Essays
Interview on novel Daughters of the Labyrinth, with Jonathan Garfinkel, at the Berlin International Literature Festival, September 2021
For the Guardian
December 2018, ‘Turn to Poetry in Troubled Times’
July 2018, ‘My top ten elegies’
November 2016, ‘My Writing Day’
November 2015, ‘Only connect: poetry’s hidden power to break down barriers’
April 2014, ‘How to do justice to Christ’s Last Words’
November 2012, ‘Poetry workshop on the radio’
March 2012 ‘Poetry has a responsibility to look at the world’
January 2012, ‘Unstill Lives: Migrations at Tate Britain’
December 2012, ‘The poetry of science, the science of poetry’
On poetry, art and writing
‘In Conversation with Ilya Kaminsky,’ Granta, November 2020
Letter to a Young Poet: Writing Poems, A Personal ABC , ‘The Scores’, Edinburgh, Autumn 2019
On Editing and Redrafting a Poem, ‘King’s English’, March 2016
‘The Hand of Art: Czesław Miłosz – Form, Communication and Reality’ Inaugural Miłosz Lecture, given at the Miłosz Festival, Krakow, 2015
‘Kathe Kollwitz and The Grieving Parents’, Episode 10 in Radio 3 series, Minds at War, July 2014
Tennyson: Echo and Harmony, Music and Thought’, Oxford Handbook to Victorian Poetry, ed. M. Bevis. 2013, OUP, Chapter 19
‘Sylvia Plath: Idol, Victim, Pioneer,’ Independent January 2013
Art, Migration and Identity – The Guardian 2012
Housman Society lecture, ‘The Name and Nature of Poetry,’ Hay on Wye Festival, 2010
Bruegel’s Landscape with flight into Egypt – Courtauld Gallery 2009 (if you have Flash, you can hear this talk online at The Guardian)
‘The unforgivable truth’: on Israel’s 60th anniversary, Israeli author S. Yizhar’s novella Khirbet Khizeh Prospect Magazine, June 2008
The wishing stones, poetry in Mandalay – P.E.N. News 2003
Talking to Paul Muldoon – Independent 2002
Talking to Colm Toibin – Independent 1999
The Conjuror, The Parrot and The Past – International Writer’s Reunion, Lahti, Finland, Midsummer 1995
On nature
Watching for Elephants in South India, Irish Pages, 2021
Hummingbirds: Hovering on the Brink of Extinction, Daily Telegraph 2013
Don’t Let Good Zoos Go Extinct, Guardian 2013
ZSL London Zoo: Place of Respite and Renewal, New Statesman 2012
Migration of cells, birds, people – and the restlessness of life – The Scientist Magazine 2012
Aquilegia Nora Barlow – Hortus Gardening Magazine 2011
Against Tiger Farming, China Dialogue 2009
Why Celebrate Darwin’s 200th birthday? Independent 2008
The Tiger in Western Literature (Tigers: the Ultimate Guide, Two Brothers Press 2004, ed. V. Thapar)
Why On the Origin of Species Does Not Mention Tigers (Tigers: the Ultimate Guide, Two Brothers Press 2004, ed. V. Thapar)
Robin Hood & the Greenwood (British Greats, Cassell, 2003)
Raven the Wise, The Times, February 2003
Hare Hunted, Hare Tamed, Hare Now, The Times, October 2002
The Bloodflow Does not Stop: Leeches and Healing. The Times, September 2002
Sacred Poison, Vipers and Adders, The Times May 2002
Into the Woods: British Forests, Myth and Now, Independent Magazine 2000
Sadder than Owl-Songs: Britain and its Owls, The Times, February 2001
The Running of the Deer, Independent Saturday Magazine, December 2000
On Putting your Dog to Sleep Independent, December 1999
On myth and Greece
On music
‘Writing Beethoven Variations,’ Blog for London Review Bookshop, 12th February 2020
‘Beethoven’s Crisis of 1812.’ The Telegraph, 1st March 2020
‘How Strangely Fogo Burns: on a Madrigal by Thomas Weelkes,’ London Review of Books 2008
On Strauss’s Ariadne Auf Naxos, Glyndebourne Festival Opera Programme, 2006
Piu Docile Sono: Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, Glyndebourne Touring Company Programme 2006
‘There are No Male Groupies: Writing I’m A Man,’ Guardian, June 2000
‘On Crete and the Female Voice in Opera’, London Review of Books 1997
Poetry Reading at the Russian Samovar, New York 2019
Ruth reading from her migration book, We Are All from Somewhere Else, for The Migration Museum
Interviews
Reading poems: Luigi Kazzanigana, New York 2019
Discussion with Rabbi Nicholas de Lange about the fate of the Jews of Crete in the Holocaust, and a reading from Ruth’s novel Daughters of the Labyrinth, in Jewish Book Week London 2022
July 2021, Interview in Writers on Research Ruth Padel on mythology, restoration, and her new novel, Daughters of the Labyrinth
‘The King’s Poet’, Interview with King’s College London students, April 2021
Interview in Publishers Weekly* on Beethoven Variations, March 2021
Interview February 2021, ‘The King’s Poet’ King’s College London Poetry Society.
January 2021 Talk and Questions on Darwin, Beethoven, Life-Writing in Poetry, Vienna University, Austria.
Ruth Padel in conversation with Ilya Kaminsky, Granta, November 2020
Conversation at Jaipur, Hindustan Times, January 2019
Poetic Gems: Ruth Padel’s Tribute to her Mother, Camden New Journal, September 2018
‘An Inconsolable loss’, Mumbai Mirror, Times of India, July 2018
‘A Leaf out of Nature’s Book,’ Mumbai Guide News, July 2018
‘The tiger, the leopard and the elephant are sacred: what’s happening to them?’ Poet Ruth Padel at the Jaipur Festival, Scroll In. February 2017
Interview Podcast, Yale University Radio, September 2018
‘Unravelling Nature’s Tangles: Ruth Padel’s wildlife novel’, The Hindu, August 2010
‘Exploring the Jungle of Life,’ Hampstead & Highgate Express, March 2010
‘What do we know about Ruth Padel?’ The Scotsman Magazine, February 2010
‘The Evolution of Ruth Padel’: The Hindu, India, January 2010
‘Ruth Awakening’, Bangalore Time Out January 2010
‘Remembering Iris Murdoch,’ Sunday Times January 2010
‘A Life in Poetry’, Guardian, May 2009
‘Darwin’s Descendent,’ New York Times, April 2009
The Wolf Poetry Magazine, April 2009
The Glasgow Herald, February 2009
Irish Times, February 2009
Poetry International Web, 2009
On Education, The Independent, 2007
‘Personally Speaking: on Life, Poems and Tigers,’ Sunday Telegraph Magazine, November 2006
‘The Great-Great-Grand-Daughter of Charles Darwin’, Cambridge BBC
‘Rhyme and Reason’, Guardian, September 2006
‘Imagery of the Elsewhere’: 1976-2004. From The “Quote –UnQuote” Newsletter, vol. 14. No. 1 January 2005
Interview with Christina Patterson, July 2004, The Independent
‘In Mexico’: November 2004 at Mexican literary festival, Letras in Golfo
Skopje, 2004: interview with Margaret Graham. translated into Macedonian and published in the magazine Kulturen Zivot. February 2005
The Rialto, 1998
Talking at a conference on 'The Human in Relation to Animals', University of Silesia, Poland, 2019. Ruth is on the academic board of Zoophilologica: The Polish Journal for Animal Studies
Ruth in her back garden, July 2021
Credit (header image): Kalpesh Lathigra