Penelope 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, Akhmatova, 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 eight poetry collections, her Selected Poems (OUP, 1998) being a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. her most recent collection is Redgrove's Wife (Bloodaxe, 2006). the two novels offered here were co-authored with Peter Redgove and form part of The Redgrove Library, originally published by Stride, but taken over by Shearsman when Stride closed down.

[Text adapted from the author's page at the Poetry Archive.]