Mama Amazonica

by Pascale Petit

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:

Genres: Poetry, Mental Health

112 pages, Paperback

Published September 28, 2017

About the author

Pascale Petit is a French-born British poet of French, Welsh and Indian heritage. Her debut novel is My Hummingbird Father, published by Salt in 2024. Her eighth collection of poetry, Tiger Girl, published by Bloodaxe in 2020, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection and for Wales Book of the Year. A poem from the book, 'Indian Paradise Flycatcher', won the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize. Her seventh collection Mama Amazonica, published by Bloodaxe in 2017, won the inaugural Laurel Prize 2020, and the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize 2018. It was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018. Her sixth collection, Fauverie, was her fourth to be shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. A portfolio of poems from the book won the 2013 Manchester Poetry Prize. Petit trained at the Royal College of Art and spent the first part of her life as a visual artist before deciding to concentrate on poetry. Three of her books were Books of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement, the Independent and the Observer. In 2004 the Poetry Book Society selected Petit as one of the Next Generation Poets. She is widely travelled, including in India, Mexico and the Venezuelan and Peruvian Amazon.

Website: http://www.pascalepetit.co.uk
Blog: http://www.pascalepetit.blogspot.com

'I am in love with this book! Haunting, grotesque, lush and strangely tender. A stunning debut novel, afraid of nothing and deeply poetic.' – Warsan Shire

'My Hummingbird Father shatters and heals, distils redemption out of a history of pain and abuse, and is one of the most affecting books you will read this year.' – Nilanjana Roy

'Rarely has the personal and environmental lament found such imaginative fusion, such outlandish and shocking expression that is at once spectacularly vigorous, intimate and heartbroken.’ - Daljit Nagra (judge for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2018)

‘Beautifully sad, the imagery inexhaustible, the sorrow and torment both tempered and sharpened by the relish for language and the ingenuity of the imagination.’ – Simon Armitage on Mama Amazonica

‘Radiant, and viscerally evocative… this image confirms the value of Petit’s work… in Mama Amazonica to make poems that are as radical as they are necessary – because they enable us to see in new ways.’ – Alice Hiller, The Poetry Review

'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

'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 Books of the Year, Observer

'a hard-hitting, palette-knife evocation of the effect that bus crash had on Kahlo's life and work, exploring the way trauma hurts an artist into creation' – Ruth Padel, The Guardian

Reviews

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good!

[Tracey Rosenlicht · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pascale Petit's writing is flowing with beautiful rich imagery of an enchanting love story between herself and her mother. I am absolutely awed by her writing style and anticipate reading more of her work in the future. My favorite poems were: Hummingbird, Anaconda, Extrapyramidal side effects,
Scarlet Macaws and Mama Oceana. The best one in my opinion was Extrapyramidal Side Effects. I love her style of incorporating mental illness into a cathartic masterpiece of emotions.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

Pascale is working with some of the most difficult personal histories an individual can go through & producing these poems as if they're the most natural thing to flow therefrom. They appear so effortless. a menagerie poet

[Flavia · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Mama Amazonica’ is an example of how the transformative power of art can buffer pain and trauma. Petit renews, rebirths and reconstructs her relationship with her mother into something ethereal, shimmering and ultimately breathtakingly beautiful and wild. One senses in this collection that Petit is seeking closure with the pain and abuse inflicted upon her during her childhood (in ‘The Jaguar’, her final poem in the collection, she writes, ‘no one had been here before,/I would not come again.’) through direct and flagrant exposition.

The collection, dedicated aptly to her mother, provides a series of alter egos, personifications and masks for her mother (which both frees and constrains): the Victoria Amazonica Waterlily, the Macaw, a Doe, the Jaguar (an animal that personifies her rapist and her daughter too), the giraffe, a Wolverine, Hummingbirds are just a handful of examples. (Petit herself is often personified as a fawn and her father as a stag or wolf.) There is a reversal of roles at play here; Pascale is mothering her mother, in this collection she is generously and gently birthing a mother she can understand and consequently love; delving deep to unearth her mother’s love which is always just out of reach.

