Recent Work

Almost, with Tenderness (Out-Spoken Press, 2025)

Poetry Pamphlet

‘Maya Caspari's Almost, with Tenderness offers a true poetics of intimacy. To read these fantastically textured yet accessible poems is to become immersed in a breathable, humming environment. Forget about "show, don't tell"; here we're mid-story, inside "feel, don't say". It's always possible that things might turn out otherwise. How did it happen that far-flung elders met and fell in love? Hot-moaning boats balance out taciturn children. Tenderness manifests, both surreal and hyperreal. Will domestic Morse code go undeciphered? Foals may sing in this city collection that teems with life that closes in, that holds, that distances: businessmen, lizards, red peppers, museum cases. Caspari doesn't shy away from the topics of migration, domestic violence, and vampiric bureaucracy. A youthful, unsparing intelligence distinguishes the almostness of this book. Each poem knows itself as a language-event in formation, refusing to be trapped, sometimes willing to be caught up. Will you love, as much as I do, the grandmother who is an astronomer in reverse, looking at gardens through a microscope? The era of 'lone genius' poetry seems far-distant from this volume, where family is a given, yet never taken for granted. Caspari's work will ease you into the most lovable negotiations, but it will never 'settle'. This is brilliant. ‘ — Anthony V. Capildeo

‘Almost, with Tenderness is a reckoning with the unspoken. With this debut pamphlet, Maya Caspari offers us glimpses of beauty and devastation in her lyric exploration of a family lost in time. A stunning new voice.’ — Charlotte Shevchenko Knight

 
 
 
 

Selected Articles

‘Subjunctive Remembering; Contingent Resistance: Katja Petrowskaja's Vielleicht Esther’, in Minority Discourses in Germany since 1990 (edited by J. Skolnik, E. Gezen, & P. Layne), Berghahn Books.

'Moving archives, touch, and world literary melancholy in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2023 [2020]

 
 

Poetry - some recent readings & publications

- Word-Mead Bring, July 2025: reading with Anthony v Capildeo & Lizzie Linklater, York
- More Song, June 2025: reading with Caleb Klaces & Lenni Sanders, Bradford
- Bluebird/Rise! launch, June 2025: reading with Janine Bradbury and Becca Drake
- Yerbard, June 2025: reading with Erika Hesketh, London
- Four Corners Poetry Night, May 2025: reading with Janine Bradbury and Becca Drake, Leeds
- Almost, with Tenderness launch at Burley Fisher Books, April 2025
- Wasafiri - ‘Past Continuous'’
- Propel - ‘Moths’
- The Poetics of Touch: reading/workshop at Memory Studies Association Conference, July 2024, Lima
- Rise Up!: reading with Anthony V Capildeo and Rebecca Drake, February 2024, York
- Aesthetica Creative Writing Award Anthology - ‘Instructions’ (shortlisted)
- Perverse Mag - ‘A Short Talk on Starfish’
- Remaking the Rules poetry workshop, co-led with Anthony v Capildeo, 2024
- Lilies and Brambles, February 2023: reading with JP Seabright and Dove, York
- Forward Book of Poetry 2023 - ‘Mixed Other’ (highly commended)
- European Poetry Festival, York - ‘Hephaestus’
- Butcher’s Dog (18) - ‘and still the roof’
- Ambit 244 issue launch reading
- Ambit - ‘Instructions for Writing to Your Sister’
- The Poetry Review - ‘Mixed Other’