Bhanu Kapil has won the most valuable award in British poetry, the TS Eliot prize, for her “radical and arresting” collection How to Wash a Heart. 'Bhanu Kapil's How to Wash a Heart catches the thinning smile of that ancient human ritual: hospitality. In a time of increasing hostility against migrants, Kapil demonstrates how survival tunes the guest to its host with devastating intimacy: 'It's exhausting to be a guest / In somebody else's house / Forever.
Bhanu Kapil was born in the United Kingdom and lives in the United States and the United Kingdom. Speaking to Asian Voice on her win, Bhanu said, “My heart feels so full. I am so grateful to the judges of the TS Eliot prize for their trust in my work. My advice to a young writer who wishes to win this prize one day? Keep developing, in tandem with external forms of praise, a sense of your own inner power and vision. And what does that mean? Trust the images and non-images as and when they arise, without censoring yourself, or being censored by others.”
