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, Observer, and 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 website and blog

www.pascalepetit.co.uk and www.pascalepetit.blogspot.com

Author photo by Derrick Kakembo.