 Twice Through the Heart is based on a 1992 poetry documentary of the same name that Kay had written for the BBC television series Words on Film . Kay was concerned by inequalities in how the legal system treats men and women who kill their spouses and , in particular , in how the law on provocation in the United Kingdom was then interpreted , allowing a defence to murder only in the context of what happened immediately before a homicide and excluding the battered woman defence which considers the broader context which may have involved years of violent abuse . She chose to base the poems on a specific true case , that of Amelia Rossiter , a woman in her sixties who refused to give evidence in court about the years of violence from her husband that eventually led to her stabbing him twice through the heart with a kitchen knife . By the time Kay 's programme was broadcast , Rossiter had been freed , her conviction reduced to manslaughter after her plea of provocation was accepted . 
