We Are All From Somewhere Else

by Ruth Padel

'A prodigy, a book of wonders. Wonder, pity and terror, the searing section of voices in transit coercing compassion – and beyond that, empathy’ Independent

Home is where you start from, but where is a swallow's real home? And what does 'native' mean if the English oak is an immigrant from Spain?

In ninety richly varied poems and illuminating prose interludes, Ruth Padel's original new book weaves science, myth, wild nature and human history to conjure a world created and sustained by migration - from the millennia-old journeys of cells, trees, birds and beasts to Geese battle raging winds over Mount Everest, lemurs skim precipices in Madagascar and wildebeest, at the climax of their epic trek from Tanzania, braving a river filled with the largest crocodiles in Africa.

Human migration has shaped civilisation but today is one of the greatest challenges the world faces. In a series of incisive portraits, Padel turns to the struggles of human displacement - the Flight into Egypt, John James Audubon emigrating to America (feeding migrant birds en route), migrant workers in Mumbai and refugees labouring over a drastically changing planet - to show how the purpose of migration, for both humans and animals, is survival.

Genres: Poetry

272 pages, Paperback

Published August 13, 2020

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

[emiadelaide · Rating 3 out of 5]

i think i may have gotten too invested in the discussions about animal migration and the science behind that to actually enjoy the poetry element of this book fully, but i enjoyed it nonetheless :)

[Daniele Bergesio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Letto nell'edizione italiana per Eliot. Cinque stelle per tre quarti del libro, riflessioni monumentali sui concetti di Migrazione e di Casa, acute e profonde.
Una stella in meno per le ultime sezioni che (secondo me) divagano molto dal tema, risultando forzate e un po' gratuite
E un'altra in meno per la mancanza, nelle poesie, del testo a fronte: per una traduzione è assolutamente imprescindibile, un vero peccato (l'ho sentita recitarne in inglese a Mantova e avrei voluto ritrovare quella stessa musicalità).

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently saw her (Zoom) read the final poem in this book (which is not a collection, but prose interspersed with poems). It's a worthy read. Even trees are immigrants.