The Zoo Father

Second collection from the poet of powerful emotions and vivid imagery, The Zoo Father underlines the author''s reputation as a questing poet capable of outstanding imagistic flourishes and surprising associations. This extraordinary and powerful volume is comprised of two sections, the first about with the poet''s relationship with her father, the second with her mother. Section One is heavily imbued with imagery of the poet''s travels in South America and her researches in the cultures and ecology of the Venezuelan. Pain, anger, bewilderment are refracted through a rich, often sensual imagery of fauna, hallucinatory drugs and tribal beliefs. This gives the poems their originality, and prevents subject matter of childhood abandonment and abuse becoming too harrowing. The imagery adapted from shamanistic beliefs is especially memorable. Section Two is set in southern France, in an almost equally exotic location of vineyards and ''dinosaur plateaux''. It concerns the poet''s family holidays in "the vineyard" and her rediscovery and subsequent repossession of that place.
Once again, the poems delineate a primary relationship (with the poet''s mother), with the lushness of the imagery putting into surprising context the development of that relationship.

Shortlisted for the 2001 T.S. Eliot Prize, this unique collection centres on a daughter''s fraught relationship with her dying father, a man whose legacy to her was violence and abandonment.

Rich in the imagery of the Amazonian jungle (fire ants, shaman masks, hummingbirds, shrunken heads, jaguars) these poems at once ward off and redeem the father through myriad transformations. In contrast, ''The Vineyard'' series is inspired by the author''s mother and by "... the last piece of wild land, / left to me by accident, by dream" - a family vineyard in France. These intense, vibrant and fiercely felt poems are sure to evoke strong responses in readers.

Refusing oblique irony, quotidian props or any pretensions to urban hipness, Pascale Petit takes considerable risks. With fierce courage, she not only survives the brutal facts of her past, but transmutes them, through vivid imagination, into art. The Zoo Father is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and a poem from the book was also shortlisted for a Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.

Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales and lives in London. In 2004 the Poetry Book Society and Arts Council named her as one of the Next Generation Poets. She has published four full-length poetry collections. Her latest is The Treekeepers Tale. The Zoo Father (2001) and The Huntress (2005) were both shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and were both Books of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement. the book was also shortlisted for a Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Pascale Petit trained as a sculptor at the Royal College of Art and tutors for Tate Modern, The Poetry School and Oxford University. She is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Middlesex University.