*sold out* Beginning Again: Renewing your Poems with Ruth Padel

This workshop is sold out, any further registrations will be added to a waiting list.

Ruth Padel is an award-winning poet, musician and conservationist, Professor of Poetry at King’s College London and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She has published twelve poetry collections, most recently a biography-cum-poetry-collection Beethoven Variations, on Beethoven’s life and music. She was the first Resident writer at Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and the first money she ever earned was £5 playing viola in Westminster Abbey.

In Beginning Again: Renewing your Poems, Ruth Padel will first give a reading from the two collections she published this year. With “Beethoven Variations, a life of Beethoven in poem” She will focus on the idea of creativity coming from suffering. “We are All from Somewhere Else”, a paperback edition of her 2012 book of poems and prose on migration updated to 2020’s global hardening of attitudes to migrants, argues that migration made the world and we are all, originally, migrants. Ruth will read, talk about the issues, and about writing political poetry. Secondly, she will talk about her Personal ABC of Writing Poetry and answer questions from the audience. She will finish by offering an exercise that might inspire participants into new poems.

‘Poetry, biography, music and memoir collide in this wonderful collection – a tender and evocative portrait of the man and his music (Tatler)
‘Ruth Padel writes with true passion; her love for, and understanding of, the man and his music shine through each poem’ (Steven Isserlis, cellist)