Ruth Sophia Padel

FRSL The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 600 Fellows, elec ...

FZS is a British poet, novelist and non-fiction author, known for her poetic explorations of migration, both animal and human, and her involvement with classical music, wildlife conservation and Greece, ancient and modern. She is Trustee for conservation charity ''New Networks for Nature'', has served on the board of the

Zoological Society of London The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is a charity devoted to the worldwide conservation of animals and their habitats. It was founded in 1826. Since 1828, it has maintained the London Zoo, and since 1931 Whipsnade Park. History On 29 ...

and was Professor of Poetry at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...

from 2013 to 2022.

Biography

Padel is daughter of psychoanalyst

John Hunter Padel John Hunter Padel (3 May 1913 – 24 October 1999) was a British psychoanalyst and classicist. He was born in Carlisle, where his father Charles Padel was headmaster of Carlisle Grammar School. His mother was Mòrag (née Hunter), 3rd daughte ...

and Hilda Barlow, daughter of Sir

Alan Barlow Sir James Alan Noel Barlow, 2nd Baronet (25 December 1881 – 28 February 1968) was a British civil servant and collector of Islamic and Chinese art. He was Principal Private Secretary to Ramsay MacDonald, 1933–1934, and later Under-secretar ...

and

Nora Barlow Emma Nora Barlow, Lady Barlow (née Darwin; 22 December 1885 – 29 May 1989), was a British botanist and geneticist. The granddaughter of the British naturalist Charles Darwin, Barlow began her academic career studying botany at Cambridge unde ...

née Darwin, granddaughter of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...

, through whom Padel is Darwin's great-great-grandchild. Her brother is historian

Oliver Padel Oliver James Padel (born 31 October 1948 in St Pancras, London, England) is an English medievalist and toponymist specializing in Welsh and Cornish studies. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, an ...

; cousins include prison reformer Una Padel, sculptor

Phyllida Barlow Dame Phyllida Barlow (born 4 April 1944) is a British artist. She studied at Chelsea College of Art (1960–63) and the Slade School of Art (1963–66). She joined the staff of the Slade in the late 1960s and taught there for more than forty y ...

, mathematician Martin T. Barlow and biographer

Randal Keynes Randal Hume Keynes, OBE, FLS ( ; born 29 July 1948) is a British conservationist, author, and great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. Family background Keynes was born in Cambridge, England. He is the son of the Hon. Anne Pinsent (née Adri ...

; her uncle is

Horace Barlow Horace Basil Barlow FRS (8 December 1921 – 5 July 2020) was a British vision scientist. Life Barlow was the son of the civil servant Sir Alan Barlow and his wife Lady Nora (granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin). He was educated ...

. Padel was born in

Wimpole Street Wimpole Street is a street in Marylebone, central London. Located in the City of Westminster, it is associated with private medical practice and medical associations. No. 1 Wimpole Street is an example of Edwardian baroque architecture, comple ...

where her great-grandfather Sir Thomas Barlow practised medicine. She attended

North London Collegiate School North London Collegiate School (NLCS) is an independent school with a day school for girls in England. Founded in Camden Town, it is now located in Edgware, in the London Borough of Harrow. Associate schools are located in South Korea, Jeju I ...

, studied Classics at Lady Margaret Hall Oxford where she sang in Schola Cantorum of Oxford, wrote a PhD on Greek poetry, and as the first Bowra Research Fellow at

Wadham College Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road. Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy W ...

Oxford, which altered its Statutes for her to accommodate female Fellows, was among the first women to become Fellows of formerly all-male Oxford colleges. She taught Greek at Oxford and Birkbeck, University of London, taught opera in the Modern Greek Department at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

, has lived extensively in Greece, and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she sang in the Choir of Église Saint-Eustache, Paris. Her publishing career began in 1985, while she was teaching Greek at Birkbeck College, with a poetry pamphlet. She then left academe to support herself by reviewing and publish her first collection (1990).''Ruth Padel profile: From teaching Greek to poetry's peak.'' Guardian Unlimited. 17 May 2009. From 1984 to 2000 she was married to philosopher

Myles Burnyeat Myles Fredric Burnyeat (1 January 1939 – 20 September 2019) was an English scholar of ancient philosophy. Early life and education Myles Burnyeat was born on 1 January 1939 to Peter James Anthony Burnyeat and Cynthia Cherry Warburg. He rece ...

