Welcome to the website of poet Pascale Petit.
Pascale’s eighth collection, Tiger Girl, published by Bloodaxe in 2020, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection and for Wales Book of the Year. Her seventh collection Mama Amazonica, published by Bloodaxe in 2017, won the inaugural Laurel Prize 2020, the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize 2018 and was the Poetry Book Society Choice. Four of Pascale’s earlier collections were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
‘I think this might be her best book so far because of this complexity of a family in crisis against a planet in crisis – she’s very much a poet of the environment… She has a powerful, imagistic authority over the landscape. It’s a very moving, powerful book.’ – Daljit Nagra, reviewing Tiger Girl on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row
‘Petit is a passionate laureate of the natural world, but alive to the cruelty of human depredation…’ – Aingeal Clare, The Guardian
‘Beautifully sad, the imagery inexhaustible, the sorrow and torment both tempered and sharpened by the relish for language and the ingenuity of the imagination.’ – Simon Armitage on Mama Amazonica
‘Mama Amazonica stitches parallels between the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and a mother and daughter’s experience of mental illness. We felt that in creating this duality she might have achieved what should have been impossible.” – Moniza Alvi, Judge, The Laurel Prize
Causley Festival Friday 29 July 2022 (in person) Launceston, Cornwall Keynote reading by Vahni (Anthony Ezekiel) Capildeo and Pascale Petit 1:15–2:pm ‘My Life as a Writer discussion with Vahni (Anthony Ezekiel) Capildeo and Pascale Petit 3:30–4:30pm More details HERE
Wake Up: Greenbelt Festival Friday evening 26 August 2022 (in person) Pascale Petit reads from Tiger Girl and Mama Amazonica in the Hot House: climate-change and ecological venue, Boughton House, Nr Kettering, Northamptonshire More details tba Details: HERE
Falmouth Poetry Group Poetry Party 6–7pm Saturday 17 September 2022 Pascale Petit reading and in conversation with Mat Osmond The Princess Pavilion, Falmouth, Cornwall
Writing, Climate and the Living World, Black Mountain College Saturday 24 September Pascale Petit Guest Reader on course led by Jay Griffiths & Tom Bullough Location: Troed yr Harn Farm, Hospital Road, Talgarth, LD3 0EF This course will ask a central question: what does it mean to be a writer today, in light of the Climate and Ecological Emergency? More details & booking: HERE
PAST EVENTS
Forward Meet the Poet7 – 7.45pm BST Tuesday 1 September 2020 Pascale Petit, read from Tiger Girl, and was in conversation with Kim Moore, one of the judges for the Forward Prize Best Collection shortlist. Zoom online event. Booking £3 HERE
Launch of Tiger Girl 7pm to 8pm Tuesday 8 September 2020 Pascale Petit launched Tiger Girl, along with Wayne-Holloway Smith and Phoebe Stuckes, who also launched their new poetry collections, Tuesday 8 September 7pm BST. Hosted by editor Neil Astley, this was streamed live through the Bloodaxe Books YouTube channel and can now be viewed. Here is a 15 minute clip of Pascale’s reading:
Pascale Petit’s collection Tiger Girl was shortlisted for Best Collection, in the 2020 Forward Prize for Poetry. Here she reads her poem ‘Jungle Owlet’ during the online awards event in October 2020.
‘Her Glasses’, a poem from Pascale Petit’s eighth collection Tiger Girl, is displayed on London Undergound for July 2021, more details HERE
Pascale Petit’s eighth collection Tiger Girl is shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year in the poetry category, more details HERE
Pascale Petit is a judge for the 2021 Forward Prizes for Poetry, along with Leontia Flynn, Shivanee Ramlochan, Tristram Fane Saunders and Chair, James Naughtie Click HERE for more details on the Forward website
The Verb: Green Memoir, BBC Radio 3, Friday 13 November 2020, 10pm Pascale Petit was a guest on Radio 3’s The Verb on 13 November. Pascale read ‘Her Tigress Eyes’ and ‘Green Bee-eater’ from her eighth collection Tiger Girl and ‘Kapok’ from her seventh collection Mama Amazonica. Listen here.
