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Ruth Padel

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Template:Use dmy datesTemplate:Short description Template:Infobox academic Ruth Sophia Padel FRSL FZS (born 8 May 1946) is a British poet, novelist and non-fiction author.

LifeEdit

She studied Greek at Oxford, where she sang in Schola Cantorum of Oxford,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Bittersweet victory for Ruth Padel">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> wrote a PhD on ancient Greek poetry, and was a Research Fellow at Wadham College, which altered its Statutes for her to allow female Fellows.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She taught Greek at Oxford, Cambridge and Birkbeck College, University of London,<ref name="Contemporary Writers" /> taught opera in the Modern Greek Department at Princeton University, and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she sang in the Choir of Église Saint-Eustache, and at the British School of Archaeology in Athens, for which she helped excavate the Royal Road at Knossos.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 1984 she left academe to write, and published a poetry pamphlet and first collection.<ref name="unlimited">Ruth Padel profile: From teaching Greek to poetry's peak. Guardian Unlimited. 17 May 2009.</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Relative Values: Ruth Padel and Gwen Burnyeat, The Sunday Times, 8 March 2009</ref> She has served as Trustee for Zoological Society of London and conservation charity New Networks for Nature, Chair of UK Poetry Society and Professor of Poetry, King's College London<ref>Department of English, Kcl.ac.uk</ref><ref>"Professor Ruth Padel", King's People, King's College London.</ref>

FamilyEdit

Her parents were pychoanalyst John Hunter Padel and Hilda Barlow, daughter of Alan Barlow and Nora Barlow née Darwin, granddaughter of Charles Darwin, through whom Padel is Darwin's great-great-grandchild.<ref name="Ruth Padel - the multi-talented great-great-granddaughter of Darwin...">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Contemporary Writers">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="R4 DDI"/><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

WorkEdit

PoetryEdit

Padel has published thirteen poetry collections, won the UK National Poetry Competition,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and been shortlisted five times for the T S Eliot and other UK prizes. Major themes are music, science, nature and wildlife, painting, history, migration (animal and human), and women's place in the world, most recently exploring myths woven around girls, the links between girlhood and nature, and the misogyny girls face.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="auto3">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="auto2">Template:Cite news</ref> Her work often focusses on the journey as a "stepping stone to lyrical reflection on the human condition".<ref>Naffis-Sahely, André, "On Ruth Padel's 'Emerald' (Chatto & Windus, 2018)" Template:Webarchive, Ambit, 30 July 2018.</ref> Padel's 1996 to 2004 collections, mixed passionate love lyric with wide adventuring across the globe,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> but also challenged the supremacy of the male gaze at women and offered the female gaze instead.<ref>Maris, Kathryn, "Curating Slatterns: painting, poetry and the female gaze", Poetry London, 1 June 2018.</ref> Described as an exquisite image-maker and love poet of intense lyricism, delicate skill, deep resonance and a wild generous imagination,<ref name="independent.co.uk">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Patterson, Christina, "Ruth Padel: Tiger, tiger, burning bright", The Independent, 30 July 2004.</ref> she went on to elegiac poems exploring loss and bereavement. A meditation on the colour green, written after her mother's death, "guides us around the world in intense flights of geological and geographical fancy, excavating the truths and mysteries of grief".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>"Ruth Padel on ‘Clast’: loss, art and creativity", The Poetry Society.</ref><ref name=EmeraldPS>Westcott, Sarah, "Review: ‘Emerald’ by Ruth Padel", Poetry School.</ref><ref name="auto3"/><ref name="auto2"/> Stylistic hallmarks are said to be juxtaposition of the modern world with the ancient,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> technical skill and musicality;<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> wit, passion, lyrical intelligence, internal and half-rhyme, enjambement and unusual energy within and against the line,<ref name="poetryinternationalweb1"/><ref name="guardian1"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 'As if Wallace Stevens had hijacked Sylvia Plath with a dash of punk Sappho thrown in."<ref name="Little">Little Ref, "Triumph tastes trifle sour", The Oxford Times. 21 May 2009.</ref><ref name="poetryinternationalweb1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Quoted influences include Gerard Manley Hopkins and Greek choral lyric.<ref name="autogenerated2007">["Between the Lines: some notes on contemporary British poet-critics", Fiona Sampson, On Listening, Salt, 2007.]</ref> From 1998 to 2004, Padel's collections reflect themes of simultaneously written non-fiction: music (I’m a Man - Sex, Gods and Rock 'n' Roll); technical attention to the poetic line (52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, exemplified in poems such as 'Icicles Round a Tree in Dumfrieshire' her National Poetry Competition winner);<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and wildlife (Tigers in Red Weather).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Three later collections, Darwin - A Life in Poems and The Mara Crossing (now updated to We Are All From Somewhere Else 2020),<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> include prose;<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="auto3"/><ref name="auto2"/> Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth(2014), with its resonant last line, 'Making is our defence against the dark,'<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> has been called a meditation on conflict and history: especially of the Abrahamic religions.<ref name="independent.co.uk"/> Tidings - A Christmas Journey addressed homelessness in her local London borough.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Emerald (2018), a memoir and meditation on the poet's mother at her death, explored the alchemy of mourning and the renewing value of green.<ref name=EmeraldPS /> Her poetry biography of Beethoven, Beethoven Variations, was praised by the New York Times critic for taking him 'deeper into Beethoven than many biographies I’ve read, and her portrayal of Beethoven early on 'drifting into states that prefigured how deafness would increasingly isolate him.'<ref name="auto1">Template:Cite news</ref> Girl (2024) is 'A sensual exploration of female archetypes' and 'a spiritual quest through ancient mythology, mysticism, European fairytales and memory' that reminds us “there is always the question of power / and girl is a trajectory / of learning how to deal with it”.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