. From 2014 to 2022 she was Professor of Poetry at King's College London.

Books

Fiction

*''Where the Serpent Lives'' 2010 *''Daughters of the Labyrinth'' 2021

Poetry

*''Alibi'' 1985 *''Summer Snow'' 1990 *''Angel'' 1993 *''Fusewire'' 1996 *''Rembrandt Would Have Loved You,'' Shortlisted for T S Eliot Prize, 1998 *''Voodoo Shop'', Shortlisted for Whitbread Prize and T S Eliot Prize, 2002 *''The Soho Leopard'', Shortlisted for T S Eliot Prize, 2004 *''Darwin – A Life in Poems'', Shortlisted for Costa Prize, 2009 *''The Mara Crossing'', Shortlisted for Ted Hughes Award, 2012 *''Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth'', Shortlisted for T S Eliot Prize, 2014 *''Tidings – A Christmas Journey'' 2016 *''Emerald'' 2018 *''Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life'' 2020

Non-Fiction

*''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, editing

*''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

Fiction

Padel's first novel ''Where the Serpent Lives''(2010) focussed on nature, and also wildlife crime, mainly in India but also in Britain. 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.' In

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

and UK, reviewers commented on the imaginative connections between nature, poetry and science.
"She has done for the forests of Karnataka and Bengal what

Amitav Ghosh Amitav Ghosh (born 11 July 1956)Ghosh, Amitav
, ''

did for the Sundarbans in ''The Hungry Tide''." Her second novel, ''Daughters of the Labyrinth'', set in London and

Crete Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, ...

2019-20, looks back to the Second World War and the little-known

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

of the Jews of Crete - where Padel has lived on and off since 1970. It also tells the story of the last synagogue on Crete, Etz Hayyim Synagogue in

Chania Chania ( el, Χανιά ; vec, La Canea), also spelled Hania, is a city in Greece and the capital of the Chania regional unit. It lies along the north west coast of the island Crete, about west of Rethymno and west of Heraklion. The muni ...

. 'It is rare to come across literary fiction as satisfying as this. I had no idea there was a Jewish community on

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''). ‘An immersive novel steeped in the history and folklore of Crete: transporting, historically informative story-telling’(''Sunday Times'').‘Evocative, entrancing, a wonderfully rich and absorbing novel, delightful in its evocation of Crete and its many-layered history.’

Poetry

Padel has published twelve poetry collections, won the UK National Poetry Competition, and been shortlisted five times for the T S Eliot and other UK prizes. Her major themes are music, science, nature, painting, history, migration and wildlife conservation; and her work takes the idea of "the journey" as a "stepping stone to lyrical reflection on the human condition". She has been described as an exquisite image-maker of intense lyricism, delicate skill, rich imagery, deep resonance and a wild generous imagination. She was described as "the sexiest voice in British poetry" for her love poems in 1998; her elegiac poems explore loss and bereavement,Westcott, Sarah
"Review: ‘Emerald’ by Ruth Padel"
Poetry School. Stylistic hallmarks are said to be juxtaposition of the modern world with the ancient, technical skill and musicality; wit, passion, lyrical intelligence, internal and half-rhyme, enjambement and unusual energy within and against the line, 'As if Wallace Stevens had hijacked Sylvia Plath with a dash of punk Sappho thrown in."Little Ref, "Triumph tastes trifle sour", ''The Oxford Times''. 21 May 2009. Quoted influences include Gerard Manley Hopkins and Greek choral lyric. 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); and wildlife (''Tigers in Red Weather''). Three later collections, ''Darwin - A Life in Poems'' and ''The Mara Crossing'' (now updated to ''We Are All From Somewhere Else'' 2020), include prose; ''Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth''(2014), with its resonant last line, 'Making is our defence against the dark,' has been called a meditation on conflict and history: especially of the Abrahamic religions. ''Tidings - A Christmas Journey'' addressed homelessness in her local London borough. ''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. Her poetry biography of Beethoven, ''Beethoven Variations'', was praised by the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

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.'

