Face to face

Ruth Padel (b. 1947) has won the National Poetry Competition and written seven collections of poetry, several shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot or Whitbread Prize; written a PhD on Greek tragedy at Oxford University, taught Greek at Oxford, Cambridge and Birkbeck College, London (and opera in Princeton Modern Greek Department).  She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London, and a great great grand-daughter of Charles Darwin. She is at present a freelance writer, doing features and reviews for many newspapers including The Independent, The Times and New York Times; and broadcasting for BBC Radio 3 and 4.

Her seven collections include Angel (1993), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation;  Rembrandt Would Have Loved You (1998), a Poetry Book Society Choice; Voodoo Shop (2002), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award; The Soho Leopard (2004), a Poetry Book Society Choice shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize; and Darwin: A Life in Poems (2009), shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award.

She writes prose as well as poetry. "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).  

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www.poetryarchive.org

Ruth is a London poet and writer. Her latest book is The Mara Crossing, a meditation on all aspects of migration in prose and poetry.

She has published eight poetry collections, a novel, and eight books of non-fiction, including several on reading poetry. She is also a well-known radio broadcaster and currently presents Poetry Workshop, a landmark BBC 4 series of programmes on writing poems.

Ruth is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Zoological Society of London. Her awards include First Prize in the UK National Poetry Competition, a Cholmondeley Award from The Society of Authors, an Arts Council of England Writers’ Award, and a British Council Darwin Now Research Award for her novel Where the Serpent Lives.