Description
Book SynopsisRuth Padel is a prize-winning poet, Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Zoological Society of London, and first Resident Writer at Somerset House, London. Her collections include Rembrandt Would Have Loved You, Voodoo Shop and The Soho Leopard, all shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, and more recently Darwin: A Life in Poems, shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award.
Highly acclaimed for her nature writing in a book about conservation, Tigers in Red Weather, and her novel, Where the Serpent Lives, she has also published books on contemporary poetry, including 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem and The Poem and the Journey.
In 2014, Ruth Padel is the first Writer in Residence at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and is recording her experiences in her blog at http://www.ruthpadel.com/blog/.
Trade ReviewRuth Padel combines two major gifts: she is both a distinguished poet and a quite exceptional reader of the poetry of others... The result is a book which opens doors, which bids us share with its author and the poems she has chosen a wealth of insight -- George Steiner
She argues away the idea that contemporary poetry is "difficult": all it needs is a little work and the rewards are great * Sunday Times *
A brilliant snapshot of contemporary poetry. Padel writes with incisive intelligence, particularly in her lively and provocative introduction on gender-related power in the poetry world and why poetry has "lost its audience -- Christina Patterson, Director of the Poetry Society * Independent *
She chooses her poems with impeccable taste, an anthologist of the very best contemporary poetry * The Times *
A great gift for any student or poetry virgin who wonders what all the excitement is about * Glasgow Herald *