ThemesEdit

MigrationEdit

Padel's collaboration with Syrian artist Issam Kourbaj, on Syrian refugees arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos, was performed on the first day of the Venice Biennale 2019.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Tidings - A Christmas Journey (2016) dedicated to the Focus Homeless Outreach Team in Camden, North London,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> is described as an eloquent unsentimental narrative poem exploring homelessness and the meanings of Christmas today."The rough, apparently unmanageable contrast between child and tramp, hope and despair, gives the book its integrity.<ref name=Kellaway>Kellaway, Kate, "Tidings: A Christmas Journey by Ruth Padel – wise and eloquent", The Observer, 13 December 2016.</ref> Padel's 2014 collection Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth collects poems going back twelve years reflecting keen interest in the Middle East, from her prize-winning poem on Pieter Bruegel's "The Triumph of Death",<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> the 2002 Siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> to the title poem "Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth",<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> which she has stated came from hearing Le Trio Joubran.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> She has held dialogues with Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and written an Introduction to the posthumous poems of Mahmoud Darwish.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth is said to have a 'magnificent central section on the Crucifixion,' and be steeped in the Middle East, Judaism, Christianity and Islam: "Padel is a poetic Daniel Barenboim, determined to arrive at some approximation of Middle Eastern harmony."<ref name="auto">Template:Cite news</ref> Her innovative poems-and-prose volume The Mara Crossing (2012) revivified the prosimetrum, a medieval mix of poetry and prose,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It addresses animal and human migration.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="independent.co.uk1">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Davies">Template:Cite news</ref> and is described as a sweeping, experimental volume.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Migrants, cellular, animal or human, migrate to survive; human migration is inextricable from trade, invasion, colonization and empire.<ref name="Davies"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> "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?"<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Pne of her poems was used by the "Making It Home" project of the Refugee Survival Trust in Glasgow,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> which used poetry-based film-making to build bridges between groups of women of refugees and local women in Edinburgh.

