Launch reading with Pascale Petit, Vidyan Ravinthiran and Dis Poetry by Benjamin Zephaniah
Join Bloodaxe for this launch event for new April titles by Pascale Petit and Vidyan Ravinthiran, and by the late and much missed Benjamin Zephaniah who died just over a year ago. Pascale Petit and Vidyan Ravinthiran will be celebrating the publication of their latest collections by reading live and discussing their books as well as Benjamin Zephaniah’s retrospective Dis Poetry: Selected Poems & Lyrics with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley. The event will include clips of Benjamin Zephaniah performing and talking taken from Pamela Robertson-Pearce’s film To Do Wid Me which readers will be able access in full using the QR code printed in the book.
This free Bloodaxe launch event will be streamed on YouTube Live and will be available below or here: https://youtube.com/live/5Zy29ZHqwtw. Please note that you will not be joining on Zoom, so you should not worry about logging in on Zoom. No log-in is needed. You just need to go to the YouTube page at the time stated above. There may be a small delay in the event starting, but if it doesn’t show the livestream click on the play arrow until it does. For those who can't make it live, the event will be available on YouTube afterwards.
To receive reminder events about the event, you can register on TicketTailor here: https://buytickets.at/bloodaxebooks/1544561
For those who can't make it live, the reading will be available on YouTube afterwards via the same YouTube link: https://youtube.com/live/5Zy29ZHqwtw
To order copies of the poets’ books direct from Bloodaxe, please click on these links.
Pascale Petit: Beast
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/beast-1372
Vidyan Ravinthiran: Avidya
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/avidya-1374
Benjamin Zephaniah: Dis Poetry: Selected Poems & Lyrics
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/dis-poetry-1373
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Pascale Petit: Beast
Mythic and familial beasts roam the swamps and moors of Pascale Petit’s Beast. These spirits of the wild haunt the Camargue of Provence, the limestone Causses and gorges of the Languedoc, Indian tiger forests, the Amazon rainforest, and 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.
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Vidyan Ravinthiran: Avidya
These poems emerged from journeys of great personal significance, and out of a migrant sensibility tied to three different countries. Sensuous, droll, yearning, they consider otherwise forgotten (ignored, repressed, erased) events.
In 2017, Vidyan Ravinthiran travelled to the north of Sri Lanka where his parents grew up – it finally felt safe – visiting war-torn Tamil areas overwritten by a tourist focus on the sun-spoiled South. In 2020, he, his wife and their one-year-old moved from Britain to the United States, months before the pandemic hit and the travel ban separated them for almost two years from family overseas.
Avidya is a political and a spiritual collection, whose multiple poetic forms, open and closed, are shaped by myth and philosophy, and by Sri Lankan as well as global crises. It is also a book about the forms of both strength and fear that parents pass on to their children.
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Benjamin Zephaniah: Dis Poetry: Selected Poems & Lyrics
Benjamin Zephaniah (1958-2023) was a writer and performer of extraordinary range: an oral poet, novelist, playwright, children’s writer, reggae artist, actor, television personality and political activist. Born and raised in Birmingham, he was sent to an approved school for being uncontrollable, rebellious and ‘a born failure’, ending up in jail for burglary and affray. After prison he turned from crime to music and poetry. He was later nominated for Oxford Professor of Poetry, and voted Britain’s third favourite poet of all time (after T.S. Eliot and John Donne) in a BBC poll.
Benjamin was a poet who wouldn't stay silent, who didn't pull any punches, who wrote out of a sense of urgency and a commitment to social justice. Known for his performance poetry with a political edge for adults as well as his poetry with attitude for children, he had his own rap/reggae band. He was the first person to record with the Wailers after the death of Bob Marley, in a musical tribute to Nelson Mandela, which Mandela heard while in prison on Robben Island.
Dis Poetry brings together all the poems from Benjamin’s three Bloodaxe collections, City Psalms (1992), Propa Propaganda (1996) and Too Black, Too Strong (2001), as well as some from The Dread Affair (1985), along with previously unpublished work and lyrics from various recordings.
[21 January 2025]
