The Soho Leopard

by Ruth Padel

Beautiful, disturbing, and a pleasure to read, Ruth Padel's new poems are her most ambitious yet, adding animal legend and zoological science to her glitteringly imaginative canvas. With her gift for bringing together experiences and tones of voice that normally stay far apart, she sweeps us from Dulwich Pizza Hut to ancient Siberia, King's Cross to nineteenth-century Burma. We meet Socrates, urban foxes, Louisiana alligators and the endangered Amur leopard in poems resonating with sensuous delight in nature, but also with history and loss. Finally, a Chinese painter searches for tigers in a forest doomed to the sawmill while the minister who sold it scoffs an aphrodisiac bowl of tiger-penis soup.

Hallucinatory and lyrical, passionately musical, seething with life, The Soho Leopard explores our human need for wildness - and also for stories, wherever we find them. A wonderfully ferocious new collection from one of our most exciting poets.

Genres: Poetry

79 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Ruth is an English poet and writer. She has published poetry collections, novels, and books of non-fiction, including several on reading poetry. She has presented Radio 4′s Poetry Workshop, visiting poetry groups across the UK to discuss their poems.

Her awards include First Prize in the UK National Poetry Competition, a Cholmondeley Award from The Society of Authors, an Arts Council of England Writers’ Award and a British Council Darwin Now Research Award for her novel Where the Serpent Lives.

Ruth lives in London and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Member of the Bombay Natural History Society, an Ambassador for New Networks for Nature, a Patron of 21st-Century Tiger and a Council Member of the Zoological Society of London.

Reviews

[Kiran Bhat · Rating 5 out of 5]

The sounds of all the animal kingdom, at once

An ecological sojourn into the nature of life, Ruth Padel muses and extols with nuance and meaning. The poems are a great case study in craft and sound. I would recommend them to any aspiring poet.

[Harj D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dynamic collection of poems, splicing and dicing the animal kingdom with legend, anecdotes, science and a heap of imagination. I especially loved the section 'IV Nights of the Dry Monsoon' in this collection as it was simple yet effective. Beautifully written poems, weaving stories in a wicked way.

[Hilary West · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an excellent imagination Ruth Padel has. Her poetry is like a glittering toy shop juxtaposed with shards of a glass menagerie. I would recommend you read her at your earliest opportunity.