Migration

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. ''Tidings - A Christmas Journey'' (2016) dedicated to the Focus Homeless Outreach Team in Camden, North London, 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.Kellaway, Kate
"Tidings: A Christmas Journey by Ruth Padel – wise and eloquent"
''The Observer'', 13 December 2016. 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 ''The Triumph of Death'' is an oil panel painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted c. 1562. It has been in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1827. Description The painting shows a panorama of an army of skeletons wreaking havoc across a bl ...

", the 2002 Siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, to the title poem "Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth", which she has stated came from hearing

Le Trio Joubran Le Trio Joubran ( ar, الثلاثي جبران) is an oud trio playing traditional Palestinian music. The trio consists of the brothers Samir, Wissam, and Adnan Joubran, originally from the city of Nazareth, now dividing their time between ...

. She has held dialogues with Palestinian poet

Mourid Barghouti Mourid Barghouti ( ar, مريد البرغوثي, ; 8 July 1944 – 14 February 2021) was a Palestinian poet and writer. Biography Barghouti was born in Deir Ghassana, near Ramallah, on the West Bank, in 8 July 1944. He studied English litera ...

, and written an Introduction to the posthumous poems of

Mahmoud Darwish Mahmoud Darwish ( ar, محمود درويش, Maḥmūd Darwīsh, 13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008) was a Palestinian poet and author who was regarded as the Palestinian national poet. He won numerous awards for his works. Darwish used Palestine ...

. ''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." Her innovative poems-and-prose volume ''The Mara Crossing'' (2012) revivified the

prosimetrum A ''prosimetrum'' (plural ''prosimetra'') is a poetic composition which exploits a combination of prose (''prosa'') and verse (''metrum'');Braund, Susanna. Prosimetrum. In Cancil, Hubert, and Helmuth Schneider, eds. ''Brill's New Pauly''. Brill O ...

, a medieval mix of poetry and prose, It addresses

animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and go through an ontogenetic stage ...

and

human migration Human migration is the movement of people from one place to another with intentions of settling, permanently or temporarily, at a new location (geographic region). The movement often occurs over long distances and from one country to another (ex ...

. and is described as a sweeping, experimental volume. Migrants, cellular, animal or human, migrate to survive; human migration is inextricable from trade, invasion, colonization and empire. "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?" Pne of her poems was used by the "Making It Home" project of the Refugee Survival Trust in Glasgow, which used poetry-based film-making to build bridges between groups of women of refugees and local women in Edinburgh.

Darwin and Science

Engaged in relating poetry and science, Padel has written on cell migration for ''The Scientist'', was a judge for the 2012 Wellcome Trust Science Book Prize and the 2005 Aventis Science Prize for the Royal Society has written poems on genetics and zoology, and her book on migration is said to connect micro-level cell migration with macro-level social migration. An interest in combining poetry, science and religion is reflected in poems on

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar work ...

, debates on poetry and prayer with

Rowan Williams Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, (born 14 June 1950) is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012. Previously the Bish ...

Archbishop of Canterbury The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Just ...

lectures at the

Royal College of Surgeons The Royal College of Surgeons is an ancient college (a form of corporation) established in England to regulate the activity of surgeons. Derivative organisations survive in many present and former members of the Commonwealth. These organisations ...

and a residency at the Environment Institute, University College London. Her poems on

(2009) employ Darwin's writings, letters and journals in an unusual form of biography, addressing his life, family and science. They were received as innovative work by scientists and by the literary community as a "new species" of biography in verse, whose emotional centre is the Darwins' marriage, shaken by divergent religious belief and the death of a daughter. 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. Since Padel is a Darwin descendant, the book was also a family memoir. Her preface illuminates the role of Padel’s grandmother,

, 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 Francis may refer to: People *Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State and Bishop of Rome * Francis (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters * Francis (surname) Places *Rural ...

