Emerald
Emerald
Out of stock
Couldn't load pickup availability
Your payment information is processed securely. We do not store credit card details nor have access to your credit card information.
An elegy to a lost mother, Emerald is the moving new collection from prize-winning poet Ruth Padel
‘Here in deep earth, the black
blossom of mourning still sifting within me
I remembered that emerald was my birthstone …’
Prize-winning poet Ruth Padel’s heartfelt new collection is a grief observed: an elegy for her mother on her death at the age of ninety-seven.
Exploring the riches of emerald lore, Padel follows the glint of green – ‘green for awakening / for bringing life back from the dead’ – from memories of her mother, a naturalist, to the black honeycomb of a Colombian emerald mine and sunset-pink of the Emerald City, Jaipur. Beneath everything shines the jewel itself, ‘the only stone in which the flaws are prized’.
Beautifully carved and cadenced, Emerald is a moving chronicle of value and loss, and a celebration of all that is precious in the life that remains.
