Pascale Petit
Auteur de Mama Amazonica
A propos de l'auteur
Pascale Petit was born in 1953 in Paris, France. She is based in Cornwall. She is the author of seven poetry collections, which includes Heart of a Deer, The Zoo Father, The Huntress, The Treekeeper's Tale, What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo, and Fauverie. Her most recent collection is afficher plus Mama Amazonica (2017), for which she won the Royal Society of Literature's 2018 Ondaatje Prize. (Bowker Author Biography) afficher moins
Crédit image: © Photo credit Kitty Sullivan
Œuvres de Pascale Petit
Oeuvres associées
The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (2017) — Contributeur — 17 exemplaires
Sunlight on the River: Poems About Paintings, Paintings About Poems (2015) — Contributeur — 10 exemplaires
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Nom canonique
- Petit, Pascale
- Date de naissance
- 1953
- Sexe
- female
- Nationalité
- France
- Lieu de naissance
- Paris, France
- Lieux de résidence
- London, England, UK
- Études
- Royal College of Art
- Professions
- poet
editor
tutor - Prix et distinctions
- TS Eliot Prize 2001 (shortlisted), TS Eliot Prize 2005 (shortlisted), Arts Council of England Awards 2005 and 2007
Forward Prize (shortlisted) 2000, Society of Authors award 2007, Arts Council England Writers' Award 2001, New London Writers' Award 2001 - Courte biographie
- Pascale Petit is a French/Welsh poet living in the UK. Her fourth collection The Treekeeper's Tale was published by Seren in November 2008. Her second and third collections, The Huntress and The Zoo Father, were both shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and were Books of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement. A fifth collection What the Water Gave Me – Poems after Frida Kahlo will be published in June 2010. Pascale was selected as one of the Next Generation Poets and teaches creative writing in the galleries at Tate Modern. "No other British poet I am aware of can match the powerful mythic imagination of Pascale Petit." Les Murray – Times Literary Supplement.
Membres
Critiques
1 
parrishlantern | 3 autres critiques | Jun 26, 2012 |
parrishlantern | 3 autres critiques | Jun 26, 2012 | 
Startling imagery. You can tell that Petit has a knack for the visual arts as well as for language.
1 SamSearle | 3 autres critiques | Jun 23, 2011 |
SamSearle | 3 autres critiques | Jun 23, 2011 | Poems after Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo is well known as a surrealistic “folk artist,” and her Mexican heritage is evident in her works. She’s also known for her stormy marriage to fellow artist Diego Rivero. However, very little is known about her personal life beyond those details and a rather infamous unibrow. When I received the poetry collection What the Water Gave Me by Pascale Petit, I was fascinated by what the poet achieved: a biography of Kahlo through verse. The combination of historical details and poetry in this collection is unique, and when I was able to look up some of the Kahlo's work online, it was especially fascinating.
Each poem is related to a piece of Kahlo’s art, some having the same title. The poet imagines what Kahlo was thinking as she painted, and put those imagined thoughts into verse. Petit didn’t simply guess, however, she did meticulous research and even spoke to some of Kahlo’s acquaintances. As an artist herself, she was able to note visual clues in the paintings that would illuminate Kahlo’s mental state and attitudes.
An important element is the accident Kahlo was in as a teenager: her spinal column, pelvis, collarbone, and several ribs were broken. An iron handrail also crashed through her abdomen and uterus. From this accident, and from her prior illness with polio, a lifetime of pain was a certainty. Many times she was bedfast for months at a time, and her frequent miscarriages were devastating. Her pain translated into her art, few of which appear happy or jubilant. In Kettenman’s 1955 biography of Kahlo, she is quoted as saying “"I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best." More than half her paintings were self-portraits.
One of Kahlo’s most well-known works is “The Suicide of Dorothy Hale”, which she was commissioned to paint by a friend of Hale's. Hale had jumped from a skyscraper, and Kahlo rendered the descent as if the clouds were slowing her fall, so her scene in death is almost like slumber. Petit went one step further in the poem, concluding it with Kahlo’s imagined thoughts:
“And I’m desolate as you were
That violet morning
When the window spoke its glass vowels
That drew you to the balcony.”
Petit’s interpretation of her biographical knowledge combined with the artistic clues make a powerful statement. The title of the book refers to a piece Kahlo completed, and it represents a woman in a bathtub with elements of her life symbolically played out in the water. The verses combine Kahlo’s art with the reality of this image (Kahlo took frequent baths to soothe her back pain as Petit notes) to imagine the emotional and physical pain Kahlo felt being a spectator for much of her life.… (plus d'informations)
Frida Kahlo is well known as a surrealistic “folk artist,” and her Mexican heritage is evident in her works. She’s also known for her stormy marriage to fellow artist Diego Rivero. However, very little is known about her personal life beyond those details and a rather infamous unibrow. When I received the poetry collection What the Water Gave Me by Pascale Petit, I was fascinated by what the poet achieved: a biography of Kahlo through verse. The combination of historical details and poetry in this collection is unique, and when I was able to look up some of the Kahlo's work online, it was especially fascinating.