Darwin and ScienceEdit

Engaged in relating poetry and science,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Padel has written on cell migration for The Scientist,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> was a judge for the 2012 Wellcome Trust Science Book Prize<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and the 2005 Aventis Science Prize for the Royal Society<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> has written poems on genetics and zoology,<ref name=WritingAllele>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and her book on migration is said to connect micro-level cell migration with macro-level social migration.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> An interest in combining poetry, science and religion is reflected in poems on genetics,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> debates on poetry and prayer with Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> lectures at the Royal College of Surgeons and a residency at the Environment Institute, University College London.<ref name="ucl.ac.uk">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Her poems on Charles Darwin (2009) employ Darwin's writings, letters and journals in an unusual form of biography, addressing his life, family and science.<ref name="Little" /><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> They were received as innovative work by scientists<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and by the literary community as a "new species" of biography in verse,<ref name="guardian1">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> whose emotional centre is the Darwins' marriage,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> shaken by divergent religious belief and the death of a daughter.<ref name="guardian1"/> The book's staging by the Mephisto Stage Company, Ireland, was described as intensifying the musicality of the verse and dramatic interplay between the scientific and the spiritual that permeates this collection.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Since Padel is a Darwin descendant, the book was also a family memoir.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Her preface illuminates the role of Padel’s grandmother, Nora Barlow, who in editing Darwin's Autobiography restored a passage in which Darwin said he did not see how anyone could wish the doctrine of hell to be true; this had been deleted by the first editor, Darwin's son Francis, at his mother's request. Padel's poems connected Darwin's loss of his mother as a child with his passion for collecting;<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and linked his early scientific writing with his taxidermy teacher in Edinburgh John Edmonstone, a freed slave from Guiana.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

MusicEdit

Since 2013, Padel has written and performed sequences of poems on composers in conjunction with the Endellion String Quartet: first on Josef Haydn's Seven Last Words,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> which formed the central crucifixion section in her 2014 collection Learning to make an Oud in Nazareth;<ref name="auto"/> subsequently on Beethoven's late quartets<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and Schubert's Death and the Maiden.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She was first Writer in Residence at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden<ref name=bbc.co.uk>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="ucl.ac.uk"/><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and is said to be a lifelong choral singer; she has presented Radio 3's programme "The Choir",<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> has broadcast a series of BBC Radio 3 opera interval talks and has stated that if she could choose any other career it would be that of opera director.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She has written on women's voices in opera and on a sixteenth-century madrigal for the London Review of Books,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and in a Radio 3 essay series, Writers as Musicians, she spoke about playing viola,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> an instrument whose "inner voice" illustrates her Newcastle Poetry Lectures Silent Letters of the Alphabet.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> For BBC Radio 4 she has written and presented features on writers, scientists and composers including Hans Christian Andersen,<ref name="Contemporary Writers"/> Edward Elgar, Charles Darwin and W.S. Gilbert.<ref name="Contemporary Writers"/> On Desert Island Discs,<ref name="R4 DDI">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> her choices included Beethoven String Quartet Opus 132, Verdi's Requiem, "Down by the Salley Gardens" sung by Kathleen Ferrier, "I’m Ready for You" sung by Muddy Waters, a Cretan folksong and "The Boys from Piraeus", from the film Never on Sunday.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Her luxury was a herd of deer.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 2020 she followed her 2009 poetry biography of Darwin with one of Beethoven, drawing on her musical childhood to create a poetry and prose mini-bio that 'tells the great composer’s life story more profoundly than most biographies.'<ref name="auto1"/> 'A biography in verse of the great composer and a passionate highly personal account of how one creative genius can feed, and feed on, another.'<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 'An approach to Beethoven by way of precisely figured emotion. Two lives drawn beneath the lens, the composer's and her own, interacting in ways that can be bold and, finally, breathtaking. On the Eroica, she is spectacular. The composer is "fire-dust, gold-flight /winching upwards into pure light" as he drives "forward into a new-world dawn /thrilling with dissonance, calling up wild-steel angels"'(Times Literary Supplement)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> During the pandemic she recorded four podcasts on Beethoven's life, illustrated by her poems, and music played by pianist Karl Lutchmayer, the Endellion Quartet, soprano Nina Kanter and the South Asian Symphony Orchestra, for the Bangalore International Centre.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Non-FictionEdit