Pascale Petit’s seventh collection, Mama Amazonica, has won the inaugural Laurel Prize. Poet Laureate Simon Armitage’s new award that recognises and encourages the resurgence of nature and environmental writing currently taking place in poetry. More information HERE and HERE Tiger Girl was shortlisted for the 2020 Forward Prize for Best Collection Pascale Petit‘s eighth collection Tiger Girl, (Bloodaxe, 2020) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. The judges were Leaf Arbuthnot, Kim Moore, Alexandra Harris, Roger Robinson and David Wheatley. More details HERE
Pascale Petit won the 2020 Keats-Shelley poetry prize with her poem ‘Indian Paradise Flycatcher’, which is now published in her collection Tiger Girl. Read more HERE
Free Thinking, BBC Radio 3, Wednesday 1 May 2019, 10pm Pascale Petit and three other winners of the RSL Ondaatje Prize took part in a special event at the British Library on 16 April 2019 to celebrate 15 years of the Prize. This event was recorded for BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking, and was broadcast on Wednesday 1 May. Pascale talked about how the Amazon rainforest inspired the collection, and read her poem ‘Jaguar Mama’ from Mama Amazonica. Listen here. Also downloadable as a BBC Arts & Ideas podcast.
Pascale Petit was on Radio 3’s The Verb 10pm Friday 19th October 2018 discussing ‘Forests and Metaphor’ and reading from her Ondaatje prizewinning collection Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe, 2017)
Pascale Petit’s Mama Amazonica has won the RSL Ondaatje Prize2018 Pascale Petit’s seventh poetry collection Mama Amazonica has won the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, announced on 14 May 2018 at the Travellers Club, London. The prize is an annual award of £10,000 for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, best evoking the spirit of a place.
‘Rich with metaphor, the poems explode on the page with the multiple narratives of motherhood, illness, pain, and redemption. All of this set in a rainforest that is both mythic and vividly alive. This is a book that feels almost magical in its unlikeliness, and that for me is what made it a clear winner,’- Tahmima Anam, on behalf of the judges Daljit Nagra, Eva Hoffman, Tahmima Anam.
Pascale Petit’s Mama Amazonica is shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018 The prize is valued at £5,000 and the winner will be announced in May
Pascale Petit is a RSL Literature Matters Awards winner On 30 November 2018 the Royal Society of Literature awarded her a grant to write the first half of her eighth collection Tiger Girl, a sequence of poems exploring foreignness, in the context of Brexit Britain and her grandmother’s Indian heritage. One of the judges, Imtiaz Dharker, said that ‘a new collection of poems by Pascale Petit is always something to celebrate. To each one she brings images worked in the round, electrified by language to be live and sensuous’.
Pascale Petit is on the judging panel for the 2017 Manchester Poetry Prize for Manchester Metropolitan University, with Adam O’Riordan (chair) and Mona Arshi who will award £10,000 to the winner for a small portfolio of poems, enter HERE
Pascale Petit is the poetry mentor for the Jerwood/Arvon Mentoring Programme 2017/18, and will mentor four poets for one year, they are: Romalyn Ante, Yvonne Reddick, Alice Hiller and Seraphima Kennedy. More information HERE
Arts Council England has awarded Pascale Petit a Grant from the Arts to finish her seventh collection Mama Amazonica, due from Bloodaxe in September 2017. The grant is to buy writing time and for a research trip in the Peruvian Amazon
Pascale Petit was Chair of the judging panel for the 2015 T S Eliot Prize alongside poets Kei Miller and Ahren Warner
Pascale Petit has a feature Omphalos in the Spring 2015 The Poetry Review An occasional series in which poets write about a place central to their imaginative world
Fauverie was shortlisted for the 2014 T.S. Eliot Prize.Pascale Petit read for the T.S. Eliot Prize Readings at the Royal Festival Hall, London on 11 January 2015 – Here’s Pascale’s reading:
‘My Father’s Wardrobe’ a poem from Fauverie is The Saturday Poem in the Guardian, Saturday 18 October 2014
‘Caracal’ a poem from Fauverie is Carol Rumens’ Poem of the Week in the Guardian, Monday 29 September 2014
