Emerald

by Ruth Padel

‘Here in deep earth, the blackblossom of mourning still sifting within meI remembered that emerald was my birthstone …’Prize-winning poet Ruth Padel’s heartfelt new collection is a grief an elegy for her mother on her death at the age of ninety-seven.Exploring the riches of emerald lore, Padel follows the glint of green – ‘green for awakening / for bringing life back from the dead’ – from memories of her mother, a naturalist, to the black honeycomb of a Colombian emerald mine and sunset-pink of the Emerald City, Jaipur. Beneath everything shines the jewel itself, ‘the only stone in which the flaws are prized’.Beautifully carved and cadenced, Emerald is a moving chronicle of value and loss, and a celebration of all that is precious in the life that remains.

Genres: Poetry

Kindle Edition

Published July 12, 2018

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

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my 11th book from Padel; I’ve read a mixture of her poetry, fiction, narrative nonfiction and poetry criticism. Emerald consists mostly of poems in memory of her mother, Hilda, who died in 2017 at the age of 97. The book pivots on her mother’s death, remembering the before (family stories, her little ways, moving her into sheltered accommodation when she was 91, sitting vigil at her deathbed) and the letdown of after.

Emerald, the hue and the gemstone, recurs frequently in ornate imagery of verdant outdoor scenes and expensive art objects. Two favourites were travel-based: “Jaipur,” about the emerald-cutters of India, where Padel guiltily flew while her mother was ill; and “Salon Noir,” about a trip down into prehistoric caves of France the summer after Hilda’s death. Overall, I expected the book to resonate with me more than it did. The bereavement narrative never broke through to touch me; it remained behind a silk screen of manners and form.

Two favourite stanzas:

“Your voice is your breath.
The first thing that’s yours
and the last.” (from “Fragile as Breath”)

“that’s all of us
sifting the dark
in our anonymities and hope.” (from “Above is the Same as Below”)

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

found these poems very interesting, and well written girls but i’m not sure i’ve had the life expertise for these to make the impression that’s intended

[Amelia · Rating 2 out of 5]

(2.6)
I just read this at a wrong point in my life.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second book of poetry I've read by Ruth Padel and somehow in the 4 years between LEARNING TO MAKE AN OUD IN NAZARETH and EMERALD there's a subtle shift in tone from the sometimes daunting scholarship and allusiveness of the previous book. More limpid, flowing, yet also able to convey confusion in thought, a catch in the throat. Perhaps it's just the different subject matter - here Padel deals with her mother's illness and death and its aftermath. Yes, she makes use of a formidable range of allusions, the most important of which are explained in endnotes. But, so clearly and poignantly, she is finding the universal in the particular, roaming time and the globe to understand life, death and continuity. The two moments where she evokes the last moments of each of her parents are breathtaking. The longer last poem, The Black Salon, takes us on a collective journey of mourning and commemoration into geographical and temporal depth, evoking the threads of song and art, of being in and yet observing the world, the legacies, shared and unique, that bind us in humanity, in the world. A splendid book.

[Oran · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the book on grief I wasn't expecting. Every now and then I take a book at random from the library without researching it.

Doing a little reading around, I found the author was researching emeralds and then her mother fell ill and eventually died.

Throughout, we have a tender exploration of grief through this lens and how those ideas develop. The strangeness of someone suddenly missing when they were there, of what's left behind, physically and emotionally.

There were too many lines to draw out but it was quietly moving throughout. The last breath of the long final poem "Salon Noir":

"I remembered that emerald was my birthstone
that an emerald
mind in the dark
but lucent green
as leaves returning
after a hundred thousand years of ice

green for awakening for bring life
back from the dead renewal
in earth and of the earth
is a token of re-birth."

In essence, the ouroboros: in death there is life and vice versa ad infinitum. It's the stage of acceptance after loss and was a beautiful send-off to a very beautiful collection.

Her language is clear, minimal, and vivid. I'm definitely interested in seeing more of her work.

[Margaryta · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Emerald" is one of those few poetry collections that I can go through in one sitting by riding a wave of calm exhilaration, the words propelling me to continue reading but never feeling like a burden. Padel's poems read very smoothly but also have a sensation of breathing to them. Padel uses indentations and punctuation in a way that reminded me of respiration and pauses, opening up spaces in the collection both visually and emotionally that gently pull the reader aside, making them stop and think. The emerald theme was superbly done, in my opinion. I loved both the literal interpretations of it, seeing the history of mining as well as the colour appear in several of the poems directly, but also appreciated that Padel made me consider how the narrative of a mother's death can be read with this image of an emerald in mind. A wonderful collection that I couldn't put down which soothed and lulled me in a way that I haven't felt in a while.

[Frankie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Aruna Kumar Gadepalli · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection dealing with emotions. Most of the poems are around ailing mother, death, and other topics.

[Isa · Rating 4 out of 5]

my favourite poems I've read this year.
Appraisal - surpsingly short yet my favourite from thr collection as embodied everything I liked about the work.