Lyonesse

Penelope Shuttle has lived in Cornwall since 1970, is the widow of the poet Peter Redgrove. Her first collection of poems, The Orchard Upstairs (1981) was followed by six other books from Oxford University Press, The Child-Stealer (1983), The Lion from Rio (1986), Adventures with My Horse (1988), Taxing the Rain (1994), Building a City for Jamie (1996) and Selected Poems 1980-1996 (1998), and then A Leaf Out of His Book (1999) from Oxford Poets/Carcanet, and Redgrove’s Wife (2006) and Sandgrain and Hourglass (2010) from Bloodaxe Books. Redgrove’s Wife was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2006. Sandgrain and Hourglass is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her retrospective, Unsent: New & Selected Poems 1980-2012 (Bloodaxe Books, 2012), drew on ten collections published over three decades plus the title-collection, Unsent. Her later collections from Bloodaxe are Will you walk a little faster? (2017) and Lyonesse (2021). Heath, a collaboration about Hounslow Heath with John Greening, was published by Nine Arches in 2016. First published as a novelist, her fiction includes All the Usual Hours of Sleeping (1969), Wailing Monkey Embracing a Tree (1973) and Rainsplitter in the Zodiac Garden (1977). With Peter Redgrove, she is co-author of The Wise Wound: Menstruation and Everywoman (1978) and Alchemy for Women: Personal Transformation Through Dreams and the Female Cycle (1995), as well as a collection of poems, The Hermaphrodite Album (1973), and two novels, The Terrors of Dr Treviles: A Romance (1974) and The Glass Cottage: A Nautical Romance (1976).

Penelope Shuttle, as both thinker and poet, seems to me exemplary in her use of the intuitive faculty: a self-forgetful procedure for the renewal of awareness which one might describe as the making of leaps, rather than the taking of "logical" steps, or what Virilio, discussing Proust, calls "the Sophist idea of agape, the suddenness of this possible entry into another logic".

• 11 PrefaceLYONESSE19 Door20 Palm Sunday21 The Gownshops22 Our Cradle Sea23 Strike, strike the bell24 Make a Wish25 Kelpy26 easy27 Inscribed on a Stela found on the seabed28 Sentimental Customs29 Night Gate30 by the hoar rock in the drowned wood32 here’s my Lyonesse33 Legends34 Fortuna35 Owls36 clad me naked37 Why the Maidens prefer future funk to a Sumerian goat38 Interviewing Neptune39 My Friend40 In the dark41 Saturdays & Sundays42 When the Devil seals the seam with hot pitch43 Midsummer44 Lizzie45 Willow o’ the Wisp46 Holy Father Lions47 O Shake That Girl with the Blue Dress On48 Boat-drawn49 Rusalka50 Siren Scholarship51 The Foster Brothers of Kernow Speak52 Sewing Lesson Under the Sea53 land under sea54 An Account of the Submergence57 land under sea58 Church of the Crayfish Christ59 Up jumps the shark60 Starlit61 On St Mary’s Quayside an old salt button-holes a passer-by62 Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep, so beware, beware63 Jackie Onassis orders new dancing shoes64 Twinned with Canopus65 They say the voiced angel is an invention of the English66 More deadly than the Siren’s song is the Siren’s silence67 We are the servants of lions68 Sea Street69 The Restorer70 May the Holy Ghost blow your sailboat home71 The Devil72 Praise the Crayfish Christ striding over the waves!73 Mermaid sightings here74 Cradle-rocker’s Report75 Prospectus: Lyonesse College76 The Foster Brothers of Kernow Speak77 My Old Lover78 Lions on a love prowl79 Wooden Lady80 My own volition81 Time in the World82 Blues84 Solo85 Who’s down there86 Sermon of the Crayfish Christ, or The Latitudes88 When and If89 Blessing90 Goodbye93 NotesNEW LAMPS FOR OLD99 cup of evenings100 what is the air made of?101 new lamps for old102 husband103 home104 Dusk coming on105 sevenfold106 fly-by-night107 some strange hour of night108 Swarthmoor Hall, Ulverston117 my house118 St Olave’s Church119 Village of La Baleine120 as long as the thorn tree stands121 Kandinsky at the Tate122 Hell123 longing is part of it124 the train is125 Ruby Loftus screwing a breech ring for a Bofors Anti-Aircraft Gun126 break of day/this one evening129 glance130 other elements131 love letters132 May time133 Ann Boleyn’s Music Book134 May evening135 Under Ragged Stone Hill143 clouds in the sky144 wild rose145 Malvern Link146 the four queens find Lancelot sleeping147 found poem: Swarthmoor Hall148 Three Years149 in the mirror153 Notes