Penelope Shuttle’s History of the Child is a highly evocative exploration of childhood, memory, and imagination, blending personal and historical perspectives. The book’s themes include parenting, grief, nature, emotional recovery and connections to the past, guided by the idea of childhood as a transformative and rebellious space.
The first of the book’s four sections features poems about Katherine of Aragon, the Vestal Virgins, Stanley Spencer and Wallace Stevens, with a focus on grief, nature, and animals. The second, Book of Lullabies, steps closer to the theme of the child, with poems about memory, inwardness, climate change, sexuality in older age, and the natural world.
The third part, History of the Child, is a journey back to Penelope Shuttle's own childhood, blending personal memories with imagined perspectives to explore psychological crises, emotional recovery, and the traumas of childhood. It introduces an ‘alternative girl child self’, inspired by Persian legends, by her late husband Peter Redgrove’s dream of such a girl (‘my death, and she is my soul’), and by a friend’s fanciful wish. The culminating fourth section is a playful sequence about a little table, inspired by her mother and her childhood. The table symbolises connection to her mother, who lived to be 100 years old, and their shared history.
Penelope Shuttle's History of the Child is guided by themes of memory, imagination, foreboding, magic, history and humour, and seeks to articulate the essence of ‘being’ through fiery language and elemental imagery. She draws inspiration from Donald Winnicott’s concept of the ‘potentive space’ where play, fantasy and reality intersect.
From the reviews of Lyonesse (2021):
‘... a singular, arresting and moving book... two collections in one, hinged by a theme of loss. Lyonesse is Cornwall’s mythical kingdom – its Paradise Lost... It is this kingdom that has fired – watered – Shuttle’s imagination and produced an extraordinary flow of work... Shuttle’s Lyonesse is fresh, clear and convincing. It gives grief geography, an address. I believe in its direct dispatches from a submerged front line.’ – Kate Kellaway, The Observer, Poetry Book of the Month for July 2021
'Shuttle uses these threads of history to craft a world rich with everyday colour, but, like ours, ultimately dominated by the threat of environmental change... haunting and atmospheric poems... a deeply moving collection.' – Maggie Wang, Poetry Wales, on Lyonesse
‘… Penelope Shuttle, in her wonderfully clarifying Lyonesse, paints a picture of mythic lands submerged under seas and the loss, personal and environmental, that follows.’ – Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian (Best poetry books of 2021)
‘Penelope Shuttle’s wonderful 13th collection is two books in one. The first half of Lyonesse maps a mythical, submerged stretch of land between Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, where lions and ballgowns jostle for attention with sunken gods and pre-Raphaelite artist and muse Lizzie Siddal. Shuttle uses this terrain to explore loss, both personal and environmental. The second half, “New Lamps for Old”, focuses more directly on life after bereavement and its shifting sensations… Throughout Shuttle’s language has a vivid, smile-raising immediacy: “venture towards the happiness wherever daylight invites us”.’ – Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian, Best Recent Poetry, August 2021
‘The first section of the book, in a breathtaking showcase of skill and imagination, animates the mythical land of Lyonesse, which in legend once sat at the southwestern tip of Cornwall. Symbolism, the surreal, spiritual motifs, and more, shift and swirl together, as fluid and full of changeability as the “shape-shift silvers” of wave and sea that we delve beneath to encounter this once-was place. In the second part of the book… Shuttle paints a picture of life without a beloved, bringing details to the fore in order to tell – and touch – the reader. Fluid, thoughtful, and full of imagination, this is quite simply a must-read.’ – Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine
'In Lyonesse, a substantial collection arranged into two sections, Penelope Shuttle has achieved something remarkable: the creation of a poetic world in which it is possible to become completely immersed... It is a world that is both magical and moving in equal measure... At times demanding, at others truly enchanting, there is so much more that could be said about this extraordinary and beautiful book that it is difficult to do it justice here. Ultimately, the thing to do is get yourself a copy, hold your breath and be prepared to dive in.' - Phil Kirby, The High Window
Penelope Shuttle reads 'Missing You'
Penelope Shuttle reads her long elegiac poem 'Missing You' from Unsent. This film is from the DVD-book In Person: 30 Poets, filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce, edited by Neil Astley.
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