dumbfoundry

The poet Ruth Padel - Darwin's great-great-granddaughter - roams ground ranging from wildlife to the wild men of rock. [...]

The woman once described as "the sexiest voice in British poetry" has recently been travelling around the world to see tigers. She has sung in a nightclub in Istanbul, taught horse riding to the wives of British officers in Berlin and lived with peasants in Crete. Her new poetry collection, The Soho Leopard (Chatto, £8.99), draws on travels in Siberia and Burma, Louisiana and China, with a panoply of wildlife - tigers, leopards, alligators and jaguars - that also includes the lounge lizard.

Padel started writing poetry when she was three, but she was 43 before she realised that poetry "was going to be the thing". In the intervening years, she had a career in academia, lecturing in ancient and modern Greek at both Oxford and Cambridge. The word "career" is, in fact, one that triggers a severe allergic reaction. "I didn't want to be tenured in," Padel explains, "so I had lectureships and research fellowships. I was", she adds, "the first woman fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. They had to change the statutes for me." In poetry, too, Padel is adamant that "career" is anathema to the process and the vocation. [...]

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