Ambassadors
Our Ambassadors supplied advice and support to New Networks for Nature. Outstanding achievers in their respective fields, they produced work that fulfilled many of our aims and ideas and their support over many years has been invaluable.
At the time of closing New Networks for Nature, our Ambassadors were:
Michael McCarthy was the environment editor of The Independent newspaper from 1998 to 2013 and won a number of prestigious awards for his commitment to and coverage of the environment and conservation matters, including the RSPB medal, the Dilys Breeze medal of the BTO and the silver medal of the Zoological Society of London. He is now a full-time writer; his books Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo (2009) and The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy (2015) were widely praised. The Moth Snowstorm was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize and the Richard Jeffries prize.
Ruth Padel’s moving new collection of poems, Emerald, an elegy for her mother, is published in July 2018. Ruth is an award-winning poet, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Professor of Poetry at King’s College London, shortlisted many times for the T S Eliot Prize, most recently for Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth (2014). Her prose includes Tigers in Red Weather, on tiger conservation, and a wildlife novel Where the Serpent Lives, featuring the threatened forests of India. She was Chair of Judges for the 2016 T S Eliot Prize, and Judge for the 2016 International Man Booker Prize. Her ten collections include Darwin A Life in Poems (2009, Knopf/Chatto & Windus) a verse biography of her great-great grandfather Charles Darwin and The Mara Crossing/On Migration on human and animal migration (Chatto/ Counterpoint Press).
‘A poet of great eloquence and delicate skill, an exquisite image-maker who can work wonders with the great tradition of line and stanza. Her voice has an astonishing resonance.” (Colm Toibin).
www.ruthpadel.com
Katrina Porteous is a poet, historian and broadcaster, much of whose work involves a detailed and loving celebration of the people, landscapes and wildlife of the Northumbrian coast where she lives. She has written extensively about local inshore fishing traditions, and often works in collaboration with artists and musicians, including painter James Dodds (Longshore Drift) and piper Chris Ormston (The Wund an’ the Wetter). Her long poems for BBC radio with producer Julian May include Dunstanburgh, The Refuge Box, and – with electronic composer Peter Zinovieff – Horse and Edge. She has recently worked with Northumbria University NUSTEM on Imagining the Sun.
https://nustem.uk/imagining-the-sun/
Her most recent poetry collection, Two Countries (Bloodaxe, 2014), was shortlisted for the Portico Prize 2015.
www.katrinaporteous.co.uk
Image credits
Photograph of Mark Cocker by Rachael Cocker; Michael McCarthy by Tim Birkhead; Ruth Padel by Gwen Burnyeat.