, at his mother's request. Padel's poems connected Darwin's loss of his mother as a child with his passion for collecting; and linked his early scientific writing with his taxidermy teacher in Edinburgh John Edmonstone, a freed slave from Guiana.

Music

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'', which formed the central crucifixion section in her 2014 collection ''Learning to make an Oud in Nazareth''; subsequently on Beethoven's late quartets and Schubert's ''Death and the Maiden''. She was first Writer in Residence at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and is said to be a lifelong choral singer; she has presented Radio 3's programme "The Choir", has broadcast a series of

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also featuring. The sta ...

opera interval talks and has stated that if she could choose any other career it would be that of

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

director. She has written on women's voices in opera and on a sixteenth-century

madrigal A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th c.) and early Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number ...

for the

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review o ...

, and in a Radio 3 essay series, ''Writers as Musicians'', she spoke about playing

viola ; german: Bratsche , alt=Viola shown from the front and the side , image=Bratsche.jpg , caption= , background=string , hornbostel_sachs=321.322-71 , hornbostel_sachs_desc=Composite chordophone sounded by a bow , range= , related= *Violin family ...

, an instrument whose "inner voice" illustrates her Newcastle Poetry Lectures ''Silent Letters of the Alphabet''. For

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's ...

she has written and presented features on writers, scientists and composers including

Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales. Andersen's fairy tales, consist ...

Edward Elgar Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, (; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestr ...

and

W.S. Gilbert Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas. The most fam ...

. On ''

Desert Island Discs ''Desert Island Discs'' is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29 January 1942. Each week a guest, called a "castaway" during the programme, is asked to choose eight recordings (usua ...

'', her choices included Beethoven String Quartet Opus 132, Verdi's Requiem, " Down by the Salley Gardens" sung by

Kathleen Ferrier Kathleen Mary Ferrier, CBE (22 April 19128 October 1953) was an English contralto singer who achieved an international reputation as a stage, concert and recording artist, with a repertoire extending from folksong and popular ballads to the cl ...

, "I’m Ready for You" sung by

Muddy Waters McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 April 30, 1983), known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer and musician who was an important figure in the post- war blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicag ...

, a Cretan folksong and "The Boys from Piraeus", from the film ''

Never on Sunday ''Never on Sunday'' ( el, Ποτέ την Κυριακή, ) is a 1960 Greek romantic comedy film starring, written by and directed by Jules Dassin. The film tells the story of Ilya, a Greek prostitute (Melina Mercouri), and Homer (Dassin), an Am ...

''. Her luxury was a herd of deer. 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.' '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.' '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 ''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp. History The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to '' The Times'' but became a separate publication ...

) 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.

Journeying

Padel's 1996 to 2004 collections, ''Fusewire, Rembrandt Would Have Loved You, Voodoo Shop'' and ''The Soho Leopard'', mixed passionate love lyric with wide adventuring across the globe, but also challenged the supremacy of the male gaze at women. ''Rembrandt Would Have Loved You'' offered the female gaze: "The poems tangle with the shadowy undergrowth of political correctness, feminism and sex." ''Emerald'', 2018, a meditation on the consoling nature of green, written after the death of Padel's mother, "guides us around the world in intense flights of geological and geographical fancy anchored to the bedrock of real emotion"; "a wild and generous imagination, a writer at the peak of her powers, a rich excavation of the truths and mysteries found in grief", and also explores the relation between loss, love and creativity.

