Fauverie E-Book

Pascale Petit

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 48

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The Fauverie of this book is the big-cat house in the Jardin des Plantes zoo. But the word also evokes the Fauves, 'primitive' painters who used raw colour straight from the tube. Like The Zoo Father, Petit's acclaimed second collection, this volume has childhood trauma and a dying father at its heart, while Paris takes centre stage - a city savage as the Amazon, haunted by Aramis the black jaguar and a menagerie of wild animals. Transforming childhood horrors to ultimately mourn a lost parent, Fauverie redeems the darker forces of human nature while celebrating the ferocity and grace of endangered species. Five poems from Fauverie won the 2013 Manchester Poetry Prize and the manuscript in progress was awarded an Arts Council England Grant for the Arts. "No other British poet I am aware of can match the powerful mythic imagination of Pascale Petit." Les Murray, Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year "Pascale Petit creates forms and strategies that go beyond common knowledge of what a poem can or should do; her poetry never behaves itself or betrays itself; and contemporary British poetry is all the livelier for it." David Morley, Magma

Leseprobe

FAUVERIE

PASCALE PETIT

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

facebook.com/SerenBooks

twitter@SerenBooks

The right of Pascale Petit to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Pascale Petit 2014

ISBN: 978-1-78172-168-1

e-book: 978-1-78172-169-8

Kindle: 978-1-78172-170-4

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

Book Cover Art: Dragana Nikolic

Author photograph:Tobias Hill

Back cover photograph:

NOAO/AURA/NSF – original image

modified for creative purposes.

Author website: www.pascalepetit.co.uk

www.pascalepetit.blogspot.com

Printed in Bembo by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

Contents

Arrival of the Electric Eel

Black Jaguar at Twilight

Portrait of My Father as a Bird Fancier

Kissing a Jaguar

Sleeping Black Jaguar

Lungs (Father Speaks)

Sainte-Chapelle

Fridge

Bullet Ants

Portrait of My Father as Saint-Julien le Pauvre

Lungectomy

Pâté de Foie Gras

Your Letter is a Przewalski Horse

The World’s Smallest Deer

Self-Portrait with King Vultures

Le Sang des Bêtes

Grenelle Market I

Grenelle Market II

Blackbird

Cellar

Grenelle Market III

Lord of the Night

Grenelle Market IV

Blue-and-Gold Macaw Feather

North China Leopard (Tao)

My Father’s Wardrobe

Notre-Dame Father Speaks

Notre-Dame Father Speaks (Palm Sunday)

My Mother’s Salmon Skin Nightdress

Lapin à la Moutarde

Squirrel Monkey

Lion Man

How to Hand-Feed Sparrows (Instructions to My Father)

A Tray of Frozen Songbirds

Hand

Rue du Puits-qui-Parle

My Father’s Mirror

Ortolan

Philippe-Auguste’s Wall, Rue Clovis

Portrait of My Father as a North China Leopard

My Father’s City

Harpy Eagle Father

Lion

Resurrection

Your Dressing Gown is a River

Effigy

Clouded Leopard

Black Jaguar with Quai Saint-Bernard

Black Jaguar with Goat

Caracal

North China Leopard (Leila)

Black Jaguar at Twilight

The Horsehead Fiddle (Mongolian Myth)

Emmanuel

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Arrival of the Electric Eel

Each time I open it I feel like a Matsés girl

handed a parcel at the end of her seclusion,

my face pierced by jaguar whiskers

to make me brave.

I know what’s inside – that I must

unwrap the envelope of leaves

until all that’s left

squirming in my hands

is an electric eel.

The positive head, the negative tail,

the rows of batteries under the skin,

the small, almost blind eyes.

The day turns murky again,

I’m wading through the bottom of my life

when my father’s letter arrives. And keeps on arriving.

The charged fibres of paper

against my shaking fingers,

the thin electroplates of ink.

The messenger drags me up to the surface

to gulp air then flicks its anal fin.

Never before has a letter been so heavy,

growing to two metres in my room,

the address, the phone number, then the numbness –

I know you must be surprised, it says,

but I will die soon and want to make contact.

Black Jaguar at Twilight

He seems to have sucked

the whole Amazon

into his being, the storm-

clouds of rosettes

through a bronze dusk.

I’ve been there, sheltered

under the buttress

of a giant, felt

the air around me –

its muscles tense,

stalking me

as I stumbled

through dense fur,

my father’s tongue

wet on my neck

as I fell into a gulch,

the blackout of his mouth.

And when I woke

I thought I heard

the jungle cough – this jungle,

the jaguar safe

behind bars. I lean over

and touch his cage – his glance

grazes me like an arrow.

Portrait of My Father as a Bird Fancier

The man with an aviary – the one

sparrows follow as he shuffles along,

helping him with caresses of their wings.

The one a nightingale serenades

just because he’s in pain – that’s

the father I choose, not the man

who thrusts red-hot prongs in their eyes

so their songs will carry for miles.

He is not the kind to tie their wings. No.

My father’s nightingale will pine for him

when he dies. My Papa

with a warbler on each shoulder

and a linnet on his head, the loner

even crows chatter to. He does not

cut the nerves of their tongues

so they will sing sweeter.

When my father’s bullfinch has a bad dream

only his voice can calm it.

The hoopoe warms itself on his stove.

It leaps in the air when he wakes

and rubs its breast against his face.

It can tell what mood he’s in at a glance

and will raise its crest in alarm

if Papa struggles for breath.

My father’s chaffinch can bring him

all the birdsong from the wood.

He does not glue its eyelids

shut so it will sing night and day.

He does not make canaries trill so loud

that the tiny branches of their lungs

burst. I am sure of this, though I am just

an ounce in the fist of his hand.

Kissing a Jaguar

That first meeting was like I’d had

Virola snuff blown up my nostrils.

Alone with my father

in a room he called ‘la jungle’

bubbles of champagne

exploded like thunder, my head

split by lightning.

When I got back to my hotel I retched all night.

The next morning I floated along the pavements of Paris

and found myself in the zoo.

All paths lead to the Fauverie

and this is where I come, again and again,

to where Aramis has stars for a coat

and his mouth is a sky-gate

the jaguar shaman climbs through.

And I keep going back to that first meal,