Welcome to the website of UK poet Pascale Petit.
Pascale’s eighth collection, Tiger Girl, published by Bloodaxe in 2020, is 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 Royal Society of Literature’s 2018 Ondaatje Prize – 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. In 2018 she was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
‘No one writing in English today comes anywhere near the exuberance of Pascale Petit. Rarely has the personal and environmental lament found such imaginative fusion, such outlandish and shocking expression that is at once spectacularly vigorous, intimate and heartbroken.’ – Daljit Nagra (judge for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2018)
‘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
Forward Meet the Poet7 – 7.45pm BST Tuesday 1 September 2020
a chance to quiz the poets on the Forward Prizes 2020 shortlists.
With Pascale Petit, reading from Tiger Girl, moderated by Kim Moore
Zoom online event. Booking £3 HERE
The Forward Prizes for Poetry invite you to enjoy readings from the shortlisted books in the last of its Forward Meet the Poet series. Registered attendees can submit questions in advance and each session will be moderated by a Forward Prizes judge, in this case Kim Moore.
Arvon at Home 7:15 – 8:15pm Wednesday 9 September 2020
Pascale Petit is online guest reader
The Rialto Poetry and Place Poetry CompetitionThursday 24 September 2020
prizegiving and reading by judge Pascale Petit
at Cambridge Conservation Initiative, Cambridge (more details tba)
St. Ives ResidentialWednesday 18 November 2020
Pascale Petit is guest reader
Treloyhan Manor Hotel, St Ives, Cornwall
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
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
Poets & Playerswith Manchester Literature Festival 2:30pm Saturday 17 October 2020
Pascale Petit launches Tiger Girl in Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery
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