Non-Fiction

Greek Scholarship, Greek mythology - and Rock Music

Padel's non-fiction began with

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...

studies of ancient Greek drama and the mind. ''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 Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

and

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...

to support her thesis that male Greek culture spoke of the mind as mainly "female" and receptive rather than "male" and active. ''Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Madness in Greek and Other Tragedy'' investigates madness in tragedy from the Greeks to

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

and the moderns, parsing different views of madness in different societies. She presented the tragic hero as embodiment of the human mind, 'which lives catastrophe, suffers damage and endures.' Her 2000 study ''I'm A Man: Sex, Gods and Rock 'n' Roll'' argued that

rock music Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States a ...

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 Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cu ...

. 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.
The book had a mixed reception from male reviewers. Women reviewers described it as original, beautifully expressed, vivid, amusing and convincing; Rock writers

Charles Shaar Murray Charles Shaar Murray (born Charles Maximillian Murray; 27 June 1951) is an English music journalist and broadcaster. He has worked on the ''New Musical Express'' and many other magazines and newspapers, and has been interviewed for a number of ...

and Casper Llewellyn Smith described it as "provocative and fascinating" and her analysis of rock's

misogyny Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women. It is a form of sexism that is used to keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the societal roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practice ...

"dazzling".

Nature, Environment, Wildlife, Conservation

Padel is known for her poetry and prose on conservation, especially of tigers. While serving as Trustee for the

, she inaugurated an influential programme of ''ZSL Writers' Talks on Endangered Species'' to highlight the Zoological Society of London's conservation work. 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. Her account of wild

tiger The tiger (''Panthera tigris'') is the largest living Felidae, cat species and a member of the genus ''Panthera''. It is most recognisable for its dark vertical stripes on orange fur with a white underside. An apex predator, it primarily pr ...

conservation Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources, or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws. Conservation may also refer to: Environment and natural resources * Nature conservation, the protection and manageme ...

, drawing on her scientific background and Darwinian descent,
was valued internationally for quality of

nature writing Nature writing is nonfiction or fiction prose or poetry about the natural environment. Nature writing encompasses a wide variety of works, ranging from those that place primary emphasis on natural history facts (such as field guides) to those in w ...

, insights on conservation, travel writing on little-known parts of the world such as

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

Bhutan Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainou ...

and

Ussuriland Primorsky Krai (russian: Приморский край, r=Primorsky kray, p=prʲɪˈmorskʲɪj kraj), informally known as Primorye (, ), is a federal subject (a krai) of Russia, located in the Far East region of the country and is a part of the ...

, her ear for dialogue. and portrait of both the tiger and the field-zoologist. More recently, she has recorded '24 Splashes of Denial' - poems on water and climate denial - for ''Writers Rebel'', and 'Hormones, Divinity and Forest', her 2021 ''Memorial Lecture for Jane Harrison'' for

Newnham College, Cambridge Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millic ...

, united her early classical scholarship with contemporary environmental anxiety about the crisis in nature.

Criticism, Teaching

From 1998 to 2001 she pioneered ''The Sunday Poem'', a weekly column in London's ''

Independent on Sunday ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publishe ...

'' in readings of contemporary poems she collected in her popular books ''52 Ways of Looking at a Poem'' and ''The Poem and the Journey''. As Chair of the UK Poetry Society 2004-2007, she presided over the establishment of poetry 'Stanzas' across the UK. In 2010 she chaired Judges for the

Forward Poetry Prize The Forward Prizes for Poetry are major British awards for poetry, presented annually at a public ceremony in London. They were founded in 1992 by William Sieghart with the aim of celebrating excellence in poetry and increasing its audience. The ...

, in 2011 delivered the Housman Lecture at the

Hay Festival The Hay Festival of Literature & Arts, better known as the Hay Festival ( cy, Gŵyl Y Gelli), is an annual literature festival held in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales, for 10 days from May to June. Devised by Norman, Rhoda and Peter Florence in 1988, ...

on "The Name and Nature of Poetry," 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. Her books on reading poetry and the column from which they grew influenced a decade of writing about poetry in the UK, followed by her Newcastle University 'Bloodaxe' Lectures on poetry's use of silence, ''Silent Letters of the Alphabet''. 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". She has written introductions to the works of Palestinian poets

and

Ramsey Nasr Ramsey Nasr (born 28 January 1974, Rotterdam) is a Dutch author and actor of mixed descent, half Palestinian, half Dutch. He was '' Dichter des Vaderlands'' (Poet of the Fatherland; an unofficial title for the Dutch poet laureate) between January ...

