What the Water Gave Me: Poems After Frida Kahlo

Book excerpt: What the Water Gave Me contains fifty-two poems in the voice of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Some of the poems are close interpretations of Kahlo's work, while others are parallels or version homages where Petit draws on her experience as a visual artist to create alternative 'paintings' with words. More than just a verse biography, this collection explores how Kahlo transformed trauma into art after the artist's near-fatal bus accident. Petit, with her vivid style, her feel for nature and her understanding of pain and redemption, fully inhabits Kahlo's world. Each poem is an evocation of 'how art works on the pain spectrum', laced with splashes of ferocious colour. 'Their apparent shared sensibility makes the ventriloquism of these poems entirely unforced, and while Kahlo's voice is subtly distinguished from Petit's own, both women have a way of taking painful, private experiences and transmuting them, through imagery, into something that has the power of folklore. They capture the unsettling spirit of Frida Kahlo and her work perfectly.' Poetry London 'No other British poet I am aware of can match the powerful mythic imagination of Pascale Petit.' Les Murray Times Literary Supplement