Pascale Petit

Pascale Petit is a poet who was born in Paris and lives in London. Her collections include Fauverie (2014), What the Water Gave Me: poems after Frida Kahlo (2010) and The Zoo Father (2001), all from Seren Books. Three of her collections were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize and were books of the year in the Observer, the Independent and the TLS, where Les Murray wrote: ‘No other British poet I am aware of can match the powerful mythic imagination of Pascale Petit.’ What the Water Gave Me was shortlisted for Wales book of the year, and Black Lawrence Press published a US edition in 2011. The Zoo Father was a Poetry Book Society recommendation. She trained at the Royal College of Art and spent the first part of her life as an artist before deciding to concentrate on poetry.

The Poetry Book Society named Pascale as one of the Next Generation poets in 2004. She has won numerous writing awards, including the 2013 Manchester writing prize for poetry, four Arts Council England literature awards, and has been shortlisted for a Forward prize. A bilingual edition of The Zoo Father is published in Mexico and an illustrated edition in Serbia. A Selected Poems is published in China.

Pascale is a co-founding tutor of the Poetry School and co-edited its first anthology. She was also poetry editor of Poetry London for 15 years. She tutors poetry courses for Tate Modern, the Poetry School, the Arvon Foundation and Literature Wales.