, and British poets Walter Ralegh, Tennyson and Gerard Manley Hopkins. 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 The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...

whilst writing the poem. "It reminded him there was still a place that had a sense of truth." 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 Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

in Northern Ireland during the

Troubles The Troubles ( ga, Na Trioblóidí) were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an " ...

and of Eliot during the London blitz.

Awards and appointments

* 1992 Wingate Scholarship * 1993 ''Angel'' Poetry Book Society Recommendation * 1994 Arts Council Writers' Award for poetry collection ''Fusewire'' * 1996 First Prize, UK National Poetry Competition * 1996 Judge for T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize * 1998 ''Rembrandt Would Have Loved You''

Poetry Book Society The Poetry Book Society (PBS) was founded in 1953 by T. S. Eliot and friends, including Sir Basil Blackwell, "to propagate the art of poetry". Eric Walter White was secretary from December 1953 until 1971, and was subsequently the society's chai ...

Choice, shortlisted for T. S. Eliot Prize * 1998 Appointed Fellow of

The Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 600 Fellows, elec ...

* 1999 Judge for National Poetry Competition * 2000

Cholmondeley Award The Cholmondeley Awards () are annual awards for poetry given by the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. Awards honour distinguished poets, from a fund endowed by the Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1966. Since 1991 the award has be ...

from

Society of Authors The Society of Authors (SoA) is a United Kingdom trade union for professional writers, illustrators and literary translators, founded in 1884 to protect the rights and further the interests of authors. , it represents over 12,000 members and ass ...

* 2002 Poet in Residence for the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts in 2002. * 2002 ''Voodoo Shop''

Recommendation, short-listed for T. S. Eliot Prize and Whitbread Poetry Award * 2003 Research Award from

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation ( pt, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian), commonly referred to simply as the Gulbenkian Foundation, is a Portuguese institution dedicated to the promotion of the arts, philanthropy, science, and education. One ...

* 2004 ''The Soho Leopard''

Choice, short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize * 2005 ''Tigers in Red Weather'' shortlisted in USA for

Kiriyama Prize The Kiriyama Prize was an international literary award awarded to books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia. Its goal was to encourage greater understanding among the peoples and nations of the region. Established in 1996, the prize was last awa ...

and in UK for

Dolman Best Travel Book Award The Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards celebrate the best travel writing and travel writers in the world. The awards include the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year and the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing ...

* 2005 Judge for Royal Society Aventis Prize for Science Books * 2006

Arts Council of England The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both h ...

Individual Writer’s Bursary * 2008 First Writer in Residence at

Somerset House Somerset House is a large Neoclassical complex situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The Georgian era quadrangle was built on the site of a Tudor palace ("O ...

, London * 2008–9 Inaugurated Writers' Talks at the

Courtauld Institute of Art The Courtauld Institute of Art (), commonly referred to as The Courtauld, is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art and conservation. It is among the most prestigious specialist coll ...

. * 2009 Judge for National Poetry Competition * 2009 Leverhulme Artist in Residence Award at

Christ's College, Cambridge Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college includes the Master, the Fellows of the College, and about 450 undergraduate and 170 graduate students. The college was founded by William Byngham in 1437 as ...

* 2009 Opened

Edinburgh International Book Festival The Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) is a book festival that takes place in the last three weeks of August every year in Charlotte Square in the centre of Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh. Billed as ''The largest festival of its k ...

reading from ''Darwin – A Life in Poems'' * 2009 Elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford University * 2009 British Council ''Darwin Now'' Award * 2009 Read, talked on Darwin at

University of Havana The University of Havana or (UH, ''Universidad de La Habana'') is a university located in the Vedado district of Havana, the capital of the Republic of Cuba. Founded on January 5, 1728, the university is the oldest in Cuba, and one of the firs ...

