Wednesday 14 May 1830 - 1930
We are thrilled to welcome back Pascale Petit to the Exeter Custom House, for a reading from her latest poetry collection Beast.
About Beast
Mythic and familial beasts roam the swamps and moors of Pascale Petit’s Beast. 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.
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.
About Pascale Petit
Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales and lives in Cornwall. She is of French, Welsh, and Indian heritage. Her ninth collection, Beast, is published by Bloodaxe in 2025, it won an Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors while in progress. Her eighth collection, Tiger Girl (2020), won an RSL Literature Matters Award and a poem from the book won the 2020 Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize. Tiger Girl was shortlisted for the 2020 Forward Prize for Best Collection and for Wales Book of the Year 2021. Her seventh collection Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe, 2017), a Poetry Book Society Choice, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2018, the inaugural Laurel Prize 2020, and was shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018.
Her novel My Hummingbird Father was published by Salt in 2024.
This event will be in-person at Exeter Custom House. You can find out more about the accessibility of the Custom House here. If you have any access needs you’d like to discuss with us before the event you can contact us on quaywords@literatureworks.org.uk. We can offer free carer tickets if you need help to support you to attend.