On Migration

June 17, 2013
In this collection, British conservationist and poet Padel (Tigers in Red Weather), the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, muses on the transient natures of creatures high and low, which she classifies using two types: “Go and Stay,” which encompasses both the spread of prehistoric plants from sea to land and the erratic movement of humans; and “Go and Come Back,” which includes birds going south for the winter and salmon swimming upstream to spawn. The book is structured as a mixture of poetry and prose, and, as Padel explains, “the prose interludes are not essays but introductions to each run of poems.” However, the poems in each set vary in topic to such a degree that the prose introduction, in trying to mirror that variety, ceases to feel like an introduction and instead becomes like a poem of its own. Migrations depicted in the poems include cells replicating courtesy of DNA helicase; fruit bats flying to Congo and pollinating the jungles; and refugees from Cuba floating across the ocean on a raft of chairs. Unfortunately, the prose passages are so lyrical that Padel undercuts the power of her poems, and scientific facts bog down the poetry—especially when those facts appeared previously in the introductions to various sections. The writing is beautiful, but the book often repeats itself. Agent: Robert Kirby, United Agents (London).

August 1, 2013
A poetic exploration of every aspect of migration, from the evolution of life to the migrations of birds and the patterns of human emigration. Poet and conservationist Padel (Darwin: A Life in Poems, 2009, etc.), the great, great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, connects the relationship of the yearly migrations of birds and butterflies to seasonal human labor and such esoteric subjects as the transmigration of souls. She sets the stage with a poem, "Ripples on New Grass": I want to see autumn swarms of monarch butterflies...calling all migrants home." She follows with a discussion of the distinction between migratory labor and a permanent change of locale. While much of her poetry depends on natural images, her subject matter is wide-ranging--e.g., the contrast between seasonal emigration and forced moves of populations due to "invasion and colonization." In an even greater imaginative leap, Padel compares how human populations are changed by migration to new environments with the original spread of vegetation on the planet, which created our atmosphere. With biting wit, she attacks the shibboleths of nativism by pointing out that the British Royal Oak, an "emblem of England, [is] an immigrant from Spain." Her poems hark back to Noah and the Great Flood and the Trojan War, and she discusses how, in ancient Greece and in the Bible, "[h]elping strangers was an obligation"; she contrasts this to "hundreds of diasporas all over the world." Padel claims that "as birds are the blueprint for migration so are the Jews for diaspora and exile" and then shifts to the biblical account of Joshua leading the Jews to the Promised Land. Padel ends by affirming the role of migration in shaping modern Britain and America. A lyrically effective mix of prose and poetry.

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September 15, 2013
English poet and nature writer Padel's vision of life is of journeys within journeys. Migration is bred in the genes, and travel takes many clever forms, from the invisible trajectories of parasites and viruses to the astonishingly long flights of birds and butterflies and the covert movements of plants. A descendant of Charles Darwin, Padel deeply internalizes all that she scrutinizes, and she is a migrant, too, journeying within this richly observant and creatively interpretive volume, a thrilling inner journey of discovery, between prose and poetry. Her poems are lucid, supple, and welcoming, her prose is magnetic, and both spark with surprising, stunning revelations. Padel marvels over the daily vertical migration of millions of jellyfish, tracks the wanderings of Audubon, and ponders an exploration gone fatally wrong when a humpback whale ends up in the Thames. Padel herself has traveled the world, from Siberia to Kenya, India, and Greece. Migration is essential to life on earth, she writes, then insightfully considers the impetus for human journeys, from the tragicwar, persecution, povertyto the abiding desires for renewal, adventure, and fortune.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)