Each poem is related to a piece of Kahlo’s art, some having the same title. The poet imagines what Kahlo was thinking as she painted, and put those imagined thoughts into verse. Petit didn’t simply guess, however, she did meticulous research and even spoke to some of Kahlo’s acquaintances. As an artist herself, she was able to note visual clues in the paintings that would illuminate Kahlo’s mental state and attitudes.
An important element is the accident Kahlo was in as a teenager: her spinal column, pelvis, collarbone, and several ribs were broken. An iron handrail also crashed through her abdomen and uterus. From this accident, and from her prior illness with polio, a lifetime of pain was a certainty. Many times she was bedfast for months at a time, and her frequent miscarriages were devastating. Her pain translated into her art, few of which appear happy or jubilant. In Kettenman’s 1955 biography of Kahlo, she is quoted as saying “"I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best." More than half her paintings were self-portraits.
One of Kahlo’s most well-known works is “The Suicide of Dorothy Hale”, which she was commissioned to paint by a friend of Hale's. Hale had jumped from a skyscraper, and Kahlo rendered the descent as if the clouds were slowing her fall, so her scene in death is almost like slumber. Petit went one step further in the poem, concluding it with Kahlo’s imagined thoughts:
“And I’m desolate as you were
That violet morning
When the window spoke its glass vowels
That drew you to the balcony.”
Petit’s interpretation of her biographical knowledge combined with the artistic clues make a powerful statement. The title of the book refers to a piece Kahlo completed, and it represents a woman in a bathtub with elements of her life symbolically played out in the water. The verses combine Kahlo’s art with the reality of this image (Kahlo took frequent baths to soothe her back pain as Petit notes) to imagine the emotional and physical pain Kahlo felt being a spectator for much of her life.… (plus d'informations)
1 BlackSheepDances | 3 autres critiques | Jul 15, 2010 |
BlackSheepDances | 3 autres critiques | Jul 15, 2010 | Pascale Petit, Frida Kahlo and the Mirror
(From my Stella Pierides: Reading Room Blog: http://stellapierides.com/blog/pascale-petit-frida-kahlo-and-the-mirror)
I love Pascale Petit’s work. She has an imagination bubbling with creative and often electrifying ways of seeing the world. What Les Murray said about a “powerful mythic imagination” in her poetry is certainly true, though for me, while she draws from the whole gamut and history of art and culture, she fizzles with new ideas of her own. As a result, on reading her poems you acquire a new set of eyes, different with every single poem.
This is what makes it even more remarkable for me, namely, that she is able to put herself into another person’s perspective so well, with sensitivity and humility. Her poem “War Horse,” from The Treekeeper’s Tale, an earlier collection, inspired by Franz Marc’s letter to his wife Maria, is a beautiful instance of this. Writing to his wife from the slaughter fields of World War I, at night, he speaks through Petit over the distance of space, time, and culture to us as individual human beings.
It seems that Frida Kahlo is given the same treatment. I have not read the whole book yet, but from the poems and the reviews I have read, it seems that Pascale Petit is putting her remarkable imagination and empathy to excellent use. Taking her lead from a painting titled “What the Water Gave Me,” in which images from Kahlo’s life float in the bath water of her painting, Petit gives voice to this remarkable woman.
Kahlo became internationally known late in the twentieth century, long after her suffering polio, then catastrophic injuries from an accident in her teenage years, and her tumultuous relationship with Diego Rivera. Kahlo wove the strands of life, pain and art in her work: she used her injuries to inspire and fire her art, and her art to cope with her injuries and pain. The details of her injuries and private life have had a powerful effect on generations of women in particular, and have been written about extensively. It is a pity that a large number of her fans are said to be more fascinated with Kahlo’s tragic life than with the greatness of her art: the way she used life, pain and paint to speak in a unique language of painting. It is a unique “language” which conveys in colour, form, and Mexican folklore what it is for a courageous intellect such as Kahlo’s to be looking at herself in the mirror.
One wonders what might have happened had Kahlo herself written poetry instead; or in addition to, her painting. Might she have coped in a different way, perhaps better than she did in her life? We will never know. Now, however, through Petit’s book, we can hear her voice.
While there is a plethora of writing about Kahlo, not many have managed the task of letting her speak for herself. Petit transforms the paint into poem in the same way that Kahlo transformed pain into paint. Unafraid of death, anger, blood, ugliness, loneliness, of the monkey and the other animals in Kahlo’s portraits, of Diego Rivera, and other disturbing realities in Kahlo’s life, Petit empowers Kahlo to speak and the reader to hear her.… (plus d'informations)
(From my Stella Pierides: Reading Room Blog: http://stellapierides.com/blog/pascale-petit-frida-kahlo-and-the-mirror)
I love Pascale Petit’s work. She has an imagination bubbling with creative and often electrifying ways of seeing the world. What Les Murray said about a “powerful mythic imagination” in her poetry is certainly true, though for me, while she draws from the whole gamut and history of art and culture, she fizzles with new ideas of her own. As a result, on reading her poems you acquire a new set of eyes, different with every single poem.
