"The Colourful Life Of A 21st Century Poet"

She was born in an attic in Wimpole Street. She had a teacher called Mrs Cornflake. She ( not Mrs Cornflake) liked singing sea shanties. She's travelled Asian Jungles searching for tigers, she's sung in an Istanbul nightclub and she's lived with peasants in Greece. She likes Iraqui music, has studied and taught at Oxbridge, and yes, she's also taught the wives of British officers to ride horses in Berlin....
Who said the lives of poets were DULL?
Ruth Padel visited Chester Literature Festival yesterday and showed us her poetry; it reveals her classical background of painstaking academic research, but it's also sensual and visual and as she herself once said about poetry in general:"it will light a dark tunnel" .


Padel's poetry will certainly do this; it's both illuminating and quirky and it reflects the life of an extraordinary woman.


* " The Poem and The Journey: and 60 poems to read along the way" ( Padel's newest book)
* Above : " The lives of the poets" by Samuel Johnson. (Born 1709)

Both books available at http://www.amazon.co.uk/ and all good book shops.
AND PS: Ruth Padel is the great great grand daughter of Charles Darwin.