Drawing on the natural world
THE West Cork Literary Festival is one of the biggest events of the year for book-lovers in Ireland. The festival will be opened at Bantry Library on Sunday, Jul 7, by award-winning writer Ruth Padel, who presents the BBC Radio 4 programme Poetry Workshop and whose work as a poet draws heavily on the natural world for inspiration. Padel will read from her new poem, ‘The Mill Wheel at Bantry.’
Padel has spent a lot of time in Ireland over the last 20 years. Having started her career as a classical Greek scholar at Oxford, she has also maintained a lifelong relationship with Greece. She has seen at first hand the human damage caused by the current financial crisis. “The genesis of the poem was a workshop I did in Bantry last year,” she recalls. “I asked the participants to wander around the town as an exercise. The key to this task is to allow yourself to become reflective and open and to let yourself be drawn to something that feels important or has some personal significance.
