Ruth Padel

British poet, journalist and former academic

Ruth Padel is a British poet and journalist. Born in London, She studied classics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, before obtaining her doctorate on Greek tragedy. Her academic career has seen her teach in Oxford, London, Princeton and Buenos Aires. After the birth of her first child in 1985, she turned her efforts to poetry, publishing her first pamphlet Alibi and, in 1990, producing her first full-length literary collection, Summer Snow. She has since written extensively for the international press. She was the winner of the 1997 UK National Poetry Competition with ‘Icicles Round a Tree in Dumfriesshire’, and was shortlisted for several prizes. Padel is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an honorary member of the Poetry Society, and in 2003 was made Chair of the UK Poetry Society.

Great-great-granddaughter to Charles Darwin and an active conservationist, Padel is a member of the Zoological Society of London, the Royal Geographical Society, the Bombay Natural History Society and International PEN. She briefly held the position of Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford in 2009, the first female to be elected to the post.