The poems mark a change of direction in Penelope Shuttle’s work – shifting from elegy to explorations of cities – both actual and metaphoric.

The significant impetus for this sequence of poems is a guided walk led by poet Tom Chivers on a cold February afternoon in 2013. Tom took a group along the route of the long-buried ‘lost’ Walbrook River, from Shoreditch to its outflow in the Thames near Canon Street Station This walk in sleet and icy winds inspired the title poem —’In the Snowy Air’.