Penelope Shuttle has made her home in Cornwall since 1970 and the county’s mercurial weather and rich

history are continuing sources of inspiration. So too is the personal and artistic union Shuttle shared with her

husband, the poet Peter Redgrove, until his untimely death in 2003. The fruitful nature of their relationship

is celebrated in her poetry and in the work they accomplished together, most notably in the ground breaking

feminist studies on menstruation, ‘The Wise Wound’, and its sequel, ‘Alchemy for Women’.

“For me it is the way the poem breathes that gives it form"

Penelope Shuttle

Will You Walk a Little Faster?

By Penelope Shuttle. Published by Bloodaxe Books, May 2017

Cornwall Contemporary Poetry Festival

Will be held in Falmouth, from Thursday 22

to Sunday 25 November 2018

Penelope Shuttle has made her home in Cornwall

since 1970 and the county’s mercurial weather and

rich history are continuing sources of inspiration.

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‘Will You Walk a Little Faster?’ is Penelope Shuttle’s first new book-length collection since her Bloodaxe

retrospective, ‘Unsent: New and Selected Poems 1980-2012’, and was published on her 70th birthday.

Penelope Shuttle’s new collection explores cities (London,

Bristol) on foot and via inward exploration, drawing on

architecture, history and personal memory. These are poems

drawn from the flipside of experience, undermining and

rebuilding syntax in order to precipitate language, and, in the

main, abjuring punctuation. The poems also engage with

inward exploration where both active and meditative thinking

seek a vulnerable equilibrium; poems more interested in

framing questions than arriving at answers.

Back in 2005 Penelope attended a Study Day at Tate Britain which focused on the Gallery’s current major

exhibition, Turner, Whistler, Monet. She made some notes, filed them and promptly forgot about them.

A few years later they came to light in a notebook. Suddenly she found herself writing about Monet in London.

Monet was a man with a very hearty appetite. Penelope had gone to the Study Day on her own, but more usually

visit places with friends, or with her daughter. In one of the poems Penelope was accompanied by her Great

Aunt Wave, and it is 1955. The common thread of the pamphlet are visits she made and those experiences she

encountered.  Sissinghurst, Paris, Lapland, Galway, Wales, and Rome, are places explored. A set of travelling

poems capturing a sense of the energy she felt at each different locale.

Four portions of everything on the menu for M’sieur Monet!

By Penelope Shuttle. Published by Indigo Dreams Publishing, August 2016

Penelope Shuttle & John Greening

Nine Arches Press

Penelope Shuttle

Verbivoracious Press

Penelope Shuttle

Indigo Dreams Publishing

“Although my ‘Unsent: New and Selected Poems’ stretches over thirty two years I remain no wiser as to how poems

get themselves written. Since I began writing in my teens, nothing has so enthralled me as poetry; before my first

attempts at writing, reading poetry had thrown a similar glamour over me, as it continues to do. Words are made of

the breath of life, its essence, and they land on the page still breathing. That, I think, is the mystery and the surprise,

for me, and then follows the hard work.” -  Penelope Shuttle

“It falls on to the open page through some kind magic"

Penelope Shuttle

Will You Walk a Little Faster? review by The Observer

Will You Walk a Little Faster? - review by Kate Kellaway, The Observer, 2 July 2017

“Penelope Shuttle need not walk any faster – as this, her 14th collection, demonstrates. It is the gentle pace

that captivates in her poems. And what a phenomenal poet she is (she has recently celebrated her 70th birthday).

She has an unbossy, contemplative, unmistakable voice. She leads you quietly and helps you see things –

London especially – afresh. There is nothing stale about the way she writes, although she is thinking about

what it means to be older. She reflects on the city, its present moment and history – its bones. The past is there,

almost palpable, and the dead, too – only just beyond touch and sight. She salutes London while resisting its

metropolitan speed. Once part of a celebrated working duo with her late husband, the poet Peter Redgrove,

his absence is strong enough to be a presence here. This is a volume that combines sorrow with an oddball

wryness – an unusual mix. Shuttle implausibly casts herself as a relic, and in a comically sympathetic poem

set in Waitrose, Balham, measures her time against the nonstop pace of the supermarket.”  -  Kate Kellaway

“Reading poetry. My grandfather had a shop - he sold prams and bikes, but he was also an unofficial pawn-broker

so when times were hard between the wars people would bring a box of stuff and he'd give them a couple of quid,

and it would often have old anthologies and old school books in and I would sit in my grandfather's house and read

them. It's where I first came across Keats, Edward Thomas and poets like that.” -  Penelope Shuttle

“Your journey into poetry, what started it?”

Alyson Hallet from Raceme Magazine asks the questions

For all copyright and permissions enquires, please contact contact Penelope Shuttles' literary agent:

David Higham Associates, 7th Floor, Waverley House, 7–12 Noel Street, London  W1F 8GQ  UK

Email: dha@davidhigham.co.uk  Website: www.davidhigham.co.uk

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feeds or if you wish to contact Penelope about her work you can email her on penny@penelopeshuttle.co.uk  

Click on the YouTube link below to find recordings of Penelope reading her poetry.