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Lyonesse
The submerged land of Lyonesse was once part of Cornwall, according to myth, standing for a lost paradise in Arthurian legend, but becomes an emblem of human frailty in the face of climate change in Penelope Shuttle’s new poems. There was indeed a Bronze Age inundation event which swept the entire west of Cornwall under the sea, with only the Isles of Scilly and St Michael’s Mount left as remnants above sea-level. Lyonesse was also Thomas Hardy’s name for Cornwall where Penelope Shuttle has lived all her adult life, always fascinated by the stories and symbolic presence of Lyonesse. In her preface she ‘Lyonesse is a place of paradox, both real and historical as well as an imaginary region for exploring depths. It holds grief for many kinds of loss… The poems seek re-wilding of a city where human loss interconnects with mythic loss; myth is rooted in the real.’ This book is two collections in the second part, New Lamps for Old, is a collection of poems she needed to write in coming up for air from the watery depths of Lyonesse, to find ways to begin again, to find meaning in life after losing her husband, the poet Peter Redgrove. The ‘old lamps’ of a former life have been extinguished, leaving darkness. Her challenge was to find ‘new lamps’ to illuminate and give meaning to life. Lyonesse is a fluid magical world. The poems of New Lamps for Old are concerned with earth, air and fire. Both collections share allegiance with the fifth element, the spirit.
- GenresPoetry
154 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 24, 2021
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32 people want to read
About the author
Penelope Shuttle
67 books11 followersPenelope Shuttle (b. 1947) 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. Recognition came quickly for Shuttle with an Eric Gregory Award in 1974 that acknowledged her poetry's visionary power. This quality is something she shares with the poets she read in translation, voices such as Rilke, Ahkmatova, and Lorca, whose early influence was far more profound than the pervading realism of the English poets of the period. Shuttle has also written five acclaimed novels as well as seven poetry collections, her Selected Poems (OUP, 1998) being a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Shuttle's poems are full of elemental imagery: water, earth and, in particular, lightening, as in her description of her marriage in 'The Weather House' with its "trembling galvanic rooms". Whilst her subject matter can be everyday - motherhood, depression, bereavement - she refuses to be bound by anecdote, drawing instead on myth and dream to transform reality: in her work "the ordinary seen as heavenly" ('Thief') becomes the norm. In keeping with her role as witness, Shuttle's language sometimes has a ceremonial quality about it, a setting aside of words from their everyday currency which is like the difference between a coin used to buy bread and a coin thrown into a well as an offering "Splashing down//for reverence, not luck" ('The Well at Mylor'). However, when dealing with the intimacies of family life, such as the shift of a daughter into womanhood ('Outgrown') or the process of grief, as in the moving sequence for her husband, 'Missing You', Shuttle can be painfully direct.
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/pen...
Shuttle's poems are full of elemental imagery: water, earth and, in particular, lightening, as in her description of her marriage in 'The Weather House' with its "trembling galvanic rooms". Whilst her subject matter can be everyday - motherhood, depression, bereavement - she refuses to be bound by anecdote, drawing instead on myth and dream to transform reality: in her work "the ordinary seen as heavenly" ('Thief') becomes the norm. In keeping with her role as witness, Shuttle's language sometimes has a ceremonial quality about it, a setting aside of words from their everyday currency which is like the difference between a coin used to buy bread and a coin thrown into a well as an offering "Splashing down//for reverence, not luck" ('The Well at Mylor'). However, when dealing with the intimacies of family life, such as the shift of a daughter into womanhood ('Outgrown') or the process of grief, as in the moving sequence for her husband, 'Missing You', Shuttle can be painfully direct.
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/pen...
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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June 2, 2023'Lyonesse' presents a problem. On the one hand, it’s tricky to talk about because I don’t feel able to map out the book’s depths. Parts of it remain sunken and mysterious to me – I can claim no commanding vantage point, despite having browsed it on-off for a couple of months and read some of the poems upwards of a dozen times.
On the other hand, it’s tricky to talk about because it describes itself, its themes and its subject matter clearly enough without any need for me to add gloss. In the preface and on the cover and in the poems themselves we are introduced to Lyonesse as “a submerged land”, “a city under the sea”, “an emblem of human frailty in the face of climate change”, “a fluid magical world”, “a feasting-cup city”, “just what you want it to be / streets paved / with the sea”. And in a sense, this is all we need to know; the poems expand on and exemplify these core traits, even foreseeing my present dilemma by referring to Lyonesse as “a place of paradox”.
