The Soho Leopard [Paperback]

'A glittering imaginative riff on a broken relationship', Christina Patterson, Independent

'Elegant, allusively rich lines: is a poetic version of Darwin's vision into the complex dependency between forms, feelings and ideas'

'Weird, clever, playful poems about urban animals (sly foxes, sexy beasts, we've all met them): terrific'

'Verbally exhilerating, utterly wonderful'

Best collection yet from the highly acclaimed author of Voodoo Shop and editor of 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem.

Hallucinatory and lyrical, these poems cross Dulwich Pizza Hut with mating alligators, endangered animal species with stage directions for Beauty and the Beast. Making wild connections over space and time, Ruth Padel's new collection displays her gift for getting into the same register areas of life that are normally far apart. Full of wild life and colour, black and gold, The Soho Leopard explores new extremes of Padel's voice, range and poetics, linking mythology and zoological science to her rich descriptive powers, vivid speaking voice and the passion and sensuality of her language. Starting from London streets, Soho and Kings Cross, the poems reach out to the Amazon, Siberia, Mexico, Louisiana wetlands, Mayan myth, ancient Athenian politicians, Tudor England, and our human need for stories. Thoughts turn into music in an enchanted castle, a crocodile-god waves the feather of truth at Judas, a downloaded Buddha opens his eyes when highlit on a laptop. We explore a year of urban fox life, watch a prehistoric story-teller defrosting, hear invisible alligators explain scarring in the human epidermis, while an elephant embroidered by Mary Queen of Scots nearly - but not quite - touches the spinet played by the woman who executed her. (20030731)

Best collection yet from the highly acclaimed author of Voodoo Shop and editor of 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem.

Beautiful, disturbing, and a pleasure to read, Ruth Padel's new poems are her most ambitious yet, adding animal legend and zoological science to her glitteringly imaginative canvas. With her gift for bringing together experiences and tones of voice that normally stay far apart, she sweeps us from Dulwich Pizza Hut to ancient Siberia, King's Cross to nineteenth-century Burma. We meet Socrates, urban foxes, Louisiana alligators and the endangered Amur leopard in poems resonating with sensuous delight in nature, but also with history and loss. Finally, a Chinese painter searches for tigers in a forest doomed to the sawmill while the minister who sold it scoffs an aphrodisiac bowl of tiger-penis soup.

Hallucinatory and lyrical, passionately musical, seething with life, The Soho Leopard explores our human need for wildness - and also for stories, wherever we find them. A wonderfully ferocious new collection from one of our most exciting poets.

Ruth Padel has published five collections and won the National Poetry Prize; her latest collection Voodoo Shop was shortlisted for the Whitbread and T S Eliot Prizes. She is a Fellow of the Society of Authors and London Zoological Society and writes a wildlife column, "Wild Thing" for the Saturday Times She is currently travelling through Asia writing a travel/memoir prose book about wild tigers. Website www.ruthpadel.com (20030731)