"A poet and scholar with a beautifully patient understanding, reminiscent of Ted Hughes, of how the natural world invests itself in our experience." Telegraph
Welcome to Ruth Padel's website
On Ruth's first novel, Where the Serpent Lives
"Magical. When the naturalist confronts a king cobra there has been little in literature to match it since D H Lawrence’s poem ‘The Snake’” Time Out Mumbai
"A novel you will not lightly forget. Only Emily Brontë has embraced Padel's radical and sympathetic inclusiveness of creaturely life." Guardian
“A nature lover’s delight - readable, compelling, acute, lyrical, with wonderfully pulse-quickening moments. She has done for the forests of Karnataka and Bengal what Amitav Ghosh did for the Sundarbans in The Hungry Tide” - India Today
"An intensely readeable parable of love and fear." - Daily Mail
On Ruth's poetry
"Poise, delicacy, technical venturesomeness, shining imagination and flights of exuberant imagery" Sunday Times
“Soaring rhythms, assured technique and a gift for modulating from conversational voice to richly textured singing line" Sunday Telegraph
Read a RECENT POEM
Ruth Padel is a prize-winning British poet and author, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London, celebrated especially for her nature writing in both poetry and prose. This year she is Chair of the Judges for the Forward Poetry Prize, a Judge for the Costa Poetry Prize, and has published three books: Silent Letters of the Alphabet (on poetry's use of silence), an Introduction to her selection of poems by Sir Walter Ralegh and his circle, and her debut novel, Where the Serpent Lives.
Ruth's Darwin - A Life in Poems, shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Prize, is a verse biography of her great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin. Her travel -conservation book Tigers in Red Weather, shortlisted in USA for the Kiriyama Prize, describes her journeys through Asian forests to learn first-hand about tiger conservation.
On Tigers in Red Weather
"There are few women writing non-fiction today with such a sophisticated understanding of language, nuanced approach to style, and willingness to engage with the big issues, personal and political." Guardian
"Occasionally you open a new book, read a few pages and just know: This is special." Washington Post
Other Non-Fiction
Ruth's non-fiction includes two studies in ancient Greek tragedy, and I'm A Man, Sex, Gods and Rock 'n' Roll , "Her brilliant wide-ranging book makes the connections between rock and myth absolutely plain” (Ian Sansone, London Review of Books). Ruth is also well-known has also written two popular books on reading modern poetry - The Poem and the Journey and 52 Ways of Looking at A Poem, featured in Mslexia's Literary Landmarks series Ground-Breaking Books in the History of Women's Literature. "A much-loved friend to be returned to again and again, for her wisdom, perception and unrestrained passion for poetry" (Kirkus UK).
BIOGRAPHY
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