Trinidadian-British poet Vahni Capildeo is the daughter of poet Devendranath Capildeo. Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, she earned a PhD at Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar studying translation theory and Old Norse. She completed a research fellowship at Girton College, Cambridge University. She has served as a contributing editor for the Caribbean Review of Books and as an editorial assistant and a researcher for the Oxford English Dictionary. She has lived in the United Kingdom since 1991.