Research trip to Paris then Languedoc

This Irish pub Finnegans Wake is at 9 rue des Boulangers, about 3 minutes' walk from the Jardin des Plantes, in Paris's Quartier Latin. I have often walked past it down the steep, narrow, cobbled old street, when I used to visit my father and on my way to the Jardin, and chuckled at the pub's name. Later, my father told me that the first place he lived with my mother was in a two-room tiny apartment above it, and that they were happy there. By one of those strange coincidences, I came across a cheap studio room available for holiday rentals directly opposite where they used to live, in 10-12, on the opposite side of the narrow street, also on the first floor. So I've rented it and will stay there one week on 7th August, to research for my novel and sixth collection. 

This is only possible because the Society of Authors awarded me an Authors' Foundation grant. During a hectic teaching week since I heard the news, I have been making plans and bookings. After Paris, I will spend a week in a remote house at the top of a tiny hamlet in the Parc Naturel Régional du Haut-Languedoc, where I hope to do some more writing as well as exploring.

A Poem for Frida Kahlo's Birthday: Diego on My Mind

Frida Kahlo was born on 6th July 1907 and died in 1954 at the age of 47. Here is a poem from What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo to celebrate her birthday. She often painted herself with a portrait of Diego on her forehead, as in this painting Diego on My Mind.  Here, she is speaking to him and perhaps to herself as she used to feel very alone when he was out with his celebrity mistresses.

Diego on My Mind

Today I chose the ceremonial huipil

with a lace cobweb framing my face.

I have made a fine bed for you

with the white frills of my Tehuana headdress.

And on the counterpane of my brow
           just where the pillows would rest
I have painted your portrait.

All day you keep me company
as I work each gauze bud
into a stiff flower.

You whisper encouragements from the mirror,
nestling deeper into my forehead.

But remember, when you take
          María Félix
                    Paulette Goddard
                              or my sister

to your dirty yellow hotel room,
they lie on my eyes.

My nose smells them.
My mouth stays closed. Every love-cry

is a silk tendril
          quivering in my silent house.


Tomorrow I'm going to Cardiff to the Wales Book of the Year ceremony, particularly thrilled to have What the Water Gave Me shortlisted for this Welsh prize as I grew up there so it feels like my adopted country has adopted me. The UK edition is available from the Welsh publisher Seren and the US edition (just published) from Black Lawrence Press. I'll be giving an illustrated reading from the book at Pallant House gallery in Chichester, 6pm on Thursday 28 July, during their Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera exhibition which opens 9th July. Can't wait to see it!

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).