It isn't a large oeuvre, but then there is no excess. Shapcott anticipates her critics at every turn. She knows what she is up against. She will be attacked for what she does. An ironising of irony.
Nothing is Manichaean.
And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing. It's another poem from the ironic pages of the Shapcott gender bestiary. Watching Medusa Struck dumb when I saw her scalp begin to stir, saw the little eyes slide like drops through her hair, saw them look back at me kindly and fluid as a bunch of lovers. Here we have a challenge to the mythologies of patriarchy.