The poems flicker between mother and daughter’s point of views; both of them fragile, vulnerable, direct, hurt, angry, both of them victims of the same situation. There are numerous references to water and mirrors; both as reflectors as well as painful weapons (“She swims though the star-splinters/of a mirror” ‘Jaguar Girl’). ‘My Amazonian Birth’ shows how mother and daughter’s journey and destiny are one, fusing into each other, internalised through literary construct; “There she lies, her roots upended like jangled nerves/they’ll diagnose as anxiety/that slides into pychosis.//Butterflies jink over her trunk/even as her flesh rots/and blossoms with fungi - /your broken mama/laid out like a long-table//for the rest of your life to feast on.”

The background to these poems vary from rather grey, grim, oppressive woods, forests and zoos to the exotic, vibrant, colourful, wild, fertile danger of the Amazonian jungle – which is also claustrophobic - (and yet very symbolically these places of wilderness are associated with loss/being lost/abandoned to oneself in nature, as well as being places of quest). These are violent poems (danger lurks around each comma or line break!); the grotesque and innocence entwine (like in the Garden of Eden – indeed there are snakes/pythons moving their stealthily way through this collection too), often raw with the primal need for survival.

The language literally throbs and Petit’s use of alliteration provides pace and music (there are many references to birdsong scattered amongst the poems – it is like being absorbed by the wildlife), there are so many colours flashing through this collection, “emerald-rust armour” “rose-copper gorget” “crystal blue”.

This collection also takes on the universal plight of the fragile and delicate balance of nature, as well as our psyche, whereby external threats are imminent, highways and bulldozers threatening to plough through the Amazon; the important question of mankind playing havoc with the world and the terrible consequences of this.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mother is vast as a rainforest and vulnerable as a single wren. This narrative collection tells the story of a mother who lives in a psychiatric ward, and has been through terrible pain and trauma. It also describes the trauma of the rainforest: species on the brink of extinction, the impact of deforestation, and the unspeakable mourning of the planet. Petit’s imagery is savage and lush, full of depictions of the fragile body and mind and the wildness of the jungle. The collection is urgent, bold and frightening. It’s a really impressive piece of work, that I would recommend, though I feel this collection could be tighter, and at times some themes became repetitive.

One of my favourite poems in the collection is Snow Leopard Woman, describing the beautiful, elusive snow leopard, and the intelligence and intricacy of the mother figure’s mind, even though she is not lucid. The poem ends

Where she hid was always minus thirty
but exposed to pure sun. She knew

traps were set below the snowline
so she climbed higher, up the icefield

towards the summit,
until there was no more up.

[Liz L · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was devastating.

I feel moved, like actually moved, like something moved inside me while I was reading it. Her description of the physicality of grief put into words something that I've never been able to:

"Grief squatting in your heart
like a strangler fig high in a branch-fork
that sends roots
down your chest and weaves a cage
around each hope -

your chest that, even as it's learning to
breathe, feels vines tighten."

I've never had poetry make me feel like this, or this much. This book was really stunningly beautiful and really painful. I am feeling so many feelings that I don't know what to do with myself. I'm in that state after you read a really amazing book where you need to say things but have nothing of much value to say, you're just spewing feelings all over the place incoherently. So enjoy my feeling-spewing, I guess.

You should read it, even though (especially because) it will hurt.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterly handling of difficult and complex subject matter. This book has stayed with me in the weeks after i read it. A sure mark of a great poetry collection. One I will definitely come back to again.

[Michelle McGrane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Day 21 Choice The Sealey Challenge 2022

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was astounded by the poems in Pascale Petit's collection Mama Amazonica: they are very disturbing, hinting at domestic violence towards the eponymous mother figure and sexual abuse, but they are nonetheless expressed in a highly elegant way, equating the mother and father figures with many kinds of tropical animals. For example, in 'When My Mother Became a Boa', the mother demonstrates her true strength by transforming herself into a snake while apparently languishing as a patient in a mental hospital, while elsewhere the father becomes a menacing creature such as 'El Hombre Caiman'.
I was reminded of the confessional poetry of Anne Sexton, but these poems are more polished works of art. It is not surprising that Pascale Petit also shows ecological concern for the rainforest and empathy for suffering animals like 'Zarafa the First Giraffe in France'. I recommend this book highly.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful

