Welcome to the website of poet Pascale Petit.
Pascale’s eighth collection, Tiger Girl, published by Bloodaxe in 2020, was shortlisted for the 2020 Forward Prize for Best Collection. A poem from the book, ‘Indian Paradise Flycatcher’, won the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize. 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. 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
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 Pascale Petit launched Tiger Girl, along with Wayne-Holloway Smith and Phoebe Stuckes who also launched their new poetry collections on Tuesday 8th September from 7pm to 8pm BST. Hosted by editor Neil Astley, this free event 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.
The Laurel Prize with Simon Armitage & Pascale Petit at Cambridge Literary Festival 7.30pm Sunday 22 November Poet Laureate Simon Armitage will talk about the Laurel Prize which he founded, and the inaugural winner Pascale Petit will read and be in conversation with Anna Selby. Online event, Tickets and details Here
Romalyn Ante and Pascale Petit 7pm-8pm Thursday 26 November on Zoom Readings from Antiemetic for Homesickness and Tiger Girl, followed by conversation, hosted by Alice Hiller. Free entry but booking essential on Eventbrite HERE
POETRY AND the Wild in a Time of Coronavirus, 5pm GMT online Monday 30 November 2020 with Shekar Dattatri and Pascale Petit Chaired by Ruth Padel, Professor of Poetry, King’s College, London FREE More details HERE and to register HERE on Eventbrite
Forest Poets Presents: Pascale Petit19:30 GMT Monday 8 March 2021 Pascale Petit reads for Forest Poets via Zoom, on INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY Book HERE, £2 entry fee
Lewes Live Literature Wednesday 7 April 2021 Pascale Petit reading at Lewes Arts Centre (more tba)
Cardiff Poetry Festival on Zoom 16-18 April 2021 Pascale Petit reading from Tiger Girl and in conversation
Welshpool Poetry Festival7:30pm Saturday 5 June 2021 Pascale Petit reading from Tiger Girl, with Jonathan Edwards, Church House, Welshpool, Mid-Wales £8 inc free drink
Timber International Forest Festival 16:30 – 17:15 Saturday 3 June 2021 Laurel and Gingko Prize readings with Simon Armitage, Pascale Petit and Jade Cuttle Feanedock, inside the National Forest, Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire/Derbyshire border More info Here
Thomas Hardy Festival and Conference8pm Monday 12 July 2021 Pascale Petit reads from Tiger Girl Sunninghill Preparatory School, South Walks Road, Dorchester DT1 1EB
Greenbelt Festival‘Wild at heart’27 – 30 August 2021 Pascale Petit reads from Tiger Girl The Leaves, Boughton House, near Kettering
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 is shortlisted for the 2020 Forward Prize for Best Collection Pascale Petit‘s eighth collection Tiger Girl, forthcoming from Bloodaxe on 3 September, has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. The five-strong shortlist for the £10,000 prize was announced on 10 June. The winners of all three categories in the 2020 Forward Prizes for Poetry will be revealed on 25 October 2020.
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 will be published in her collection Tiger Girl in September 2020.
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