The poems are also characterised as a series of ‘soundings’ that test the weight and the character of the Lyonesse concept through propositions, and by answering their own questions. How are bells made in an underwater city? They are cast out of lobster carcasses. What would a church service there comprise? Well, the ‘Crayfish Christ’ would have this to say:
Beloveds
you must live for pleasure alone!
This is my gospel
Am I not half-brother to the moon?
Are not the deeds of my claw everlasting joy and delight?
(Church of Crayfish Christ)
Thus Lyonesse accumulates history and character. A close reading seems redundant; the book is a Lonely Planet guide. It fills you in on all the details, and repeats its own title so often that ‘Lyonesse’ becomes a spell in itself, a magic word, the repeated hissing and breaking of waves.
Full review: https://gojonstonego.com/blog/2022/09...
On the other hand, it’s tricky to talk about because it describes itself, its themes and its subject matter clearly enough without any need for me to add gloss. In the preface and on the cover and in the poems themselves we are introduced to Lyonesse as “a submerged land”, “a city under the sea”, “an emblem of human frailty in the face of climate change”, “a fluid magical world”, “a feasting-cup city”, “just what you want it to be / streets paved / with the sea”. And in a sense, this is all we need to know; the poems expand on and exemplify these core traits, even foreseeing my present dilemma by referring to Lyonesse as “a place of paradox”.
The poems are also characterised as a series of ‘soundings’ that test the weight and the character of the Lyonesse concept through propositions, and by answering their own questions. How are bells made in an underwater city? They are cast out of lobster carcasses. What would a church service there comprise? Well, the ‘Crayfish Christ’ would have this to say:
Beloveds
you must live for pleasure alone!
This is my gospel
Am I not half-brother to the moon?
Are not the deeds of my claw everlasting joy and delight?
(Church of Crayfish Christ)
Thus Lyonesse accumulates history and character. A close reading seems redundant; the book is a Lonely Planet guide. It fills you in on all the details, and repeats its own title so often that ‘Lyonesse’ becomes a spell in itself, a magic word, the repeated hissing and breaking of waves.
Full review: https://gojonstonego.com/blog/2022/09...
February 19, 2022
A bit like a fable, this collection would be good for children or young folk interested in the story- or world-building potential of poetry. I found this collection (which as another reviewer pointed out is really two collections) on a list of poetry about climate change. I can see how that would be plucked out from Lyonesse and its changing powers drawn out by Shuttle, but certainly is an abstraction. Every Lyonesse poem reminds you, unnecessarily, that its in that collection by including some conjunction of the word.
I liked the more traditional pieces - o shake that girl with the blue dress on
"I'll eye-spy you in the bobbing shadow
the coastguard 'copter casts
on the deep blue sea
and in the solitudes of the week after half-term
I'll bring you my bird-in-the-hand
pitch you the swansong of Lyonesse"
or from The Restorer
"when he grasps the nettle of me
I'm tear-honed
tongue-tied
just the way I like it"
on climate: May the Holy Ghost blow your sailboat home
"Lyonesse is a blind alley
where I forget
what hangs my bones together
because when all's said and done
I'm no more than that line on a weather map
inked-in more darkly to show
rain is here"
If anything, the second collection felt more aptly descriptive of an author's hometown. The world around us is the world around us - to force an image feels cartoonish.
I liked the more traditional pieces - o shake that girl with the blue dress on
"I'll eye-spy you in the bobbing shadow
the coastguard 'copter casts
on the deep blue sea
and in the solitudes of the week after half-term
I'll bring you my bird-in-the-hand
pitch you the swansong of Lyonesse"
or from The Restorer
"when he grasps the nettle of me
I'm tear-honed
tongue-tied
just the way I like it"
on climate: May the Holy Ghost blow your sailboat home
"Lyonesse is a blind alley
where I forget
what hangs my bones together
because when all's said and done
I'm no more than that line on a weather map
inked-in more darkly to show
rain is here"
If anything, the second collection felt more aptly descriptive of an author's hometown. The world around us is the world around us - to force an image feels cartoonish.
March 18, 2024
The first half exhaustively evokes the drowned land of Arthurian legend. I found much more precision and energy when her poems turned to human-sized losses ('May time') and the natural world in front of her ('Under Ragged Stone Hill').
October 11, 2022
Day 18 Choice The Sealey Poetry Challenge 2022
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews