Padel, Ruth 1946-

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Padel, Ruth 1946-

PERSONAL:

Born May 8, 1946, in London, England; daughter of John Hunter (a psychoanalyst) and Hilda (a child welfare worker) Padel; married Myles Burnyeat (a professor of ancient philosophy), August, 1984; children: Gwen. Education: Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, B.A. (honors), 1969; Wolfson College, Oxford, M.A., D.Phil., 1976. Politics: Labour. Religion: Church of England.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England. Agent—Patrick Walsh, Conville & Walsh, 2 Banton St., London W1F 7QL, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, poet, musician, lecturer, radio broadcaster, travel writer, and educator. Oxford University, Oxford, England, research fellow and lecturer, 1972-80; Birkbeck College, University of London, London, England, lecturer in classics, 1980-84. Instructor and lecturer at other colleges and universities, including Princeton University; Corpus Christi College, Oxford; Wadham College, Oxford; Merton College, Oxford; King's College, Cambridge; and Buenos Aires University. Poetry society of Great Britain, chair, 2004-07; Somerset Housem, first resident writer, 2008—; Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, resident poet. Presenter of programs on books and music for Britain's Radio 3 and 4.

MEMBER:

International PEN, UK Poetry Society (chair, 2004-06), Society of Hellenic Studies, Bombay Natural History Society, Royal Geographical Society.

AWARDS, HONORS:

British National Poetry Competition winner, 1997, for "Icicles Round a Tree in Dumfriesshire"; Cholmondeley Award, 2003; Royal Society of Literature, fellow; Zoological Society of London, fellow; Wadham College, Bowra fellow; Wolfson College, research fellow.

WRITINGS:

Alibi (poems), Many Press, 1985.

Summer Snow (poems), Century Hutchinson (London, England), 1990.

In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1992.

Indian Red, Bernard Stone and Raymond Danowski (London, England), 1992.

Angel (poems), Dufour Editions (Chester Springs, PA), 1993.

Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1995.

Fusewire (poems), Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1996.

Rembrandt Would Have Loved You (poems), Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1998.

I'm a Man: Sex, Gods, and Rock 'n' Roll, Faber (London, England), 2000.

Voodoo Shop (poems), Chatto & Windus (London, England), 2002.

Fifty-two Ways of Looking at a Poem; or, How Reading Poetry Can Change Your Life, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 2002.

The Soho Leopard, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 2004.

Tigers in Red Weather: A Quest for the Last Wild Tigers, Abacus (London, England), 2006.

The Poem and the Journey: And Sixty Poems to Read along the Way, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 2007.

Author of column, "Reading Poetry," Independent on Sunday, 1998-2000.

Contributor to books and anthologies, including We're So Fab We Said All the Right Things, Hyphen: Short Stories by Poets, edited by R. Page, Comma and Carcanet Press, 2003.

Contributor periodicals, magazines, and newspapers, including the Dublin Review, London Magazine, Financial Times, New York Times, Independent, Times (London, England), and Prospect Magazine.

Author's works have been translated into German.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ruth Padel is a poet and author of critical nonfiction. She wrote a newspaper column called "Reading Poetry" for the Independent on Sunday for three years in which she published a new poem each week and instructed readers on how to interpret it. The collection of these poems is in her book Fifty-two Ways of Looking at a Poem. Padel's poetry explores the highs and lows of human emotions, focusing largely on the narrative situations encountered by her subjects. Her collection Rembrandt Would Have Loved You also reveals the author's ability as a storyteller. In this compilation of love poems, she creates both power and vulnerability in her characters and shapes her narrative against numerous mythological and cultural references.

Padel's Voodoo Shop was published in 2002. The poems in this collection chronicle a love affair that moves from Brazil to Ireland and then to other countries. Also included are three poems addressed to the ailing mother of the narrator. This type of juxtaposition is classic for Padel. N.S. Thompson noted in a review for the Times Literary Supplement that Voodoo Shop contains "a language lush and bold, exotic as well as erotic."

