphlets. Currently, he reads for Poetry magazine and is a PhD candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

About The Dead One...: Jay Gao’s second collection is an ambitious book-length poem that reimagines trees as sites of dreaming, language, and desire. Formally inspired by the commonplace book and medieval dream-visions, Jay Gao’s work unfolds through leaf-like fragments and long, branching lines that stretch across the page, creating a serial, visionary rewiring between nature and language.

Digging deep into land extraction, climate crises, invasive species and migration, queer desire and intimacy, digital technology, sustainable renewal, Gao asks: If trees once acted as portals into a dream-world, then what does it mean to be surrounded in the twenty-first century by the presence of trees, wood and paper. Are we constantly living in a dream world?

Colin Bramwell was born in Ayrshire, grew up in Fortrose on the Black Isle and lives in Edinburgh. His poetry has appeared in Poetry Review, Irish Pages, The London Magazine, PN Review, Magma, The Rialto, New Writing Scotland, Interpret, Poetry Scotland and The Scotsman. He was the runner-up for the 2020 Edwin Morgan Prize; his translations of Yang Mu won the 2018 John Dryden Translation Competition; his translation of Ko-Hua Chen’s Decapitated Poetry won the 2024 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. He holds a doctorate in creative writing from the University of St Andrews.

About Fower Pessoas: Fower Pessoas is a bold reimagining of Fernando Pessoa's poetry by an exciting next-generation Scottish poet. Following his subject's unique approach to composition, Colin Bramwell puts all four of Pessoa's heteronyms into a present-day Scots-language vernacular, and so creates a parochial Pessoa for our own times.

Bramwell's adaptation matches his subject's restless lyricism. It is rare to see a translator go toe-to-toe with their subject in this way. The resulting entanglement makes for some astonishing, full-throated poetry.

Readers will be delighted by this witty, emotive and artful reinterpretation of an indispensable European poet. Fower Pessoas not only celebrates Pessoa's extraordinary range of modes and moods, but also marks the arrival of an outstanding new talent in Scottish poetry.