Biography

Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in Wales and France, and now lives in Cornwall. She is of French/Welsh/Indian heritage. She graduated from the Royal College of Art and spent the first part of her life as a sculptor before concentrating on poetry, and her writing takes much from visual art – the vivid, painterly images make for what Ruth Padel has called “hard hitting, palette-knife evocation”. Her first book, Heart of a Deer (Enitharmon) appeared in 1998 and announced the arrival of a fiercely imaginative new voice – whose mythic confessionalism is rooted in the natural world. Her second work, The Zoo Father (Seren, 2001), garnered much critical acclaim and her first of four TS Eliot prize nominations, and Petit was selected as a Next Generation poet. Her sixth collection, Fauverie (Seren, 2014) returns to the Jardin des Plantes zoo in Paris as its eponymous big-cat house, though it also works with notions of art practice crucial to her artwork: ‘Fauverie’ evokes the Fauves, a group of French painters who used raw colour straight from the tube. A selection from Fauverie won the 2013 Manchester Poetry Prize, and judges praised the “unreproducible bite of her images”. Her seventh collection, Mama Amazonica, published by Bloodaxe in 2017, won the inaugural Laurel Prize 2020, and the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize 2018 – the first time a poetry book won this prize for a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry best evoking the spirit of a place. It was also shortlisted for the Roehampton Prize, was a Poetry Book Society Choice and Marina Warner’s Book of the Year. Her eighth collection, Tiger Girl, published by Bloodaxe in 2020, was shortlisted for the 2020 Forward Prize for Best Collection and for Wales Book of the Year, and a poem from the book won the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize. Pascale’s rich and measured readings of the selection from “Mama Amazonica” draws out the strength, vulnerability and inspiration provided by the Amazonian rainforest in the context of a daughter’s experience of her mother’s mental health crises. The poems open up a deep connection to place and identity which she shares with the reader without reserve, bringing together multi-faceted themes and experiences with extraordinary talent.’

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In 2018 Petit was elected as a Royal Society of Literature Fellow. She is widely translated and travelled, particularly in the Amazon rainforest and Indian tiger forests. The poet Daljit Nagra has said of her work: ‘Rarely has the personal and environmental lament found such imaginative fusion, such outlandish and shocking expression that is at once spectacularly vigorous, intimate and heartbroken.’

There is something of the cumulative effect of layering paint over a stark white canvas – in Petit’s case the starkness is the rawness of trauma – of mixing ‘the blue sting [and] the red ache’. In 'The Strait-Jackets’, the poet curates forty hummingbirds around her incapacitated father, so that he ‘can see their changing colours’ – the room brightens and his breathing improves for the fleeting few moments the birds are allowed to roam free. Her poems often locate feeling in a clearly articulated natural agent or conceit – ‘Self-Portrait with Fire Ants’ sees a father’s lack manifested in ‘a mask of fire ants’ which smother the abandoned speaker; only the father as ‘giant anteater’ can clear them, but that brings with it new, more sinister problems. And in ‘Emmanuel’, the largest bell in the Notre-Dame cathedral comes to accommodate a father’s ‘badness’ in its great mass; the palpability of its unflinching ‘F sharp’ and the aftermath of its ‘hum’ is a sound more absolute than anything ‘he said / and didn’t say’. Petit reveals in her introduction to this recording that she has in fact been up to the Emmanuel bell and touched it – and this tactility, its ‘bronze weight’, she sculpts so well out of the language. The poem ends in proclamation, but the poet remains measured in her reading voice – a voice that never overblows the confessional element of its subject matter; though impassioned, it is one of syllabic pace and care. Hers is a voice we can learn much from – confident with the advice she gives us on reading her poems, but always compassionate and inquisitive in tone, to ask, as she does in ‘Fauverie IV (Black Jaguar)’ – ‘what vet could take / a scalpel to this / dreaming universe?’

Pascale’s rich and measured readings of poems from “Mama Amazonica” draws out the strength, vulnerability and inspiration provided by the Amazonian rainforest in the context of a daughter’s experience of her mother’s mental health crises.  In the title poem, we find the mother on a mental health ward undergoing a ‘…deep sleep cure...’ in the company of numerous creatures from the rainforest, ‘...a sloth clings to a cecropia tree, / a jaguar sniffs the bank.’ ‘...a caiman basking beside her.’ In Mama Amazonica, Pascale has opened up a deeper connection to place and identity which she shares with the listener and reader without reserve.

Pascale Petit's favourite poetry sayings:

"the smoulder // of black rosettes / a zoo of sub-atoms / I try to tame - " - 'Sleeping Black Jaguar', Pascale Petit

“It’s wonderful, there’s nothing else like it, you write in a trance. And the trance is completely addictive.” - Les Murray

“I like to write with raw colour, working on the truth and tune of my lines, until they feel like a chant with some primitive quality, something of childhood.” - Pascale Petit

"This is hunting and the poem is a new species of creature, a new specimen of the life outside your own." - Ted Hughes

"Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you to write. This above all, ask yourself in the stillest hour of night: Must I write?"- Rainer Maria Rilke

Pascale's first recording was made on 19 November 2013 at The Soundhouse, London, and was produced by Anne Rosenfeld. Her second recordings were made via zoom and provided by Pascale from her home on June 18th 2021. Photography by Brian Fraser.

Poems by Pascale Petit

‘Jaguar Girl’ for BBC 100 - Pascale Petit
Rainforest in the Sleep Room - Pascale Petit
Mama Amazonica - Pascale Petit
Jaguar Girl - Pascale Petit
The Strait-jackets - Pascale Petit
Self-Portrait with Fire Ants - Pascale Petit
What the Water Gave Me (VI) - Pascale Petit
Fauverie IV (Black Jaguar) - Pascale Petit
Pascale Petit in the Poetry Store

The free tracks you can enjoy in the Poetry Archive are a selection of a poet’s work. Our catalogue store includes many more recordings which you can download to your device.

Books by Pascale Petit

Awards

2001

Arts Council England Writers' Award

Prize website
2001

The Zoo Father Poetry Book Society Recommendation

Prize website
2001

New London Writers' Award

2005

Arts Council England Grants for the Arts Award

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2006

Arts Council England Grants for the Arts Award

Prize website
2006

Society of Author's Author's Foundation Award

Prize website
2007-09

Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Middlesex University

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2011

Royal Literary Fund Fellowship at Courtauld Institute of Art

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2013

Manchester Poetry Prize

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2015

Cholmondeley Award

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2016

Arts Council England Grants for the Arts Award

Prize website
2017

Mama Amazonica was Poetry Book Society Choice

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2018

Mama Amazonica wins the Ondaatje Prize

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2018

Literature Matters Award from the Royal Society of Literature

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2018

Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

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2020

'Indian Paradise Flycatcher' wins Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize

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2020

Mama Amazonica wins the inaugural Laurel Prize for Poetry

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