Poetry Society of America The Poetry Society of America is a literary organization founded in 1910 by poets, editors, and artists. It is the oldest poetry organization in the United States. Past members of the society have included such renowned poets as Witter Bynner, Ro ...

in Lillian Vernon House, New York, and

New York Botanical Garden The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is a botanical garden at Bronx Park in the Bronx, New York City. Established in 1891, it is located on a site that contains a landscape with over one million living plants; the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, ...

. * 2009 ''Darwin – A Life in Poems'' shortlisted for

Costa Book Awards The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, the ...

for poetry * 2010 Read on conservation, nature and environment in Mumbai, at

Bombay Natural History Society The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), founded on 15 September 1883, is one of the largest non-governmental organisations in India engaged in conservation and biodiversity research. It supports many research efforts through grants and publ ...

and

Prithvi Theatre Prithvi Theatre is one of Mumbai's best known theatres. It was built by Shashi Kapoor and his wife Jennifer Kapoor in memory of Prithviraj Kapoor, Shashi's father, who had dreamt of having a "home" for his repertory theatre company, Prithvi ...

. * 2010–2011 Writer in Residence at the Environment Institute, University College London * 2010 Chair of Judges for Forward Poetry Prize * 2010 Curated "Writing the Family" events for

* 2010 Judge for Poetry for 2010 Costa Book Awards * 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. * 2013 Appointed to teach Creative Writing, King's College London * 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 * 2015 Read at International Literature Festival Berlin * 2016 Judge for International Man Booker Prize * 2016 Chair of Judges for T. S. Eliot Prize * 2016 Performed at Times of India Festival Mumbai * 2016 Performed ''Tidings – A Christmas Journey'' at Ely, in conversation with former Archbishop of Canterbury

* 2016 Performed ''Tidings'' in the Round Church

Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, generally known as The Round Church, is an Anglican church in the city of Cambridge, England. It is located on the corner of Round Church Street and Bridge Street. Since 1950 the church has been designated a Gr ...

, in the Cambridge Literary Festival * 2017 Performed at Jaipur Literature Festival * 2019 Inaugurated Jaipur Literary Festival with two poems, on Jaipur and on the world's first cell

Oxford Professor of Poetry

Padel was the first woman to be elected Oxford Professor of Poetry - in 2009, with 297 votes. (Predecessors James Fenton and Christopher Ricks were elected on 228 and 214 votes; online voting now allows wider participation.) She was elected in a media storm, triggered by photocopied pages"Derek Walcott’s Acts of Sexual Harassment"
(letter), To the Editor, ''The New York Times'', 21 March 2017. from a university publication describing sexual harassment charges against her rival

Derek Walcott Sir Derek Alton Walcott (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem '' Omeros'' (1990), which many critics view "as Walcot ...

,who withdrew his candidacy. Padel denied connection with them, but commentators alleged her involvement and she resigned, saying she did not wish to do the job under suspicion. Public comment attributed treatment of Padel to misogyny, the gender war or 'toxicity of the

media Media may refer to: Communication * Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass e ...

', which "pursued allegations against Walcott's past but also criticised Padel for having mentioned them as a source of voters' disquiet, unfairly excavating Walcott's past while unfairly denigrating Padel, justly held in high regard for her poetry and teaching." "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." On ''Newsnight Review'', poet

Simon Armitage Simon Robert Armitage (born 26 May 1963) is an English poet, playwright, musician and novelist. He was appointed Poet Laureate on 10 May 2019. He is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds. He has published over 20 collections of poet ...

, 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."

References

External links

Personal WebsiteKing's College London websiteRuth Padel Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Padel, Ruth 1946 births Living people Academics of Birkbeck, University of London Academics of King's College London Alumni of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford English women poets Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature People educated at North London Collegiate School Fellows of the Zoological Society of London 20th-century English poets 21st-century English poets 21st-century English novelists English women novelists 20th-century English women writers 21st-century English women writers 21st-century British writers