Overview

Poetry Book Society Recommendation Mythic and familial beasts roam the swamps and moors of Pascale Petit's Beast, a collection that ranges from the Camargue of Provence, the limestone Causses and gorges of the Languedoc, Indian tiger forests, the Amazon rainforest, to her home by Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. Some of these remote places are vestiges of earth's pristine habitats, while other wildernesses are encaged in cellars of Paris, along with the world's last species. Their essence is evoked in lithe and luxurious lines sometimes compressed as a trapped animal. An estranged father reappears as a hunter, while Maman is an orb spider or a grand piano; both are predators. And there are earthly beasts wild horses and bulls, lammergeiers, bee-eaters and catfish, remnants of a vanishing natural world. Beast asks if survival is possible in an abusive family and on an abused home planet, with trials such as climate change, childhood trauma and war. These poems face difficult challenges and insist that making art is an act of love and hope, and there are joyful lyrics celebrating the ineffable beauty of endangered species.

Full Product Details

Author:   Pascale Petit
Publisher:   Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Imprint:   Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Edition:   Paperback original
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.00cm , Length: 23.40cm
ISBN:  

9781780377377

ISBN 10:   1780377371
Pages:   112
Publication Date:   24 April 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

I. AMAZONIA 10 The River 12 Oxbow Lake 14 Catfish 15 House of Puberty 17 Concert for Motherhood 18 Dumbo Octopus 19 Monkey Muriel 20 My Book of the Dead 22 Portrait of My Mother at Six Weeks 23 Maman 24 Western Façade 25 Skinner 26 Hummer 27 The Lover’s Bed 29 Kisser 30 The Insect Father 31 To a Botfly 32 The Pelts of Animals 34 Pale-winged Trumpeters 35 Vial II. THE CAMARGUE AND LANGUEDOC 38 On Longing 40 The Lammergeier Daughter 41 Civet de Cerf 42 Papa Guêpier 43 Choker 44 After visiting the Museum of Doors, Pézenas, 46 The Frozen Zoo 48 Bac du Sauvage 49 Ode to Causse Méjean with Takhi Horses 50 Chemin des Rainettes 51 The Beast of Vaccarès 53 Courses Camarguaises 54 The Tarasque Tattoo 56 Camargue Bull at Dusk 58 Hide (Emperors and Egrets) 60 Ode to the Camargue 62 Hide (Mosquitoes) 64 Hide (My Birth) 65 Letter to Muriel 69 The Walnut Tree 70 Maman Argiope 72 Hide (Red Crayfish Claws and a Glossy Ibis) 73 My Mother’s Provençal Dress III. TALA ZONE 76 Tala Zone IV. WHAT ROUGH BEAST? 85 I asked if I could leave the Earth 86 A Mother Sings 87 What Eagle Saw 88 Butcherbirds 89 Salt Bride 90 Beauty V. BEAST OF BODMIN 93 The Moor Horses 95 Galloway Bull at the Waterhole 96 Roebuck 98 Ode to a Cornish Hedge 100 Song Thrush 102 Swallows 104 Murmurations at Roughtor 105 Beast of Bodmin 111 Acknowledgements

Reviews

Tiger Girl…pushes deep into the wilder places of the forest and the human heart. It shimmers with the colours of bee-eaters and flycatchers and rages at the darker regions of environmental exploitation and cruelty…alarming, mythic, beautiful… -- Alexandra Harris * chair of Forward Prize judges * 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 * on Mama Amazonica * Family history is at the heart of Pascale Petit’s Tiger Girl, the story of her grandmother, born in Rajasthan to her father’s maid but brought up as his wife’s child… Petit is a passionate laureate of the natural world, but alive to the cruelty of human depredation. -- Aingeal Clare * The Guardian *

Author Information

Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales and lives in Cornwall. She is of French, Welsh, and Indian heritage. Her eighth collection, Tiger Girl (2020), won an RSL Literature Matters Award while in progress, and a poem from the book won the 2020 Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize. Tiger Girl was shortlisted for the 2020 Forward Prize for Best Collection and for the English language poetry category shortlist for Wales Book of the Year 2021. Her seventh collection Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe Books, 2017), a Poetry Book Society Choice, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2018 and the Laurel Prize 2020, and was shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018. She has published six previous poetry collections, four of which were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, most recently, her sixth collection, Fauverie (Seren, 2014). A portfolio of poems from that book won the 2013 Manchester Poetry Prize. In 2018 she was appointed as Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2015, and was the chair of the judges for the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize. Her novel Hummingbird Father is published by Salt in 2024. Her books have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Serbian and French. She is widely travelled in the Peruvian and Venezuelan Amazon, China, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Mexico and India. Her fifth collection, What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo, published by Seren in 2010 (UK) and Black Lawrence Press in 2011 (US), was shortlisted for both the T.S. Eliot Prize and Wales Book of the Year. Two of her previous books, The Zoo Father and The Huntress, were also shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. In 2004 the Poetry Book Society selected Petit as one of the Next Generation Poets.

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