Touching sculptures at Tate Modern for Poetry from Art

For our penultimate session of Poetry from Art at Tate Modern the curator of the Tate access project Marcus Dickey Horley gave us a Touch Tour in the States of Flux galleries. Usually, no sighting person is allowed to touch the sculptures, as Marcus provides the tour for blind and visually impaired visitors, but he requested special dispensation for us. Only the sturdiest sculptures can be touched and then it's through lint-free gloves, but imagine if you could feel Rodin's The Kiss. We also felt Umberto Boccioni's futuristic machine-man Unique Forms of Continuity in Space and Raymond Duchamp-Villon's animal-machine hybrid Large Horse.

After the Touch Tour and Marcus' fascinating insights into the sculptures, we read the adulterous kissers Francesca and Paolo's tragic story from Dante's Inferno (in Ciaran Carson's translation – half terza rima, half ballad). Their lips never quite meet in the Inferno and they are destined to stay frozen apart but tantalizingly close throughout eternity in the second circle of hell, after Francesca's husband murdered them as they were about to embrace. In the marble they do seem to have just about started, though you have to crane your neck in to see their lips. The sculpture was daringly frank for its day (1904), a curious blend of classicism and eroticism. We also read 'The Race' by Sharon Olds as a study of a poem about speed, for those who wanted to write from Boccioni's striding figure or the leaping war horse.

You can read poems from this session and the rest of the term, in the Miró exhibition, the Rothko room, and Lamia Joreige's Objects of War, in the pamphlet anthology Poetry from Art at Tate Modern 2011, to be launched at 6.45pm on Saturday 24 September, in the East Room at Tate Modern. Entry will be free, and there'll be readings, wine and great views. Please join us if you're in town.
 

 The Kiss Auguste Rodin, 1901-4 Pentelican marble

My trip to New Mexico, 1-7 May 2011

It was snowing when I arrived in Albuquerque airport on May 1st, and by the time the shuttle arrived to take me to Santa Fe, where I was met by the poets Veronica Golos and Andrea Watson, a blizzard obscured the longed-for views on the winding road to Taos in the mountains. When Veronica took me for a hike in the Rio Grande Gorge, snowdrifts still flanked our path. But within a few days the weather switched to dry desert heat. Here are some pics taken in Taos, at the Taos Pueblo, and in the Rio Grande Gorge. Warm thanks to the fabulous poet Veronica Golos for inviting me into her home, to her and Andrea for their hard work organising a reading and workshop, and to Arthur Sze for a super meal in Santa Fe on my way back to Albuquerque and on to the next leg of my tour, California.

Also at the end you'll see a strange dried creature in a small Taos museum. It's a baby shark used by the Mexican Cora tribe as a charm against evil spirits. It was caught on a moonlit night during the primal equinox at the precise moment that a cloud passed over the moon. The method by which it was dried did not include any metal instruments and is a closely guarded secret. 

What the Water Gave Me now published in US by Black Lawrence Press

For anyone in the US who'd like to buy my collection What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo, I'm delighted to announce that it's now published by Black Lawrence Press and available to buy from their website for $14.

What the Water Gave Me was first published by Seren in 2010. It was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, Wales Book of the Year and was a Book of the Year in the Observer. There's more information about it and sample poems on my website.

Redwoods and Hummingbirds, Santa Cruz

The last reading of my US tour was a return visit to Poetry Santa Cruz where I was adopted as an honorary local when I read my poem 'The University among the Redwoods, Santa Cruz' from my fourth collection The Treekeeper's Tale. The morning before I flew home, my hosts Tom and Ellen took me to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. We then had a picnic in a hummingbird arboretum in the grounds of the uni, right in front of the hummers' favourite Grevillea bush, where dozens of Anna's Hummingbirds were doing their dive-bombing displays into the ruby clusters. It was heaven! The birds were too fast to photograph but here are my shots of the coast redwoods earlier that morning. I wrote the poem, which is part of a sequence, when I last read for Dennis Morton at Poetry Santa Cruz in 2005 and you can read it on the Santa Cruz News.

Judyth Piazza chats with Pascale Petit on Cinco de Mayo

Today is Cinco de Mayo, Frida Day! To celebrate it, Judyth Piazza, host of the American Perspective Radio Program, has interviewed me for the Student Operated Press. You can hear the 15 minute interview here:

Judyth Piazza chats with Pascale Petit, Author of "What the Water Gave Me"

It was snowing when I arrived in New Mexico last Sunday but now the sky is the deepest sapphire and sacred Taos mountain is the only white peak left.  I have seen robins building their nests and heard a nightingale-wren in nearby Rio Grande Gorge. The houses here are rich cinnamon shades of adobe earth against the blue, so they seem to melt into the landscape.

