We're over the moon to share that Anthony V. Capildeo has been awarded the 2025 Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry!

The Windham-Campbell prizes are global English-language awards that call attention to literary achievement and provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. Prizewinners receive an unrestricted grant of $175,000.

In making today's announcement, the prize released a statement saying, 'One finds a sacred wonder and delight in language in every poem in each of their nine collections and eight chapbooks. ... 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.'

For the full list of recipients, go to the prize website.

Congratulations Anthony!

Polkadot Wounds is a delight, wrestling with life in our restless times. Capildeo entices us to enter conversations with others (dead and living), amongst glimpsing reflections of encounters. Landscapes become 'landskips', playing on traditions of travel and nature writing, childlike spontaneity and movement across gaps. Dante's Divine Comedy frames untimely deaths and breakthroughs of joy, during the pandemic and in queer and far-flung communities. The title of the book is inspired by the stones of the ruined Norman castle in Launceston, Cornwall, and the local martyr, St Cuthbert Mayne, where Capildeo was writer-in-residence with the Charles Causley Trust.