Sandgrain and Hourglass by Penelope Shuttle
A poem can remove the thorn from any lion's paw - but by the same token a poet may have to ask the lion to tend her wound. Penelope Shuttle's new collection, "Sandgrain and Hourglass", charts a variety of transactions between poet-self and wound, between wound and beast. A major preoccupation is her continuing experience of loss, particularly the way time modulates and redefines grief. Some aspects of human experience can be too painful or difficult to bear except through poetry. As Ted Hughes said, "poetry is a way of speaking to people we've lost when it is too late". In these poems - as in her previous book "Redgrove's Wife" - Shuttle continues such conversations with her husband Peter Redgrove, her father Jack Shuttle, and her close friend L.H.S., among others. Her engagement with the world's manifold possibilities is also strongly present in Sandgrain and Hourglass - A machine for grading kisses? Edward Thomas translated into Japanese? A stolen reindeer? Faust? Francis Bacon's mirror? Bedtime? The possibilities are endless.
Shuttle's originality is everywhere evident, her response to loss both surprising and moving - Stephen Knight, Independent on Sunday'Her poems of mourning...are among the best she has written - Elaine Feinstein, The Times. A wonderful book of poetry of love and loss by Penelope Shuttle about her late husband, poet Peter Redgrove. It spoke to me very strongly, having lost my own husband not so long ago - Maureen Lipman, Daily Express.
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 (due 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).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781852248826 |
| ISBN 10 | 1852248823 |
| Title | Sandgrain and Hourglass |
| Author | Penelope Shuttle |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloodaxe Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2010-10-30 |
| Number of pages | 96 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |