Nadia Saward
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‘Ablutions’: a poem by Nadia Saward
Ablutions I sat with her body until morning. The blueblack cold mimicked her blueblack skin. I chafed her feet with lemon-scented lotion. The corridors were quiet, a stillness only found early on Sunday mornings, holy and soft. The women will come, their white headscarves, and we will wash her body. Earlier,…
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The World of the Half-Seen: on Ruth Padel’s ‘Emerald’ and writing loss
Nadia Saward Emerald, Ruth Padel’s new collection (Chatto & Windus, 2018), is primarily an elegy for her mother who passed away in 2017 at the age of ninety-seven. In it, through careful observation of the world around her, Padel has created a nuanced portrayal of the transformations that occur in our lives when…
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Into the Road Map’s Blank Regions: On Paul Farley
Photo credit: Urszula Soltys ‘Poetry And – The Red Egg’, a free talk and poetry reading with two award-winning writers, poet Paul Farley and scientist Tim Birkhead, takes place on Tuesday 28 November at King’s Chapel on the Strand, 7-8.30pm. Curated by Ruth Padel, Paul and Tim will share their passion for birds, birds’…
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‘Life beyond the glass’: Darwin: A Life in Poems by Ruth Padel
Released in 2009 to celebrate Darwin’s bicentenary, Darwin: A Life in Poems is a selection of snapshots of the naturalist’s life, using quotations from his journals, papers, autobiography and letters. Acting as a miniature biography, Padel (Darwin’s great-great-granddaughter) follows the progress of Darwin’s thought; both in the discovery of evolution to the growing tension in…