Greek Scholarship, Greek Myth, Rock MusicEdit

Padel's non-fiction began with Princeton University Press studies of ancient Greek drama and the mind.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self explores the way Greek ideas of inwardness shaped European notions of the self. She used anthropology and psychoanalysis to support her thesis that male Greek culture spoke of the mind as mainly "female" and receptive rather than "male" and active.<ref name="didaskalia1"/> Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Madness in Greek and Other Tragedy investigates madness in tragedy from the Greeks to Shakespeare and the moderns, parsing different views of madness in different societies.<ref name="didaskalia1"/> She presented the tragic hero as embodiment of the human mind, 'which lives catastrophe, suffers damage and endures.'<ref name="didaskalia1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Her 2000 study I'm A Man: Sex, Gods and Rock 'n' Roll argued that rock music began as a "wishing well of masculinity", which drew on mythic connections between male sexuality, aggression, anxiety, misogyny and violence which derived from Ancient Greece. Padel has stated that she intended this to focus on women's voices but then felt she ought first to pick apart the maleness of rock music.<ref name="independent1">[1] Template:Dead linkTemplate:Cbignore</ref> The book had a mixed reception from male reviewers. Women reviewers described it as original, beautifully expressed, vivid, amusing and convincing;<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Rock writers Charles Shaar Murray and Casper Llewellyn Smith described it as "provocative and fascinating" and her analysis of rock's misogyny "dazzling".<ref name="independent1"/>

Nature, Environment, Wildlife, ConservationEdit

Padel is known for her poetry and prose on conservation, especially of tigers.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref> While serving as Trustee for the Zoological Society of London,<ref name="chinadialogue1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> she inaugurated an influential programme of ZSL Writers' Talks on Endangered Species to highlight the Zoological Society of London's conservation work.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and is an Ambassador for New Networks for Nature, an alliance of practitioners in different fields, artistic and scientific, who celebrate Britain's nature and wildlife.<ref name="newnetworksfornature1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Her account of wild tiger conservation,<ref name="independent1"/> drawing on her scientific background and Darwinian descent,<ref name="petit">[2] Template:Dead linkTemplate:Cbignore</ref> was valued internationally for quality of nature writing, insights on conservation, travel writing on little-known parts of the world such as Sumatra, Bhutan and Ussuriland, her ear for dialogue.<ref name="petit"/><ref name="deccanherald1"/><ref name="poststore">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and portrait of both the tiger and the field-zoologist.<ref name="poststore"/> More recently, she has recorded '24 Splashes of Denial' - poems on water and climate denial - for Writers Rebel,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and 'Hormones, Divinity and Forest', her 2021 Memorial Lecture for Jane Harrison for Newnham College, Cambridge, united her early classical scholarship with contemporary environmental anxiety about the crisis in nature.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

FictionEdit

Padel's first novel Where the Serpent Lives (2010) focussed on nature, and also wildlife crime, mainly in India but also in Britain.<ref name="deccanherald1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="spectator.co.uk">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="steviedavies">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It was praised for its vivid nature writing, intensely observed portrait of Indian forests and wildlife under threat, her innovative use of science and animal's eye viewpoint. 'Only Emily Brontë has embraced Padel’s radical and sympathetic inclusiveness of creaturely life.' 'She brings a poet’s intensity to her prose: objects, plants, and the wildlife that stalk her pages are all fiercely observed. Elephants and tigers under threat from poachers, forests felled for financial gain, corruption and uncaring officialdom result in habitats lost and species disappearing.'<ref name="steviedavies"/><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In India and UK, reviewers commented on the imaginative connections between nature, poetry and science.<ref name="silobreaker">[3] Template:Dead linkTemplate:Cbignore</ref> "She has done for the forests of Karnataka and Bengal what Amitav Ghosh did for the Sundarbans in The Hungry Tide."<ref name="deccanherald1"/><ref name="spectator.co.uk"/><ref name="steviedavies"/><ref name="silobreaker"/><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Her second novel, Daughters of the Labyrinth, set in London and Crete 2019-20, looks back to the Second World War and the little-known Holocaust of the Jews of Crete - where Padel has lived on and off since 1970.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It also tells the story of the last synagogue on Crete, Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania. 'It is rare to come across literary fiction as satisfying as this. I had no idea there was a Jewish community on Crete or what had happened to them. Padel skilfully shows the lives of Cretan Jews deeply embedded in the island’s life, and, tragically, how cut off they were from what was happening to Jews on the Greek mainland. The whiff of authenticity seeps from every page,'(Jewish Chronicle).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> ‘An immersive novel steeped in the history and folklore of Crete: transporting, historically informative story-telling’(Sunday Times).<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>‘Evocative, entrancing, a wonderfully rich and absorbing novel, delightful in its evocation of Crete and its many-layered history.’<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Criticism, TeachingEdit