This is what makes it even more remarkable for me, namely, that she is able to put herself into another person’s perspective so well, with sensitivity and humility. Her poem “War Horse,” from The Treekeeper’s Tale, an earlier collection, inspired by Franz Marc’s letter to his wife Maria, is a beautiful instance of this. Writing to his wife from the slaughter fields of World War I, at night, he speaks through Petit over the distance of space, time, and culture to us as individual human beings.
It seems that Frida Kahlo is given the same treatment. I have not read the whole book yet, but from the poems and the reviews I have read, it seems that Pascale Petit is putting her remarkable imagination and empathy to excellent use. Taking her lead from a painting titled “What the Water Gave Me,” in which images from Kahlo’s life float in the bath water of her painting, Petit gives voice to this remarkable woman.
Kahlo became internationally known late in the twentieth century, long after her suffering polio, then catastrophic injuries from an accident in her teenage years, and her tumultuous relationship with Diego Rivera. Kahlo wove the strands of life, pain and art in her work: she used her injuries to inspire and fire her art, and her art to cope with her injuries and pain. The details of her injuries and private life have had a powerful effect on generations of women in particular, and have been written about extensively. It is a pity that a large number of her fans are said to be more fascinated with Kahlo’s tragic life than with the greatness of her art: the way she used life, pain and paint to speak in a unique language of painting. It is a unique “language” which conveys in colour, form, and Mexican folklore what it is for a courageous intellect such as Kahlo’s to be looking at herself in the mirror.
One wonders what might have happened had Kahlo herself written poetry instead; or in addition to, her painting. Might she have coped in a different way, perhaps better than she did in her life? We will never know. Now, however, through Petit’s book, we can hear her voice.
While there is a plethora of writing about Kahlo, not many have managed the task of letting her speak for herself. Petit transforms the paint into poem in the same way that Kahlo transformed pain into paint. Unafraid of death, anger, blood, ugliness, loneliness, of the monkey and the other animals in Kahlo’s portraits, of Diego Rivera, and other disturbing realities in Kahlo’s life, Petit empowers Kahlo to speak and the reader to hear her.… (plus d'informations)
1 stellapierides | 3 autres critiques | Jun 26, 2010 |
stellapierides | 3 autres critiques | Jun 26, 2010 | Listes
Prix et récompenses
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Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 17
- Aussi par
- 8
- Membres
- 148
- Popularité
- #140,180
- Évaluation
- 4.1
- Critiques
- 4
- ISBN
- 25
- Langues
- 3
All of this feeds into her paintings, which are remembered for “ it’s pain and passion” the intense colours and how she incorporated Mexican culture and Amerindian cultural traditions into her work, which has sometimes been characterized as Naïve art or folk art, although her work has also been described as "surrealist", and in 1938 André Breton, principal initiator of the surrealist movement, described Kahlo's art as a "ribbon around a bomb".
Pascale Petit is a French-born poet who grew up in Wales and lives in London, she trained as a sculptor at the Royal College of Art, spending the first part of her life as an artist, before choosing to concentrate on poetry. She has published five collections of poetry, two of which were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and featured as Books of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement and the Independent. In 2004 the Poetry Book Society selected her as one of the Next Generation Poets. This is her second collection that deals with the life and art of Frida Kahlo, the first “The Wounded Deer” was published in 2005, after which she wrote “ The Huntress (2005) followed by the “Treekeeper’s Tale” (2008) and yet Kahlo still haunted her, more poems kept coming resulting in this new collection “What The Water Gave Me”, which contains fifty-two poems exploring how trauma can become art, how an artist channels the pain and angst, the joy and terror experienced in life through some alchemical process into an image on canvas that has the power to alter those that look upon it, to haunt long after the picture has faded from the eye.
By adopting the voice of Frida Kahlo in these poems, Pascale stated that she found it exhilarating to become this artist, and by this medium she found she could write about such difficult subjects as childhood trauma and sex, without the need to be confessional, she also said that “For each poem I meditated on a painting, not just on the subject, but her process: the colours and brushstrokes, until I could create my own ‘painting’ with words. My poem versions bear the titles of her paintings and juxtapose images from them with incidents in her life. For example, in my poem ‘Remembrance of an Open Wound’, I superimposed the accident with her sex life with Diego, so there is joy as well as brokenness.”. Also having been through a long illness herself, she could identify with the artists isolation and need to remake herself……
http://parrishlantern.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/ribbon-around-bomb.html… (plus d'informations)