[Laura Bakker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely adored this poetry collection. The writing style was absolutely beautiful.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful

[Sophie McKeand · Rating 5 out of 5]

This dark collection reaches into my heart to squeeze and squeeze. These are epic, achingly beautiful
poems of love, abuse and self-betrayal that are, ultimately, a celebration of the glorious tenacity of
life in multitudinous shape-shifting form. That these multifaceted poems simultaneously expose, in
microscopic detail, the horrors of the dysfunctional family, while unmasking our patriarchal culture’s
violation of Mother Earth, is nothing short of genius, and is what lifts Mama Amazonica into a poetic
stratosphere of its own.

[J.S. Watts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shining, jewel-like poems and a haunting sense of loss and betrayal.

[Tolu · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enthusiastic five stars for this truly breathtaking book.

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a heartwrenching collection on maternal grief and trauma. The images are bound and plentiful, and the poet sticks to this theme like it is the only thing that matters, the only thing worth considering, or the only thing keeping the poet alive.

[Gabriel Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most striking thing about this collection is the way (for me) it commits to a series of metaphors and bravely follows them all the way. And then there’s the language, which delineates a teeming, explosively alive landscape in ways that consistently defy the usual cliches and tropes related to rainforest imagery. The subject matter - there were times when I felt I was trespassing, especially as a man, in experiencing some of these poems. Challenging, formally accomplished and uncomfortable. But since when was poetry supposed to be safe?

[Maggie Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn that's some cutting poetry that excavates trauma and reveals it for all to see. Petit speaks of her mentally ill mother, her struggles, their relationship, and all within a series of complex jungle metaphors. It's a haunting, crushing work. My one complaint is that some poems are a tad repetitive, but on the other hand, it just means you get more of this fantastic poetry.

[Miss Jools · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been trying to read more poetry this year and am working through what's available in the library.

This one was not for me, at all. But clearly I'm missing something as there are a lot of excellent reviews.

[Charlotte Wiltshire]

Two favorite poems from the collection: King Vultures and When My Mother Became a Boa

[peg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was the winner of the 2018 Ondaatje Prize, one of several prizes awarded by the Royal Society of Literature. The Ondaatje looks for the book of any genre that best evokes a “sense of place” and this is the first book of poetry that has ever won.
The setting here is the Amazon Rain Forest and the poems are filled with realistic imagery of the forest animals and plants. It also deals with the poet’s mother and her time in a mental institution which though well done, confused me at times. I don’t have much experience with poetry and am sure that more readings would help me see more in the book!

[VG · Rating 3 out of 5]

I greatly admire the imagery used in this collection - the life of the rainforest was an inspired choice to represent aspects of Pascale Petit’s life and family. At times, lost in the language, I had to remind myself of the horrific abuse and illness that each poem portrayed. Whilst not every poem worked as well for me, this is the sort of collection where more and more is revealed during subsequent re-reads.

[Philip Coulter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part of what I'm liking about Pascale Petit's writing at the minute is how it all seems to be part of the same ecosystem (for want of a better word).
What I've read so far - Tiger Girl, Mama Amazonica, My Hummingbird Father - it feels like a common experience behind it and a common set of metaphors found in nature, but with each book approaching that from a different angle.

[Sherri (Harte Reads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very raw poems about how it felt to grow up with a mentally-ill mother. The author uses a metaphorical jungle to give voice to the indescribable and lets you see the world through her eyes.

The subject matter makes this a hard read - but worth it.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poems in Pascale Petit's bold bestiary have stayed with me long after reading. A luminous and enchanting collection.

[Syreeta Muir · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of the most affecting and beautiful pieces of art I have read in a long while. The mood swings from protective and maternal in ‘Mama Amazonica’, where Petit sings lullabies to her “new born mama”, through the harrowing and bestial, as in “Something Blue” and “Bestiarum” ending in a kind of parting of fronds. ‘The Jaguar’ really put me in mind of The Beach or Apocalypse Now. It is cinematic, cathartic and I would say, spiritual. I keep reading and re-reading this book. It moves me on a very deep level and I know it will stay with me.