Poem of the Week

Published on Thursday 19 February 2009 10:30

BARMOUTH by Ruth Padel

With The Lost World reading campaign sweeping libraries near you, and the nation remembering Charles Darwin at 200, Ruth Padel pays tribute to her great-great grandfather in this compelling sequence of biographical poems (Darwin: A Life in Poems, Chatto & Windus, 12.99). This one imagines Darwin aged ten, in 1819, when his family went on holiday to Plas Edwards, or Barmouth, in North Wales.

'A child on a beach, alone.

Grey-eyed, thickset, kneeling to look.

A blowy day. A large black and scarlet

hemipterous insect. Many moths

including zygaena. A cicindela –

largest genus of the Tiger beetle –

not found in Shropshire.'

Why does every gentleman not

become an ornithologist?

Gulls and cormorants take their way home

at evening on a wild, irregular course.

You can borrow Darwin: A Life in Poems from the Scottish Poetry Library, which also lends by post. Tel: [phone], e-mail [e-mail] or visit www.spl.org.uk