Full Description
The submerged land of Lyonesse was once part of Cornwall, according to myth and the oral tradition, standing for a lost paradise in Arthurian legend, but now an emblem of human frailty in the face of climate change. And there was indeed a Bronze Age inundation event which swept the entire west of Cornwall under the sea, with only the Scilly Isles 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.
After seeing the Scilly Isles from a small plane at a low altitude - flying over the Wolf Lighthouse - and then visiting the recent Sunken Cities exhibition at the British Museum, imagination and memory played their part in joining the Lyonesse dots together for her, prompting what she calls 'a spontaneous inundation of approaches to the theme, images, soundings of Lyonesse'. As she writes in a preface to this book: 'The universality of loss, both of physical cities and of the human experience erased from the record, enhanced the resource of Lyonesse in my writing. Lyonesse is a place of paradox. It is real, had historical existence. It is also 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.'
The second part of this book - 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 bereavement. 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.
Contents
11 Preface
LYONESSE
19 Door
20 Palm Sunday
21 The Gownshops
22 Our Cradle Sea
23 Strike, strike the bell
24 Make a Wish
25 Kelpy
26 easy
27 Inscribed on a Stela found on the seabed
28 Sentimental Customs
29 Night Gate
30 by the hoar rock in the drowned wood
32 here's my Lyonesse
33 Legends
34 Fortuna
35 Owls
36 clad me naked
37 Why the Maidens prefer future funk to a Sumerian goat
38 Interviewing Neptune
39 My Friend
40 In the dark
41 Saturdays & Sundays
42 When the Devil seals the seam with hot pitch
43 Midsummer
44 Lizzie
45 Willow o' the Wisp
46 Holy Father Lions
47 O Shake That Girl with the Blue Dress On
48 Boat-drawn
49 Rusalka
50 Siren Scholarship
51 The Foster Brothers of Kernow Speak
52 Sewing Lesson Under the Sea
53 land under sea
54 An Account of the Submergence
57 land under sea
58 Church of the Crayfish Christ
59 Up jumps the shark
60 Starlit
61 On St Mary's Quayside an old salt button-holes a passer-by
62 Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep, so beware, beware
63 Jackie Onassis orders new dancing shoes
64 Twinned with Canopus
65 They say the voiced angel is an invention of the English
66 More deadly than the Siren's song is the Siren's silence
67 We are the servants of lions
68 Sea Street
69 The Restorer
70 May the Holy Ghost blow your sailboat home
71 The Devil
72 Praise the Crayfish Christ striding over the waves!
73 Mermaid sightings here
74 Cradle-rocker's Report
75 Prospectus: Lyonesse College
76 The Foster Brothers of Kernow Speak
77 My Old Lover
78 Lions on a love prowl
79 Wooden Lady
80 My own volition
81 Time in the World
82 Blues
84 Solo
85 Who's down there
86 Sermon of the Crayfish Christ, or The Latitudes
88 When and If
89 Blessing
90 Goodbye
93 Notes
NEW LAMPS FOR OLD
99 cup of evenings
100 what is the air made of?
101 new lamps for old
102 husband
103 home
104 Dusk coming on
105 sevenfold
106 fly-by-night
107 some strange hour of night
108 Swarthmoor Hall, Ulverston
117 my house
118 St Olave's Church
119 Village of La Baleine
120 as long as the thorn tree stands
121 Kandinsky at the Tate
122 Hell
123 longing is part of it
124 the train is
125 Ruby Loftus screwing a breech ring for a Bofors Anti-Aircraft Gun
126 break of day/this one evening
129 glance
130 other elements
131 love letters
132 May time
133 Ann Boleyn's Music Book
134 May evening
135 Under Ragged Stone Hill
143 clouds in the sky
144 wild rose
145 Malvern Link
146 the four queens find Lancelot sleeping
147 found poem: Swarthmoor Hall
148 Three Years
149 in the mirror
153 Notes
