Beast

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 eighth collection, Tiger Girl (2020), won an RSL Literature Matters Award while in progress, 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 the English language poetry category shortlist for Wales Book of the Year 2021. Her seventh collection Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe Books, 2017), a Poetry Book Society Choice, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2018 and the Laurel Prize 2020, and was shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018. Her ninth collection, Beast (Bloodaxe Books, 2025) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She has published six previous poetry collections, four of which were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, most recently, her sixth collection, Fauverie (Seren, 2014). A portfolio of poems from that book won the 2013 Manchester Poetry Prize. In 2018 she was appointed as Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2015, and was the chair of the judges for the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize. Her novel Hummingbird Father was published by Salt in 2024. Her books have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Serbian and French. She is widely travelled in the Peruvian and Venezuelan Amazon, China, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Mexico and India. 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 and Wales Book of the Year. Two of her previous books, The Zoo Father and The Huntress, were also shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. In 2004 the Poetry Book Society selected Petit as one of the Next Generation Poets.

Rarely has the personal and environmental lament found such imaginative fusion, such outlandish and shocking expression that is at once spectacularly vigorous, intimate and heartbroken.

• I. AMAZONIA10 The River12 Oxbow Lake14 Catfish15 House of Puberty17 Concert for Motherhood18 Dumbo Octopus19 Monkey Muriel20 My Book of the Dead22 Portrait of My Mother at Six Weeks23 Maman24 Western Façade25 Skinner26 Hummer27 The Lover’s Bed29 Kisser30 The Insect Father31 To a Botfly32 The Pelts of Animals34 Pale-winged Trumpeters35 Vial II. THE CAMARGUE AND LANGUEDOC38 On Longing40 The Lammergeier Daughter41 Civet de Cerf42 Papa Guêpier43 Choker44 After visiting the Museum of Doors, Pézenas,46 The Frozen Zoo48 Bac du Sauvage49 Ode to Causse Méjean with Takhi Horses50 Chemin des Rainettes51 The Beast of Vaccarès53 Courses Camarguaises54 The Tarasque Tattoo56 Camargue Bull at Dusk58 Hide (Emperors and Egrets)60 Ode to the Camargue62 Hide (Mosquitoes)64 Hide (My Birth)65 Letter to Muriel69 The Walnut Tree70 Maman Argiope72 Hide (Red Crayfish Claws and a Glossy Ibis)73 My Mother’s Provençal Dress III. TALA ZONE76 Tala Zone IV. WHAT ROUGH BEAST?85 I asked if I could leave the Earth86 A Mother Sings87 What Eagle Saw88 Butcherbirds89 Salt Bride90 Beauty V. BEAST OF BODMIN93 The Moor Horses95 Galloway Bull at the Waterhole96 Roebuck98 Ode to a Cornish Hedge100 Song Thrush102 Swallows104 Murmurations at Roughtor105 Beast of Bodmin 111 Acknowledgements