LISTEN TO POEMS, DISCUSSIONS, TALKS, PERFORMANCES:

July 2020: for Extinction Rebellion and XR Writers Rebel, Ruth reads a new sequence on water and climate change, ‘Twenty-Four Splashes of Denial’

July 2020, Bangalore International Centre: Ruth reads poems through Beethoven’s life, illustrated by musicians.

Part 1 Childhood, Arrival in Vienna, Worries about Deafness

Part 2 Artistic Triumph, Failure in Love

Part 3 ‘The Essence of Romanticism’: Anguish in a Time of War

Part 4 ‘The Immortal Beloved: Despair – and his Astonishing Late Style’

Podcast of Beethoven event, 2020, London Review Bookshop: Ruth with poets Anthony Anaxagorou and Ray Antrobus

November 2019, Ruth reads ‘Your Life as a Wave’, her poem in response to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 60, in the British Council Pakistan garden in Lahore.

Poetry Reading at 92Y Poetry Center, New York, 2019

Two poems (after speeches) at Inaugural Session of 2019 Jaipur Literary Festival.

Performance at Jaipur Festival 2019 with Ben Okri, Kaveh Akbar, Tishani Doshi and Zeina Beck, introduced by William Sieghart

Poetry Hour Jaipur 2019, with Kaveh Akbar, Akhil Katyal, Anupama Raju, Devesh Alakh and Makarand R. Paranjape, moderated by Satyajit Sarna

2019 Ruth talking about her life with radio presenter Gideon Coe, for Postcards from the Past

2017 talking about Charles Darwin at Heraklion Natural History Museum, Crete (mostly in Greek)

2016 First reading from Tidings, Serpentine Gallery, London

2016 Meet the Writer, radio interview with Monocle Magazine

January 2015 ‘We break the line to shape it.’ Reading from Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth in the 2014 T. S. Eliot Prize readings, introduced by Ian Macmillan: ‘She shows how in agony and redemption we reach for language, moving towards that fantastic last line; ‘Making is our defence against the dark.’

2015 Talking about Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth, in Venice

2014 Talking about her crucifixion poems (from Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth) and the Seven Last Words by Josef Haydn, with cellist David Waterman of the Endellion Quartet

2014 Reading ‘To Speak of Distance’ (from Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth) commissioned for Nowhere Island

2013 Reading ‘Time to Fly’ for New Networks for Nature.

2012 Talking about science and poetry with philosopher Mary Midgeley

2009 In conversation at Cambridge Darwin Festival 2009

‘Indian Princess Picks Lover Out from Gods’, Poetry Archive 1998

Poems for The Poetry Archive, 1998

Ruth’s poem ‘The Cello’, read on Poetry Monday

Photo by Mark Gerson, National Portrait Gallery, London

 

READ POEMS:

‘Moonlight Sonata’ from Beethoven Variations, Guardian 2020

‘Salon Noir‘, from Emerald, in Prac Crit, with Introduction and Interview by Declan Ryan, 2018

‘Clast’, from Emerald, in Poetry Review, and Ruth’s piece about the poem in Poetry Review’s ‘Behind the Poem’ series, 2018

‘The Electrification of Beth Shalom’, Guardian 2014

‘The Cello’, New Yorker, 2012

‘Making an Oud in Nazareth‘, New Yorker 2008

‘Sunrise over Bethlehem’, Financial Times, 2016, from Tidings

‘Icicles Round a Tree in Dumfriesshire’, Rembrandt Would Have Loved You, 1998

‘Writing to Onegin’ (after a scene from Pushkin), from Voodoo Shop, 2002

‘Tiger Drinking at Forest Pool’, from The Soho Leopard, 2004

‘Two Handled Jug’ & ‘Lone Ranger’ (later titled ‘Ripples on New Grass’). London Review of Books 2011

‘Writing a Postcard After a War’, London Review of Books 2009

‘The Sea Will Do Us All Good’, on Annie Darwin’s illness and death, from Darwin – A Life in Poems, 2009, London Review of Books 2009

‘Like Giving to a Blind Man Eyes’, ‘Plankton’, ‘Algae from the Arctic’, ‘The Miser’, and ‘On Not Thinking About Variation in Tortoise-Shell’, from Darwin – A Life in Poems’, Nature Magazine 2009

‘Revelation’ London Review of Books 2011

‘The Forest, The Corrupt Official, and a Bowl of Penis Soup’, London Review of Books 2004

‘Four Alligator Poems’ from The Soho Leopard, London Review of Books 2004

‘The Soho Leopard’, Scottish Poetry Library, 2004

‘Second Chance’ and ‘Gorey Bay 1933’ (from Emerald), Compass Magazine 2018

‘Mary’s Tapestry, Elizabeth’s Spinet’ (from The Soho Leopard), Poems About the V & A 2002

‘Extract from the Travels of Ibn Jubayr,’ and ‘Bladderwrack’, Asymptote 2011

‘Herodotus in Egypt Remembers Delos’, from Summer Snow 1990

‘Trial’, from Fusewire 1996