Ms Ruth Padel
Nationality: United Kingdom
Year: 1992
Subject Area: Arts and Humanities
Website: Visit (opens in a new window)Given a scholarship to study women's desire in opera as a manmade construct, I went through many twists of research and argument, discovering that rock music countered my argument, and I should consider that, and male desire in song, before considering women's. Meanwhile I published five other books: two non-fiction: ‘IN AND OUT OF THE MIND: GREEK IMAGES OF THE TRAGIC SELF’,(Princeton University Press 1993), and ‘WHOM GODS DESTROY: MADNESS IN GREEK AND OTHER TRAGEDY’, (Princeton 1995); three collections of poems: ‘ANGEL’ (Bloodaxe 1993), ‘FUSEWIRE’ (Chatto 1996) and ‘REMBRANDT WOULD HAVE LOVED YOU’ (Chatto 1998). I also won the UK National Poetry Competition (1997). In 2000 my Wingate research came out as, ‘I'M A MAN: GODS SEX AND ROCK N ROLL’ (Faber). Subsequently, as Chair of the Poetry Society, I rescued the Society from constitutional impasse, invented its most popular series of readings at the London Review Bookshop, "Under the Influence", and published five more books. Two on reading modern poetry: ‘52 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A POEM’, Chatto 2004 and ‘THE POEM AND THE JOURNEY’, (Chatto 2007); one travel-memoir, ‘TIGERS IN RED WEATHER’, (Little, Brown 2006), two poetry collections: ‘VOODOO SHOP’, (Chatto 2002) and ‘THE SOHO LEOPARD’, (Chatto 2004).