In ninety richly varied poems and illuminating prose interludes, Ruth Padel weaves science, myth, wild nature and human history to conjure a world created and sustained by migration.
*First published as The Mara Crossing, now with new and updated material*
'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 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.
Industry Reviews
A vertiginous compendium, a prodigy, a book of wonders: it is Montaigne's and Darwin's 21st-century child * Independent *
A broad-ranging meditation on all things migratory...This is a book of raw interfaces and unnerving encounters. Magnificent poems... a triumph of imagistic ingenuity * Guardian *
(A) thoughtful and often quite magical mix of prose and poetry...What is just as fascinating as Padel's central theme is the insight that she also gives us into poetry, or rather, into the creation of a poem. * Independent on Sunday *
The Mara Crossing is a major meditation on migration. The prose is crystalline, the poems full of the wonderful material stuff of life. It's a poet's book to the core, a passionate exploration of her subject, proving that pressures on cells, bodies, creatures (human and other), and on the planet itself, are fit and essential matter for poetry
A glorious fabric, weaving lyricism and hard facts, poetic insight and scientific detail unwinding from the multitudinous threads of geographical migration. A beautiful, far-ranging book about physical journeys and all they might mean to humans and animals alike * Mark Cocker *
In this sweeping an unconventional book about migration, Padels commendably calls for compassion and open borders. Her poems and essays are a lyrical tribute to the instincts and whims that catalyse movement, and the trials and beauties that come with motion... there are wonders of nature in this collection which will give pause to sensitive readers * The Economist *
In an original, wonderfully imaginative series of reflections, moving between essayistic insights, condensed metaphors of poetry, mysteries of microbiology and animal or human journeys, Ruth Padel takes migration as her subject and the whole earth as her province. A thrilling, poignant, richly illuminating investigation of the energies which create life and drive history * Eva Hoffman *
Who would have thought that a poet would write about one of the most fascinating aspects of behavioural biology and human striving? A remarkable, beautifully constructed book, interleaving science and history, clear prose and evocative poems * Professor Patrick Bateson, President of the Zoological Society of London *
This book is an extraordinary mixture of poetry, prose, fact and fantasy. * Saga Magazine *
An engrossing meditation on the theme of migration...reads like a collaboration between Dorothy Wordsworth and Darwin. * Sunday Telegraph *
