OVERVIEW
Ruth Padel is a prizewinning British poet, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London and currently Resident Poet at Christ's College Cambridge. Her most recent poetry collection, Darwin - A Life in Poems, is a biography in poems of her great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin. She also writes a wide range of non-fiction.
"Anyone who knows Padel's brilliant analytical anthologies of contemporary poetry will approach her technical verse-skills with respect. To tell Darwin's story, she displays a bewildering variety of stanza forms: terza rima, quatrains, syllabics, alexandrines, free verse and some marvellous sonnets." Richard Holmes, Guardian
“Since 1990, she has written, besides seven collections, a zoological quest, a book on the mythic roots of rock music and two highly-valued books about poetry. Her new book of poems is a publishing triumph. Like Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters, her Darwin - A Life in Poems is a legend explored in urgent short nuggets of verse," Peter Forbes, Independent
“It is one of her great strengths that she does not try and simplify the poems she analyses. ‘We, and our world, are complicated,’ she writes. ‘Shouldn’t our poetry be up to that?’” London Review Bookshop, Recommended Titles, on Ruth Padel's The Poem and the Journey
Read Guardian interview with Ruth, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/16/ruth-padel-oxford-poetry-professor. Read review of Darwin - A Life in Poems
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/14/darwin-life-poems-ruth-padel.
Read a RECENT POEM
Ruth's most recent book on reading poetry is The Poem and the Journey. “Nothing dumbed down or saccharine about her defence of poetry as a central force in life and culture. Her training as a classicist, and her learning, always lightly worn, bring convincing authority to her arguments. But she is never lofty, nor condescending, nor a show off." Irish Times
On this website, in BOOKS, you can read reviews of Ruth's books with a poem from each collection, and various ESSAYS. See also below, on recent collections and DARWIN - A LIFE IN POEMS.
PUBLICATIONS, BIOGRAPHY, AGENT, REVIEWS
|
|
