The Fauverie of this book is the big-cat house in the Jardin des Plantes zoo. But the word also evokes the Fauves, 'primitive' painters who used raw colour straight from the tube. Like The Zoo Father, Petit's acclaimed second collection, this volume has childhood trauma and a dying father at its heart, while Paris takes centre stage - a city savage as the Amazon, haunted by Aramis the black jaguar and a menagerie of wild animals. Transforming childhood horrors to ultimately mourn a lost parent, Fauverie redeems the darker forces of human nature while celebrating the ferocity and grace of endangered species.
'No other British poet I am aware of can match the powerful mythic imagination of Pascale Petit.' Les Murray, Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year
'Pascale Petit creates forms and strategies that go beyond common knowledge of what a poem can or should do; her poetry never behaves itself or betrays itself; and contemporary British poetry is all the livelier for it.' David Morley, Magma
'Our winner was chosen because of the un-reproducible bite of the images, her brilliant understanding of human psycho-drama, the sustained accomplishment of her metaphorical imagination.' Adam O'Riordan, Chair of judges, Manchester Poetry Prize
'(for What The Water Gave Me, Poems after Frida Kahlo) Petit's collection, exploring the way trauma hurts an artist into creation, celebrates the rebarbative energy with which Kahlo redeemed pain and transformed it into paint.' - Ruth Padel, The Guardian. (for poems from The Zoo Father)
Petit carefully joins stories of such 'private wars together with mythologies and histories of ancient cultures into a thick poetic weft. Her second collection, The Zoo Father (2001) catapults the reader into an imaginary and emotional jungle, where the relationship between a dying father and the daughter he has abused is fought out. Spun around the imagery of the Amazon and the ancient mythologies of indigenous peoples, these poems anchor 'private wars in a historical domain, equally spanning the personal and universal.' Poetry International - Rotterdam
Author
About Pascale Petit
Pascale Petit trained at the Royal College of Art and spent the first part of her life as an artist, before deciding to concentrate on poetry. Since then she has published five collections, two of which were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and featured as Books of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement and the Independent.
In 2004 the Poetry Book Society selected her as one of the Next Generation Poets. She teaches poetry writing courses for a number of organisations, including Tate Modern. Petit has read her work at many festivals around the world and travelled to Mexico several times to research Kahlo’s life.
