A new collection from one of our most distinguished poets, painting a portrait in verse of two iconic female figures poised between history and legend, and unravelling the millennia of myth men have woven around them to explore the notion of girlhood itself.
Home is where you start from, but where is a swallow''s real home? And what does ''native'' mean if the English oak is an immigrant from Spain?In ninety richly varied poems and illuminating prose interludes, Ruth Padel''s original new book weaves science, myth, wild nature and human history to conjure a world created and sustained by migration. ''We''re all from somewhere else,'' she begins, tracing the millennia-old journeys of cells, trees, birds and beasts. Geese battle raging winds over Mount Everest, lemurs skim precipices in Madagascar and wildebeest, at the climax of their epic trek from Tanzania, brave a river filled with the largest, hungriest crocodiles in Africa. Human migration has shaped civilisation but today is one of the greatest challenges the world faces. In a series of incisive portraits, Padel turns to the struggles of human displacement - the Flight into Egypt, John James Audubon emigrating to America (feeding migrant birds en route), migrant workers in Mumbai and refugees labouring over a drastically changing planet - to show how the purpose of migration, for both humans and animals, is survival.Poignant, thought-provoking and utterly compelling, here is a magnificent tapestry of life on the move from the acclaimed author of Darwin: A Life in Poems.
From the author of the bestselling Darwin: A Life in Poems, Ruth Padel¿s new collection follows in the footsteps of one of the world¿s greatest composers, Beethoven, and investigates what his life and music might mean to us todayTwo hundred and fifty years since Beethoven was born, Ruth Padel goes on a personal search for him, retracing his steps through war-torn Europe of the early nineteenth century, delving into his music, letters, diaries and the conversation books he used when deaf, to uncover the man behind the legend. Her quest, exploring the life of one of the most creative artists who ever lived, turns more personal than she expects, taking her into the sources of her own creativity and musicality. From a deeply musical family herself, Padel¿s parents met through music, and she grew up playing chamber music on viola ¿ Beethoven¿s instrument as a child. Her father¿s grandfather, a concert pianist born on the German¿Danish border, studied in Leipzig with a friend of Beethoven before immigrating to the UK. The poems in this illuminating biography in verse conjure not only Beethoven¿s life and personality, but her own music-making and love both of the European music-making tradition to which her father¿s family belongs, and to the continent itself Europe.
Ruth Padel is a prizewinning poet, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and Professor of Poetry at King¿s College London. Her recent collections include Darwin: A Life in Poems, on her great-grandfather Charles Darwin; The Mara Crossing, on migration and immigration; Tidings: A Christmas Journey, and Emerald, a poignant elegy for her mother. She lives in London.
A collection of verse by the author of "Summer Show" and "Angel". Poems on British activity in Ireland through the ages punctuate a series of love poems.
'Making is our defence against the dark...'Through images of conflict and craftsmanship, Ruth Padel's powerful new poems address the Middle East, tracing a quest for harmony in the midst of destruction.
Three lectures on contemporary poetry by one of Britain's leading poets, Ruth Padel, who hit the headlines in 2009 when she was elected Oxford Professor of Poetry in controversial circumstances. The story of her election and resignation received international news coverage.
Includes poems that use multiple viewpoints - from Darwin himself, to his beloved wife Emma, and even, at one point, the orangutang at London Zoo - and illuminates the development of Darwin's thought, the drama of the discovery of evolution, and the fluctuating emotions of Darwin the husband, and the naturalist and the tender father.
* A brilliant and beautiful travel book about love, escape, and that most mesmerising of animals: the tiger. *'Lyrical and deeply impressive . . . a gripping and informative book' GUARDIAN
Her new book, invaluable for all who want to write as well as read poems, reveals the journey of thought, language and music within sixty more poems and also shows how poems fortify us on the journey of our lives, in a collection of essays written in elegant, accessible prose.
Ruth Padel explores Greek conceptions of human innerness and the way in which Greek tragedy shaped European notions of mind and self. Arguing that Greek poetic language connects images of consciousness, even male consciousness, with the darkness attributed to Hades and to women, Padel analyzes tragedy's biological and daemonological metaphors for what is within.
Beautiful, disturbing and a pleasure to read, Ruth Padel's new poems are her most ambitious yet, adding animal legend and zoological science to her glitteringly imaginative canvas.
Modern poetry is often represented as difficult or remote from most people's experience. This is a passionate attempt to introduce and examine all aspects of contemporary poetry and make it a familiar part of our lives.
Ruth Padel's passionate new collection is a woman's eye view of a love affair, with darker undercurrents of mortality and loss.
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