I will be reading from What the Water Gave Me at the Metta Theater tonight (1470 Paseo Del Pueblo Sur, El Prado, New Mexico 87529) at 7.30pm. If you live nearby please come and say hello and chat about your experience of Frida after the reading when there'll be time for informal audience discussion. 

My south west tour continues in LA this Sunday 8th May when I'll read with Mariano Zaro at the Ruskin Art Center at 3pm (800 S. Plymouth) and on Monday 9th May for Moonday Poetry at Village Books at 7.30pm (1049 Swarthmore Ave., Pacific Palisades), when I'll be reading with the wonderful Lois P Jones, and with the visual accompaniment of Frida's paintings.  My last event is at Bookshop Santa Cruz at 7.30pm on Tuesday 10 May with Rebecca Foust (1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz). 

US launch readings from What the Water Gave Me (Black Lawrence Press)

This April the US edition of What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo is being published by Black Lawrence Press. I'll be flying to New York on Wednesday to do four readings there (see below for details) and one upstate in the Catskill Mountains. The first week I'll be in a friend's place in Tribeca, spend Easter weekend at the Bright Hill Center at Treadwell, then stay near Riverside Drive. I'm really looking forward to returning to NY, but I'll also be taking my notebooks with me to work on my writing in between gigs – heaven!

On 1st May I fly to New Mexico to do a reading and workshop, and after that, LA for two more readings, and I'll end up at Santa Cruz on 10 May to do a return reading for Dennis Morton's Poetry Santa Cruz. I wish the California part wasn't so rushed. New Mexico will be an adventure as I've never been there before. It will be good to see old friends and make new ones, get acquainted with their poems. Please come if you are near any of these places and free, and do say hello. I'm very touched by all the dear friends who have organised these events for me and helped to make this tour happen.

Launch readings from What the Water Gave Me (Black Lawrence Press, April 2011)

Bowery Poetry Club, NYC  6pm Saturday 16 April 

Bertha Rogers and Pascale Petit 

308 Bowery, NYC

mail@bowerypoetry.com Phone: 212 614 0505 http://www.bowerypoetry.com 

Juniper, Brooklyn, 5.30pm Sunday 17 April

Margot Farrington & Pascale Petit

Juniper, 112 Berry Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY 11211

Bright Hill Center, Catskills, NY, 7pm Thursday 21 April

Djelloul Marbrook & Pascale Petit with illustrated reading 

94 Church St, PO Box 193, Treadwell, NY 13846

wordthur@stny.rr.com Phone: +1 607 829 5055 

http://www.brighthillpress.org

Community Bookstore, Brooklyn, 7pm Thursday 28 April

Sally Bliumis-Dunn, William Olsen & Pascale Petit

143 Seventh Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY 11215

events@communitybookstore.net  Phone: (718) 783 3075  

http://www.communitybookstore.net/events  

Cornelia St Café, NYC, 6pm Saturday 30 April 

Mark Doty, Melissa Stein & Pascale Petit

29 Cornelia Street, New York, NY 10014

info@corneliastreetcafe.com  Phone: (212) 989 9319

http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com  

Metta Theatre, Taos, New Mexico, Thursday 5 May

Veronica Golos, Andrea Watson & Pascale Petit reading for Cinco de Mayo

1470 Paseo Del Pueblo Sur, El Prado, New Mexico 87529 

Ruskin Art Club, Los Angeles 3pm Sunday 8 May

Mariano Zaro & Pascale Petit reading

800 S. Plymouth, Los Angeles, CA, 90005

Email: Ekduende@cox.net Phone: (323) 755-3530

Moonday Poetry at Village Books, LA, 7.30pm Monday 9 May

Lois P. Jones & Pascale Petit (illustrated reading)

1049 Swarthmore Ave., Pacific Palisades, California

pero@earthlink.net Phone: (310) 454 4063

http://www.moondaypoetry.com 

Poetry Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California, 7.30pm Tuesday 10 May

Rebecca Foust and Pascale Petit

Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz

info@poetrysantacruz.org Phone: (831) 464-8983

http://www.baymoon.com/~poetrysantacruz 

Poetry from Art at Tate Modern online anthology 2011

Last night was the final session in our Poetry from Art Shaping Poems spring course at Tate Modern and was a celebration reading. An online anthology of poems from this term is now up on the Tate website. This is a selection of twenty-three poems from many the participants wrote in the galleries during five classes, responding to Gabriel Orozco's Obit Series and Lintels, Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds, Do Ho Suh's Staircase III and Marcel Duchamp's The Large Glass. 

Many of the poets read their Sunflower Seeds poems last night, as a mark of solidarity, as we had so enjoyed working with Ai Weiwei's field of sunflower seeds in the Turbine Hall and we are very concerned that the Chinese authorities won't disclose his whereabouts since police detained him at Beijing airport on 3 April. Some new poems after Do Ho Suh's ethereal red staircase also emerged, even though we'd only worked with that installation the previous week and this turned out to be another favourite.