Penelope Shuttle's History of the Child is a highly evocative exploration of childhood, memory, and imagination, blending personal and historical perspectives. The book's themes include parenting, grief, nature, emotional recovery and connections to the past, guided by the idea of childhood as a transformative and rebellious space.
The first of the book's four sections features poems about Katherine of Aragon, the Vestal Virgins, Stanley Spencer and Wallace Stevens, with a focus on grief, nature, and animals. The second, Book of Lullabies, steps closer to the theme of the child, with poems about memory, inwardness, climate change, sexuality in older age, and the natural world. The third part, History of the Child, is a journey back to Penelope Shuttle's own childhood, blending personal memories with imagined perspectives to explore psychological crises, emotional recovery, and the traumas of childhood. It introduces an 'alternative girl child self', inspired by Persian legends, by her late husband Peter Redgrove's dream of such a girl ('my death, and she is my soul'), and by a friend's fanciful wish. The culminating fourth section is a playful sequence about a little table, inspired by her mother and her childhood. The table symbolises connection to her mother, who lived to be 100 years old, and their shared history.
History of the Child is guided by themes of memory, imagination, foreboding, magic, history and humour, and seeks to articulate the essence of 'being' through fiery language and elemental imagery. She draws inspiration from Donald Winnicott's concept of the 'potentive space' where play, fantasy and reality intersect.
Table of Contents:
Father Lear
12 Father Lear
13 Orchard End, or The Laboratory of Continuous Effort
14 Beautifully done
15 Rome
16 Wallace
17 Big ships
18 Hearts by night
19 Kew Gardens, 1913
20 Hallam Street
21 Transparent
22 Self-portrait as Katharine of Aragon
23 Dog
25 The Lucidity (or Otherwise) of a Swan
26 Gardens where there’s no need for a garden
27 Uncommon Prayer
28 Wild Rose
29 Washing the Lips
30 Some had their mouths stopped with gold
33 Osterley Park Summertide Trees
34 1976
35 the colour rain in the lavender
36 Rue in Wine
37 The Half-guest
38 Verbs
39 Yoshinaga
40 Observed Phenomena and Fancied Correspondences
41 the opposite of night
42 thou twingest me therewith Beloved as doth a pair of tongs
43 it came as if called
44 long-lost
Book of Lullabies
46 cockcrow
47 cradled in the roots of a great tree
48 homestead
49 the candle
50 three green gowns of silence
51 I feel sorry for the anchors, sorry for the piers,
52 Contemplative Promenade Experience
54 infancy of the weather
60 early 21st-century ice loss
61 the false child
62 written on a linden leaf
63 cunnikin
64 summoning the ferry from the shade of the willow
65 book of lullabies
70 all souls’ night
History of the Child
73 newefangel
74 own judge and jury
75 notes on her background
76 nine years old
77 child London of London
78 binding with briars, my joys and desires
79 in a strange land
80 Matty
81 her first-nation name is birthstone
82 who made thee?
83 child’s childhood
84 child tilts the planet sideways
85 school play 1957
87 simple question
88 she wants to be famous, so
89 sold her bed and lay on the straw
90 Old Pretender Doll
91 plane to Fargo 1959
92 Lucifer
93 wearing a tunic cut down from…
95 sleeping rough in class
96 frequent subject of Japanese art
97 valentine’s day
98 oh but
99 white road by the bombsite
100 FAQ
101 child as linden shield
102 she’s not the guest of honour
103 glad rag
104 memo to the child
105 La Pucelle
106 when she was the Queen of Maidens
107 st elmo’s chapel
108 down lullaby lane
109 what is trauma?
110 what is happiness?
111 willing sacrifice
little table
115 little table
123 Notes
