Fauverie

Overview

The fauverie of this poetry book is the big-cat house in the Jardin des Plantes zoo. But the word also evokes the Fauves, "primitive" painters who used raw color straight from the tube. This volume has childhood trauma and a dying father at its heart, while Paris takes center 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.

Reviews

"No other British poet I am aware of can match the powerful mythic imagination of Pascale Petit."  —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."  —Magma

"Our winner was chosen because of the unreproducible 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

Author Biography

Pascale Petit is a poet who currently teaches a popular writer's workshop at Tate Modern. Her poetry collections include What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo, which was short-listed for the Forward, T. S. Eliot, and Wales Book of the Year prizes. She is a founding member of the Poetry School in London. Five poems from this book have already won the Manchester Poetry Prize.