From 1998 to 2001 she pioneered The Sunday Poem, a weekly column in London's Independent on Sunday in readings of contemporary poems she collected in her popular books 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem and The Poem and the Journey.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> As Chair of the UK Poetry Society 2004-2007, she presided over the establishment of poetry 'Stanzas' across the UK.<ref name="Contemporary Writers"/><ref>Poetry Society Template:Webarchive About us page</ref> In 2010 she chaired Judges for the Forward Poetry Prize,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> in 2011 delivered the Housman Lecture at the Hay Festival on "The Name and Nature of Poetry,"<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and inaugurated Radio 4's Poetry Workshop, a series of programmes on writing poetry in which she led workshops with poetry groups across the UK.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Her books on reading poetry and the column from which they grew influenced a decade of writing about poetry in the UK,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> followed by her Newcastle University 'Bloodaxe' Lectures on poetry's use of silence, Silent Letters of the Alphabet.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Her criticism is reported to employ close analysis, knowledge of Greek poetics, myth, metaphor, tone and rhyme; she is said to read with aural acuity, generosity and no polemic; her precision "does not obscure but builds the big picture", addressing the general reader but with "utmost attention to the page".<ref name="autogenerated2007"/><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>['The Journey or the Dance? On Syllables Belonging to Each Other', Poetry Review 96:2, Summer 2006, "Between the Lines: some notes on contemporary British poet-critics", Fiona Sampson, On Listening, Salt, 2007.]</ref>

She has written introductions to the works of Palestinian poets Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti and Ramsey Nasr, and British poets Walter Ralegh, Tennyson and Gerard Manley Hopkins.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> At the opening festival of the T S Eliot Festival at Little Gidding in 2006, 70 years after Eliot's visit there, Padel described the contrast between Eliot's memories of Little Gidding and his experience of The Blitz whilst writing the poem. "It reminded him there was still a place that had a sense of truth."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She returned to this moment in her foreword to the posthumous volume of Mahmoud Darwish, comparing his sense of the poet's role in a time of violence to that of Seamus Heaney in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and of Eliot during the London blitz.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

BooksEdit

FictionEdit

  • Where the Serpent Lives 2010
  • Daughters of the Labyrinth 2021

PoetryEdit

  • Alibi, The Many Press, 1985
  • Summer Snow, Hutchinson, 1990
  • Angel, Bloodaxe Books 1993
  • Fusewire, Chatto & Windus, 1996
  • Rembrandt Would Have Loved You, Shortlisted for T S Eliot Prize, Chatto & Windus, 1998
  • Voodoo Shop, Shortlisted for Whitbread Prize and T S Eliot Prize, Chatto & Windus, 2002
  • The Soho Leopard, Shortlisted for T S Eliot Prize, Chatto & Windus, 2004
  • Darwin – A Life in Poems, Shortlisted for Costa Prize, Chatto & Windus, A A Knopf, 2009
  • The Mara Crossing, Shortlisted for Ted Hughes Award, Chatto & Windus, 2012
  • Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth, Shortlisted for T S Eliot Prize, Chatto & Windus, 2014
  • Tidings – A Christmas Journey Chatto & Windus, 2016
  • Emerald, Chatto & Windus, 2018
  • Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life, Chatto & Windus and A. A. Knopf, 2020
  • We Are All from Somewhere Else (updated edition of The Mara Crossing) Vintage, 2020
  • Watershed - poems on water and climate denial, Hazel Press, 2023
  • Girl, Chatto & Windus, 2024, Poetry Book Society Special Commendation

Non-FictionEdit

  • In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self 1992
  • Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness 1995
  • I'm a Man: Sex, Gods and Rock 'n' Roll 2000
  • Tigers in Red Weather 2005

