Back to All Events

Pascale Petit

Pascale Petit was born in Paris and lives in Cornwall, she is of French, Welsh and Indian heritage. Her debut novel, My Hummingbird Father, was published by Salt in 2024. She has published nine poetry collections, four of which were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Her seventh, Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe, 2017), won the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the inaugural Laurel Prize and was the Poetry Book Society Choice. Her eighth, Tiger Girl (Bloodaxe, 2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and for Wales Book of the Year. Her ninth collection, Beast, published by Bloodaxe in April 2025, won a Society of Authors Arthur Welton Award while in progress.

We are delighted to celebrate Pascale’s new collection Beast, in which mythic and familial beasts roam the swamps and moors. 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.

In Beast, 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.

Author photo credit Derrick Kakembo

The first half of this event will be open mic, so please feel free to bring and read a poem in a friendly and welcoming space.

Tickets on the door: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.

Previous
Previous
11 April

Hetty Cliss

Next
Next
14 November

Troy Cabida