Pascale Petit Launch Readings
‘A kaleidoscopic menagerie of creatures, both heavenly and demonic, await the reader in Pascale Petit’s astonishing collection Beast.’ – Georgie Henley, Poetry Wales
Pascale Petit's ninth poetry collection, Beast, is published by Bloodaxe in April 2025. It is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Summer 2025.
In this new collection, mythic and familial beasts roam wild landscapes. These spirits haunt forests in India and the Amazon as well as the Camargue and Languedoc in France, as well as 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. Beast asks if survival is possible in an abusive family and on an abused home planet, in the face of climate catastrophe, 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.
Her eighth collection Tiger Girl, published by Bloodaxe in 2020, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2020 and the English language poetry category of Wales Book of the Year 2021. Her seventh, Mama Amazonica, awarded Poetry Book Society Choice for Autumn 2017 and shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2018 - the first time in the prize's 15-year history that a poetry title won the award. It also won the inaugural Laurel Prize, Poet Laureate Simon Armitage's new award for eco and environmental poetry. Pascale presented her Laurel Prize commission; 'Beast of Bodmin Moor' at Cornwall AONB on 22 September 2021. 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 was published by Salt in 2024.
Pascale Petit was interviewed on Radio 3's The Verb on 13 November 2020. Listen here. She read poems from both Tiger Girl and Mama Amazonica at various points in the programme.
'Surprised!' from Tiger Girl was featured in the Spring 2021 issue of Oxford Review of Books. The collection was reviewed in great depth in their autumn 2020 issue here.
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‘A kaleidoscopic menagerie of creatures, both heavenly and demonic, await the reader in Pascale Petit’s astonishing collection Beast. [...] This is a collection of many skins, pelts, furs, wings, as Petit finds strange sanctuary in the quotidian violence of the skies and sea. Bodies are pierced, bruised, bloodied, yet it is Petit’s plaintive assertions of hope that truly knock the breath out of her reader, ‘I am a door no one can open’.' – Georgie Henley, Poetry Wales
FORTHCOMING LAUNCH READINGS FOR BEAST
Bloodaxe online launch reading with Pascale Petit, Vidyan Ravinthiran and Dis Poetry by Benjamin Zephaniah - Tuesday 22 April 2025, 7pm BST
Join Bloodaxe for this launch event for new April 2025 titles by Pascale Petit and Vidyan Ravinthiran, and by the late and much-missed Benjamin Zephaniah. 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 posthumous 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 event will be available to watch live or later via YouTube.
To receive reminder events about the event, you can register on TicketTailor here: https://buytickets.at/bloodaxebooks/1544561
Thursday 24 April, 2025, 4pm-5pm
Cambridge Literary Festival: Pascale Petit & Gwyneth Lewis
Lucia Windsor room, Newnham College, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DF
Gwyneth Lewis & Pascale Petit | Two Poets, One Story
Gywneth Lewis will be reading from her new collection First Rain in Paradise alongside Pascale Petit, whose new collection Beast is published in April 2025.
'Two of our finest poets present their latest collections of moving, lyrical and ultimately redemptive poetry which reflect their experiences of family abuse. First Rain in Paradise relates to the emotional abuse Lewis received by her mother, also the subject of a memoir, Nightshade Mother. Pascale Petit’s latest collection Beast relates to her upbringing with abusive parents coupled with explorations of our abused planet.'
In-person event. Tickets £14/£10.
https://www.cambridgeliteraryfestival.com/events/gwyneth-lewis-pascale-petit-first-rain-in-paradise/
Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival, Saturday 26 April 2025, 5pm–6pm
at St George’s, Great George St, Bristol BS1 5RR
Wild Poems
Pascale Petit launches her new collection, Beast, and reads with Fran Lock and Susie Wilson. Pascale will lead a workshop earlier in the day - see below.
Tickets: £8 (£10 solidarity, £5 concessions)
Book here.
Into the Wild: workshop with Pascale Petit
Saturday 26 April, 12 noon–2pm
Before her reading at 5pm, Pascale will lead a workshop Into the Wild.
Tickets: £8 (£10 solidarity, £5 concessions)
Book here.
28 April – 3 May 2025
Animals, Beasts and Monsters
Moniack Mhor, Kiltarlity, Inverness-shire, IV4 7HT
Join tutors Gywneth Lewis & Pascale Petit for this week-long writing course at Moniack Mhor. Guest Reader: Jay Griffiths.
More details and booking here.
Wednesday 14 May 2025, 6.30pm
Quay Words presents Pascale Petit: Beast
Exeter Custom House, Quayside, Exeter, Devon.
Literature Works host the Southwest launch of Pascale Petit’s ninth collection, Beast.
Beast will be for sale afterwards courtesy of BookBag bookshop and Pascale will be available for signings.
More details and booking here.
Bude Literary Festival 6-7pm Saturday 17 May 2025
The Parkhouse Centre, Ergue-Gaberic Way, Bude, EX23 8LD
Pascale Petit launches Beast in Bude, Cornwall.
To book click HERE.
Friday 30 May 2025, 8pm
The Plough Poetry Prize
The Plough Arts Centre, 9-11 Fore Street, Great Torrington, Devon EX38 8HQ
Pascale Petit will announce prizewinners and read from her ninth collection Beast.
Tickets: £6.
More details here.
