The Darwin Poems

This exquisite collection of poetry, while loosely following Charles Darwin's life, is more a 'portrait' in verse of his inner and family life. In 1836, a twenty-six year old Charles Darwin stopped at Wentworth Falls en route to Bathurst, during the Beagle's short stay in Australia. The walk Darwin took through the bush, along the creek to the falls, is the same one the poet now takes, with its plaque fastened to a rock: 'Charles Darwin passed this way'. This was a young Darwin, his observations on the Beagle allowing his ideas on the origins of the species to first gestate; a highly sensitive man who loved Paradise Lost and Wordsworth's Preludes; keenly aware that geological forces of time were 'truly poetical', carrying a flower painter's colour samples around with him so that he might better describe his own collections; a man in love with the mysteries of the world, who believed that science and poetry were, after all, but a series of philosophical riddles to solve.

"A mad, compressed biography, in a luminous, fertile poetry, of a once-in-centuries genius."
Luke Davies, author of Candy

"I've been moved and fascinated by Emily Ballou's achievement. These rich, wry poems bring us extraordinarily close to Darwin's life and mind...She encompasses so much in her long-breathed lines...
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading them."
Dame Gillian Beer, author of Darwin's Plots.