We are all from somewhere else

Part of the Arts & Humanities Festival 2013: Being | Human

This event is free and open to all but booking is required.

We are all from somewhere else: human migration and the restlessness of life

The beginning of life is the beginning of migration. The first thing the first cell did on earth was spread. Cells in our bodies migrate to create new life or defend the organism and cell migration is the basis of auto-immunity. Bird migration is the heartbeat of the planet. From cells to sharks, from jellyfish to human beings, life-forms are constantly in motion. Today, increasing billions of displaced migrants stream across the globe in search of new homes. Reading from her groundbreaking poems and prose on migration, Ruth Padel will use microbiology and animal behaviour to illuminate human migration and ask what today’s mass displacements, refugees and asylum-seekers tell us about being human.

Biography:
Ruth Padel is a poet and author with close connections to conservation, Greece and music. She has published nine poetry collections, shortlisted for all major UK prizes, most recently Darwin – A Life in Poems, an internationally praised verse biography of her great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin, and The Mara Crossing (published in the US as On Migration): ‘A book of wonders: Montaigne’s and Darwin’s 21st-century child. (Independent). Her non-fiction include Tigers in Red Weather and 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Council Member for the Zoological Society of London and a Teaching Fellow in Poetry at Kings College London. She is currently curating a series of Writers Talks on Endangered Animals at ZSL London Zoo. See www.ruthpadel.com

The full programme can be found here.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/ahfest/Programme/at-a-glance.aspx