Books Books
Category: Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 72
ISBN: 9781854115157
Publication date: April 28, 2010
Price: £10.99
Category: Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 72
ISBN: 9781781720073
Publication date: May 1, 2010
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2010
Shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2011
“Pascale’s poems are as fresh as paint, and make you look all over again at Frida and her brilliant and tragic life.” – Jackie Kay, The Observer
“Poems about paintings rarely set off fireworks, but this is ekphrasis with a difference: Petit speaks in Kahlo’s voice with eerie believability, animating her paintings with a behind-the-scenes narrative of romantic and reproductive woes, chronic pain after a bus crash, and the occasional moment of joy. ‘Whenever we make love, you say / it’s like fucking a crash –/ I bring the bus with me into the bedroom’ (‘Remembrance of an Open Wound’)” – Time Out London
What the Water Gave Me contains fifty-two poems in the voice of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Some of the poems are close interpretations of Kahlo’s work, while others are parallels or version homages where Petit draws on her experience as a visual artist to create alternative ‘paintings’ with words. More than just a verse biography, this collection explores how Kahlo transformed trauma into art after the artist’s near-fatal bus accident. Petit, with her vivid style, her feel for nature and her understanding of pain and redemption, fully inhabits Kahlo’s world. Each poem is an evocation of “how art works on the pain spectrum”, laced with splashes of ferocious colour.
“Their apparent shared sensibility makes the ventriloquism of these poems entirely unforced, and while Kahlo’s voice is subtly distinguished from Petit’s own, both women have a way of taking painful, private experiences and transmuting them, through imagery, into something that has the power of folklore. They capture the unsettling spirit of Frida Kahlo and her work perfectly.” – Poetry London
“No other British poet I am aware of can match the powerful mythic imagination of Pascale Petit.” – Les Murray, Times Literary Supplement
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.