Launceston Poetry Festival, Saturday 31 May 2025, 12pm-1pm
Launceston Town Hall, Western Rd, Launceston PL15 7AR
Pascale Petit and Katrina Naomi: poetry readings and in conversation
Pascale launches Beast and reads with Katrina Naomi.
Tickets: £10.
More information & bookings here.
Friday 13 June 2025, 8pm
Launch of Beast at Ware Poets
Southern Maltings Arts Centre, Kibes Lane, Ware, Herfordshire, SG12 7BS
Pascale Petit will be reading from Beast at the monthly Ware Poets event.
More details and booking here.
Red Door Poets, Covent Garden, London, Tuesday 17 June 2025
Venue: Club for Acts and Actors, 20 Bedford St, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9HP (this has yet to be confirmed)
Pascale Petit’s London launch of Beast, at a reading with Richard Scott and Katrina Naomi.
More details tbc soon.
Heligan Homecoming Festival, Cornwall, Saturday 21 June 2025
Pentewan, St Austell, Cornwall PL26 6EN
Simon Armitage and Pascale Petit reading at The Lost Gardens of Heligan
More tbc soon here: https://www.heligan.com/
Wednesday 2 July 2025, 7.15pm
How I Write: Pascale Petit (Arvon at Home)
- in conversation with Daniel Sluman
Join Daniel Sluman online as he interviews award-winning poet and novelist Pascale Petit, as part of his 2025 virtual residency with Arvon. Daniel will be asking Pascale about her creative process, her influences, and how she has approached her writing at different stages throughout her long career.
More details and booking here.
The Lyric Self, Arvon course at Totleigh Barton, Devon, Mon 14– Sat 19 July 2025
What are the ways into writing the personal in poetry? How can you make it intimate, playful and inventive for the writer and reader? Intrepid poets Pascale Petit and Will Harris, both with award-winning collections investigating the lyric self, will guide you on this residential course. Guest reader is Ella Frears.
Details here. FULLY BOOKED!
North Cornwall Book Festival Saturday/Sunday 27/28 September 2025
ST Endellion, Port Isaac, Cornwall PL29 3TP
Katrina Naomi and Pascale Petit reading. Pascale will read from her new poetry collection, Beast, and her debut novel My Hummingbird Father.
Details to be announced in May here.
PAST EVENTS
FILM FOR COP26, NOVEMBER 2021
Pascale Petit reads two poems for SHE Changes Climate at COP26
Pascale Petit reads ‘Rainforest in the Sleep Room’ from Mama Amazonica and ‘Green Bee-eater’ from Tiger Girl. Film by Brian Fraser and edited by Kit Ondaatje Rolls for a COP26 event at The Pipe Factory, Glasgow, on 9 November 2021. Photographs and videos of the Peruvian Amazon and the green bee-eater in Bandhavgarh National Park, India, by Brian Fraser and Pascale Petit. With kind permission of Kit Ondaatje Rolls.
Launch Reading by Pascale Petit, Wayne Holloway-Smith & Phoebe Stuckes, 7-8 pm BST, Tuesday 8 September 2020
Bloodaxe Books online launch by Pascale Petit, Wayne-Holloway Smith and Phoebe Stuckes of their new poetry collections. The event was live-streamed on 8 September, and is now on YouTube. Hosted by editor Neil Astley.
The three readings were followed by a Q&A session with the online audience. Pascale was the first to read.
Pascale Petit launched her new collection Tiger Girl in a Bloodaxe online launch reading shared with Wayne Holloway-Smith and Phoebe Stuckes on 8 September 2020. This video is an excerpt from that event which went out on YouTube Live.
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Aingeal Clare reviewed Tiger Girl in The Guardian of 12 September 2020 here.
Tiger Girl was reviewed by Daljit Nagra on Radio 4's Front Row on 24 August 2020. Listen here. Daljit begins his poetry round-up at 21.48. He reviews Tiger Girl from 26.39.
An interview with Pascale Petit, focusing on Tiger Girl in particular, went online at Versopolis on 27 July 2020. Read here.
Two poems from Tiger Girl are featured on Extinction Rebellion's Writers' Rebel website are here. Pascale introduces the poems with the comment:
‘#ExtinctionRebellion’ and ‘For a Coming Extinction’ will both appear in my eighth collection, Tiger Girl, published by Bloodaxe in September 2020. Tiger Girl explores my grandmother’s Indian heritage and the fauna and flora of subcontinental jungles. Tiger girl is my grandmother, who brought me up with tales of wild tigers, but she’s also the endangered predators I encountered in Central India, with their threats of poaching, species extinction, and deforestation. In this overpopulated country, so many charismatic megafauna, such as tigers, leopards, elephants and sloth bears, have to inhabit smaller and smaller territories, next to displaced and impoverished forest tribals and local farmers. National parks and tiger reserves like Bandhavgarh in Madhya Pradesh, where I spent most of my time, are like a crucible, where humanity and wildlife struggle for survival.'
Pascale Petit's poem 'The Anthropocene' from Tiger Girl is featured in the New Statesman of 3 June here.
Some poems from Tiger Girl are featured on Pascale's blog here, along with photographs taken in India.
Pascale Petit's poem 'Indian Paradise Flycatcher' from Tiger Girl won the Keats-Shelley Prize. More details on our website here.
[05 February 2025]
