Padel has published twelve poetry collections, won the UK National Poetry Competition, and been shortlisted five times for the T S Eliot and other UK prizes. Her major themes are music, science, nature, painting, history, migration and wildlife conservation; and her work takes the idea of "the journey" as a "stepping stone to lyrical reflection on the human condition". She has been described as an exquisite image-maker of intense lyricism, delicate skill, rich imagery, deep resonance and a wild generous imagination. She was described as "the sexiest voice in British poetry" for her love poems in 1998; her elegiac poems explore loss and bereavement, Stylistic hallmarks are said to be juxtaposition of the modern world with the ancient, technical skill and musicality; wit, passion, lyrical intelligence, internal and half-rhyme, enjambement and unusual energy within and against the line, 'As if Wallace Stevens had hijacked Sylvia Plath with a dash of punk Sappho thrown in." Quoted influences include Gerard Manley Hopkins and Greek choral lyric. From 1998 to 2004, Padel's collections reflect themes of simultaneously written non-fiction: music (I’m a Man - Sex, Gods and Rock 'n' Roll); technical attention to the poetic line (52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, exemplified in poems such as 'Icicles Round a Tree in Dumfrieshire' her National Poetry Competition winner); and wildlife (Tigers in Red Weather). Three later collections, Darwin - A Life in Poems and The Mara Crossing (now updated to We Are All From Somewhere Else 2020), include prose; Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth(2014), with its resonant last line, 'Making is our defence against the dark,' has been called a meditation on conflict and history: especially of the Abrahamic religions. Tidings - A Christmas Journey addressed homelessness in her local London borough. Emerald (2018), a memoir and meditation on the poet's mother at her death, explored the alchemy of mourning and the renewing value of green. Her poetry biography of Beethoven, Beethoven Variations, was praised by the New York Times critic for taking him 'deeper into Beethoven than many biographies I’ve read, and her portrayal of Beethoven early on 'drifting into states that prefigured how deafness would increasingly isolate him.' Migration Padel's collaboration with Syrian artist Issam Kourbaj, on Syrian refugees arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos, was performed on the first day of the Venice Biennale 2019. Tidings - A Christmas Journey (2016) dedicated to the Focus Homeless