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Mama Amazonica - RSL Ondaatje Prize 2018 & Laurel Prize 2020

Mama Amazonica - RSL Ondaatje Prize 2018 & Laurel Prize 2020

by PascalePetit (Author)

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    Paperback 2017

    $3.94

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    Paperback 2017

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Synopsis

Mama Amazonica is set in a psychiatric ward and in the Amazon rainforest, an asylum for animals on the brink of extinction. It reveals the story of Pascale Petit's mentally ill mother and the consequences of abuse. The mother transforms into a giant Victoria amazonica waterlily, and a bestiary of untameable creatures - a jaguar girl, a wolverine, a hummingbird - as she marries her rapist and gives birth to his children. From heartbreaking trauma, there emerge luxuriant and tender portraits of a woman battling for survival, in poems that echo the plight of others under duress, and of our companion species. Petit does not flinch from the violence but offers hope by celebrating the beauty of the wild, whether in the mind or the natural world. Mama Amazonica is Pascale Petit's seventh collection, and her first from Bloodaxe. It is the Poetry Book Society Choice for autumn 2017. Four of Pascale Petit's previous six collections have been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 112
 Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Published: 28 Sep 2017
ISBN 10: 1780372949
ISBN 13: 9781780372945

Media Reviews
'Pascale Petit's Fauverie is astonishing, one of those books that breaks new ground in how to approach writing about the unwritable.' - Ruth Padel, London Review Bookshop Books of the Year; 'The voice of Fauverie speaks both bravely and with bravura from the heart of its material. There is conspiracy in these poems and great beauty. They venture into the cellar of the past, summon up memory and conjure it into a firework display of metaphoric brilliance.' - Helen Dunmore, Chair of Judges, 2014 T.S. Eliot Prize; 'Pascale's poems are as fresh as paint, and make you look all over again at Frida and her brilliant and tragic life.' - Jackie Kay, The Observer (Books of the Year), on What the Water Gave Me: Poems After Frida Kahlo; 'This is a wonderful and red-raw collection that captures pain, love and loss.' - The Independent, on The Zoo Father
Author Bio
Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales and lives in Cornwall. She is of French/Welsh/Pakistani heritage. Her seventh collection, Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe Books, 2017) is the Poetry Book Society Choice for autumn 2017. She has published six previous poetry collections. Her sixth, Fauverie (Seren, 2014), was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. A portfolio of poems from this book won the 2013 Manchester Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a 2015 Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors and was the chair of the judges for the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize. Her books have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Serbian and French. She is widely travelled in the Peruvian and Venezuelan Amazon, China, Kazakhstan, Nepal, and Mexico. 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, Wales Book of the Year, and was Jackie Kay's Book of the Year in the Observer. Two of her previous books, The Zoo Father and The Huntress, were also shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and were Books of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement and Independent. In 2004 the Poetry Book Society selected Petit as one of the Next Generation Poets. Petit has received six major awards from Arts Council England. The Zoo Father was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. A poem from the book, 'The Strait-Jackets', was shortlisted for a Forward Prize. A Spanish/English edition is published in Mexico and Spain, an illustrated Serbian edition in Belgrade, and her selected poems Fauverie are published in a bilingual edition in China. She was Poetry Editor of Poetry London from 1989 to 2005 and is a co-founding tutor of The Poetry School. She has co-edited Tying the Song (Enitharmon, 2000) the first anthology from The Poetry School. Her poems have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4, The Poetry Archive and ABC Radio National, and published widely in journals around the world, including in Poetry, Poetry Review, American Poetry Review and Quadrant. They have been translated into 18 languages. She taught popular poetry courses in the galleries at Tate Modern for nine years, and currently tutors for the Arvon Foundation and Ty Newydd. She was the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art 2011-12.