Pascale Petit's Blog, page 9

Research trip to Paris then Languedoc

This Irish pub Finnegans Wake is at 9 rue des Boulangers, about 3 minutes' walk from the Jardins 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 Jardins, 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 Haut Cevennes National Park in the 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 huipilwith a lace cobweb framing my face.
I have made a fine bed for youwith 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). 


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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 11 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.


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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. 

Do Ho Suh's Staircase III and Duchamp split page exercise

 

  Staircase, Do Ho Suh

This is a a fascinating film about the Korean artist Do Ho Suh's Staircase III, just opened at Tate Modern, with Suh explaining how and why he made it. We'll be working underneath it tomorrow, for the fifth week of my Poetry from Art course, and I'm sure it will take me a while to fully absorb the strangeness of this red transparent nylon stairway hovering at ceiling height. It is an exact replica of the staircase in an apartment Suh once lived in, and he says how it took him six years to get to know his landlord well enough to take the precise measurements of the original stairs to recreate this 'memory'. 

But first I've asked the group to bring in their poems based on last week's session, when they responded to Marcel Duchamp's The Large Glass. I gave them a 'split page' exercise, with excerpts of Octavio Paz's description of the sculpture, which includes the bizarre notes Duchamp made to describe the Bride and her nine Bachelors, on the right hand side of each page. Everyone had to write their own love story or relationship story very fast on the left hand side. We then cut down the centre of the pages and jiggled the personal stories against notes from Duchamp's The Large Glass aka The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, and hunted for any resonant lines that materialised from the juxtaposition of the personal and the given phrases. I've already read some of the resulting poems as I'm now rush-editing our online anthology. I'm hoping the online publication will be published on the Tate website by the end of the course next week, if I can edit it by Wednesday and Tate can display it in time. As soon as it's up I'll post a link.