Criticism, editingEdit

  • 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem: How Reading Modern Poetry Can Change Your Life 2002
  • The Poem and the Journey 2006
  • Silent Letters of the Alphabet 2010
  • Walter Ralegh, Selected Poems 2010
  • Alfred Lord Tennyson (Folio Society, Introduction and Notes) 2007
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins (Folio Society, Introduction) 2011


Awards and appointmentsEdit

  • 1992 Wingate Scholarship<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 1993 Angel Poetry Book Society Recommendation
  • 1994 Arts Council Writers' Award for poetry collection Fusewire<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • 1996 First Prize, UK National Poetry Competition
  • 1996 Judge for T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
  • 1998 Rembrandt Would Have Loved You Poetry Book Society Choice, shortlisted for T. S. Eliot Prize<ref name="Contemporary Writers"/><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 1998 Appointed Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature
  • 1999 Judge for National Poetry Competition<ref name="poetrysociety.org.uk">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 2009 Judge for National Poetry Competition<ref name="poetrysociety.org.uk"/>
  • 2009 Leverhulme Artist in Residence Award<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 2010–2011 Writer in Residence at the Environment Institute, University College London<ref name="ucl.ac.uk"/>
  • 2010 Chair of Judges for Forward Poetry Prize<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 2010 Judge for Poetry for 2010 Costa Book Awards<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 2011 Inaugurated 'Poetry Workshop' on BBC Radio 4
  • 2012 The Mara Crossing nominated for London Poetry Awards and shortlisted for Ted Hughes Prize
  • 2012 Judge for the 2012 Wellcome Trust Science Book Prize.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 2013 Appointed to teach Creative Writing, King's College London<ref name="kcl.ac.uk">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 2014 First Writer in Residence, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
  • 2014 Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth shortlisted for T. S. Eliot Prize
  • 2015 Performed at Jaipur Literary Festival<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 2015 Read at International Literature Festival Berlin<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 2016 Judge for International Man Booker Prize<ref name="kcl.ac.uk"/>
  • 2016 Chair of Judges for T. S. Eliot Prize<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 2019 Inaugurated Jaipur Literary Festival with two poems, on Jaipur and on the world's first cell<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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Oxford Professor of PoetryEdit

In 2009 she became the first woman to be elected Oxford Professor of Poetry but a media storm broke out when photocopied pages from a university publication, detailing sexual harassment charges at Harvard and Boston universities against rival Derek Walcott, were sent anonymously to Oxford voters. Walcott withdrew his candidacy.<ref name="Bittersweet victory for Ruth Padel"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="nytimes.com">"Derek Walcott’s Acts of Sexual Harassment" (letter), To the Editor, The New York Times, 21 March 2017.</ref><ref name="enotes.com"/><ref name="Robert McCrum">Template:Cite news</ref> Padel denied connection with these pages but media commentators alleged her involvement; she resigned, saying she did not wish to do the job under suspicion.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Call for Oxford poet to resign after sex row">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Poetic justice as Padel steps down">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Revealed: Ruth Padel’s email that smeared her Nobel rival">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Bittersweet victory for Ruth Padel"/><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="londonersdiary.standard.co.uk">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Padel becomes Oxford Professor of Poetry">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Ruth Padel's win 'poisoned' by smear campaign">Template:Cite news</ref> Public comment attributed treatment of Padel to misogyny, and 'toxic media pursuing allegations against Walcott while denigrating Padel, justly held in high regard for her poetry and teaching, for mentioning these as a source of disquiet' and pointing out that she had mentioned information in the public domain, not rumours.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }},</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Robert McCrum"/><ref name="Bittersweet victory for Ruth Padel"/><ref name="enotes.com">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Hay festival diary: Ruth Padel talks about the poetry professorship scandal">Template:Cite news</ref> "Oxford missed out for the worst of reasons on an inspirational teacher; Walcott removed the decision from the electorate by his own choice; Padel should not have been made to pay for his decision to confront neither his accusers nor his past."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> On Newsnight Review,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> poet Simon Armitage, elected to the Chair in 2016, expressed regret at her resignation. "Ruth's a good person. I don't think she should have resigned, she would have been good."

ReferencesEdit

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External linksEdit

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