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Mama Amazonica by Pascale Petit Poetry Book Society Autumn Choice

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Poetry Book Society Choice

Mama Amazonica is set in a psychiatric ward and in the Amazon rainforest, an asylum for animals on the brink of extinction. It reveals the story of Pascale Petit’s mentally ill mother and the consequences of abuse. The mother transforms into a giant Victoria amazonica waterlily, and a bestiary of untameable creatures – a jaguar girl, a wolverine, a hummingbird – as she marries her rapist and gives birth to his children. From heartbreaking trauma, there emerge luxuriant and tender portraits of a woman battling for survival, in poems that echo the plight of others under duress, and of our companion species. Petit does not flinch from the violence but offers hope by celebrating the beauty of the wild, whether in the mind or the natural world.

Mama Amazonica is Pascale Petit's seventh collection, and her first from Bloodaxe. Four of Pascale Petit's previous six collections have been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. From the reviews:

'Pascale Petit’s Fauverie is astonishing, one of those books that breaks new ground in how to approach writing about the unwritable.' – Ruth Padel, London Review Bookshop Books of the Year

'The voice of Fauverie speaks both bravely and with bravura from the heart of its material. There is conspiracy in these poems and great beauty. They venture into the cellar of the past, summon up memory and conjure it into a firework display of metaphoric brilliance.' – Helen Dunmore, Chair of Judges, 2014 T.S. Eliot Prize

'Pascale’s poems are as fresh as paint, and make you look all over again at Frida and her brilliant and tragic life.' – Jackie Kay, The Observer (Books of the Year), on What the Water Gave Me: Poems After Frida Kahlo

'This is a wonderful and red-raw collection that captures pain, love and loss.' – The Independent, on The Zoo Father

'A brave and unsettling collection. These are psychological explorations of relationships and power struggles that take risks. – Robyn Bolam, Poetry Review, on The Huntress

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