Penelope Shuttle has lived in Cornwall since 1970, and is the widow of the poet Peter Redgrove, co-author with her of the classic study The Wise Wound: Menstruation and Everywoman (1978; latest US edition, 2005). Her first collection of poems, The Orchard Upstairs (1981) was followed by six other books from Oxford University Press, and then A Leaf Out of His Book (1999) from Oxford Poets/Carcanet, and Redgrove's Wife (2006) and Sandgrain and Hourglass (2010) from Bloodaxe Books. Her ninth poetry collectio Redgrove's Wife (2006) was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2006. Sandgrain and Hourglass (2010) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her retrospective, Unsent: New & Selected Poems 1980-2012 (Bloodaxe Books, 2012), drew on ten collections published over three decades plus the title-collection, Unsent. Her later collections from Bloodaxe are Will you walk a little faster? (2017), Lyonesse (2021), longlisted for the Laurel Prize 2022, and History of the Child (2026).