Padel's critical work revolves around analyses of Greek texts and ideas. Her In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self looks at expressions of consciousness in Greek thought. The book is divided into sections; the first four chapters explain Greek words that refer to the human psyche, the fifth chapter discusses how specific bodily imagery is female in gender, and chapters six through eight describe language used in tragedy, especially violent emotions. Ann N. Michelini maintained in a review for the American Journal of Philology that Padel's book has a "zestful marshaling of physical metaphors," although the critic found some problems as well. Michelini noted that the author sometimes confuses the analytic terminology with what the word describes, and not the actual word itself. She also suggested that the book needs "a more careful weighing of the biases of the texts taken in evidence and a more sophisticated approach to archaic Greek culture." Malcolm Heath in the British Journal of Aesthetics thought that one must have read In and Out of the Mind in order to appreciate Padel's Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness, as the latter work is a continuation of her argument on the individual and consciousness, using fifth-century Greeks as an example. Heath explained that one of the book's recurring themes is "the need for interpreters to adopt the anthropologist's commitment to understanding a culture on its own terms." The critic noted that the book's most valuable feature is "the wonderful accumulation of detailed observations, unexpected connections and illuminating analogies; through these Padel contrived to demonstrate just how profoundly alien Greek ways of thinking were, while at the same time conveying … how these patterns of thought made sense."

The author dips slightly into modern culture with her book I'm a Man: Sex, Gods, and Rock 'n' Roll, wherein she explores how the sex and drama of rock music is derived from the roots of Greek myth. From the outset, Padel admits she knows very little about rock music, which may explain the somewhat cool reviews. Steven Poole in the Manchester Guardian observed that while I'm a Man contains "several well-researched chapters about racism in rock music and its orientalist subculture," Padel never truly makes her argument stick.

Tigers in Red Weather: A Quest for the Last Wild Tigers is Padel's "remarkable chronicle" of her two-year quest to visit and observe wild tiger conservation programs in eleven countries, noted a Kirkus Reviews contributor. With about five thousand tigers living in the wild around the world, their condition is precarious, and their continued existence as a species is often in doubt. Padel explores the reasons why these magnificent big cats have been driven close to extinction, including the problems of poaching, disappearing habitat, resource mismanagement, greed, and a belief that the various body parts of tigers offer medicinal benefits. She travels through countries where wild tigers can still be found, including India, Russia, Laos, Bangladesh, China, and Indonesia. In these locations, she visits wildlife preserves and natural areas to assess the local conservation and preservation measures, and to try to see a tiger in its natural habitat. Padel's account demonstrates a "poet's eye for the details of her exotic surroundings," observed a Publishers Weekly contributor. Along with her eloquent appreciation of tigers, she discusses practical matters of tiger breeding, characteristics of habitat, and the needs of people who live in close proximity to tigers. She also offers considerable material on tiger history, legends, and lore. For readers interested in taking a more active role, Padel also includes contact information for a number of preservation and conservation groups. Library Journal reviewer Harold M. Otness called Padel's book an "exhaustive and impassioned account of her travels to see firsthand the sorry state of tiger preservation." The book is "best savored slowly: a skillful blend of natural history and political analysis, sure to incite controversy in conservation circles," mused the Kirkus Reviews critic.

Padel once told CA: "In my nonfiction, I have concentrated on ancient tragedy's notions of what is inside people. I have taught Greek and Latin and the writing of Greek verse and prose, as well as the criticism of it. I am now deeply concerned to communicate to readers who do not understand Greek the resonance and spread of meaning caged within specific Greek words. My academic work is informed by anthropology, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism. I have written on feminism and classical scholarship, George Seferis and Homer, madness, possession, images of women's inwardness in Greek tragedy, and George Steiner's readings of tragedy. In all my work, both poetry and prose, I seek to illuminate by juxtaposition and the making of new connections."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Poets, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

PERIODICALS

American Journal of Philology, fall, 1994, Ann N. Michelini, review of In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self, p. 464.

Bookseller, June 17, 2005, review of Tigers in Red Weather: A Quest for the Last Wild Tigers, p. 12.

British Journal of Aesthetics, July, 1996, Malcolm Heath, review of Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness, p. 323.

Guardian (Manchester, England), July 8, 2000, Steven Poole, "Phallic Cymbals."

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2006, review of Tigers in Red Weather, p. 715.

Library Journal, July 1, 2006, Harold M. Otness, review of Tigers in Red Weather, p. 98.

New Statesman & Society, August 3, 1990, John Lucas, review of Summer Snow, p. 42.

Publishers Weekly, May 29, 2006, review of Tigers in Red Weather, p. 45.

Times Literary Supplement, September 7, 1990, Virginia Rounding, review of Summer Snow, p. 954; November 29, 1996, review of Fusewire, p. 15; April 19, 2002, N.S. Thompson, "Take the Fortune-teller in White," p. 24; January 12, 2007, Catherine Humble, review of Tigers in Red Weather, p. 28.

Washington Post Book World, November 5, 2006, Michael Dirda, "A Poet Goes Searching for the Vanishing Tigers of the World," review of Tigers in Red Weather, p. 15.