Books Books
Category: Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 72
ISBN: 9781781721681
Publication date: September 15, 2014
Price: £9.99
Out of stock
Category: Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 72
ISBN: 9781781721698
Publication date: September 15, 2014
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
SHORTLISTED FOR THE T.S. ELIOT PRIZE 2014
The Fauverie of this book is the big-cat house in the Jardin des Plantes zoo. But the word also evokes the Fauves, ‘primitive’ painters who used raw colour straight from the tube. Like The Zoo Father, Petit’s acclaimed second collection, this volume has childhood trauma and a dying father at its heart, while Paris takes centre stage – a city savage as the Amazon, haunted by Aramis the black jaguar and a menagerie of wild animals. Transforming childhood horrors to ultimately mourn a lost parent, Fauverie redeems the darker forces of human nature while celebrating the ferocity and grace of endangered species. Five poems from Fauverie won the 2013 Manchester Poetry Prize and the manuscript in progress was awarded an Arts Council England Grant for the Arts.
“No other British poet I am aware of can match the powerful mythic imagination of Pascale Petit.” Les Murray, Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year
“Pascale Petit creates forms and strategies that go beyond common knowledge of what a poem can or should do; her poetry never behaves itself or betrays itself; and contemporary British poetry is all the livelier for it.” David Morley, Magma
“Our winner was chosen because of the un-reproducible bite of the images, her brilliant understanding of human psycho-drama, the sustained accomplishment of her metaphorical imagination.” Adam O’Riordan, Chair of judges, Manchester Poetry Prize
“Pascale Petit’s Fauverie is astonishing, one of those books that breaks new ground in how to approach writing about the unwritable.” Ruth Padel, London Review Bookshop
Pascale Petit
Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales and lives in Cornwall. She is of French, Welsh and Indian heritage. She has published eight collections of poetry, five of which are published by Seren. Her eighth collection, Tiger Girl (Bloodaxe, 2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize and for Wales Book of the Year. Her seventh, Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe, 2017), won the inaugural Laurel Prize, the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, was a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the Roehampton Prize.
Four previous collections were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, including her sixth Fauverie. Five poems from it won the 2013 Manchester Poetry Prize. A bilingual edition is published by Le Castor Astral in France, and a Serbian translation is published in Belgrade. Her fifth collection What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo was shortlisted for both the TS Eliot Prize and Wales Book of the Year. This book has gone into a number of reprintings and was Jackie Kay’s Book of the Year in the Observer. Black Lawrence Press published a US edition in 2011. Many of Pascale’s collections have been Books of the Year, including in the Times Literary Supplement, The Observer, and The Independent. Her second collection The Zoo Father was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was published in Mexico and Serbia. A poem from it was shortlisted for a Forward Prize. Her Selected Poems are published in China.
In 2004 the Poetry Book Society selected Pascale as one of the Next Generation Poets. In 2013 she was shortlisted for the Medicine Unboxed Creative Prize. She has won numerous awards, including five from Arts Council England, and regularly appears in major festivals. She trained as a sculptor at the Royal College of Art and was a visual artist for the first part of her life. Pascale is widely travelled, including in the Venezuelan and Peruvian Amazon, China and India. She has worked as Poetry Editor for Poetry London, was a co-founder of The Poetry School, and is a Royal Society of Literature Fellow.
Visit Pascale’s blog www.pascalepetit.blogspot.com
Author photo by Derrick Kakembo.
