Gillian Allnutt Launch Readings
Gillian Allnutt's tenth collection Lode is published by Bloodaxe Books in May 2025. It will be launched with a number of readings around North-East England, where Gillian Allnutt has lived for the past thirty years.
The lode in Gillian Allnutt’s title picks up on two of the many meanings of the word. A lode can be a course, a way, a journey; also a road, a lane. Her collection traces a journey through time, the time of her own life and of our lives, since the Second World War. Lode also means guidance, here the guidance afforded by the continuity and relative stability – economic, cultural, spiritual – of Britain’s postwar years, the setting of the first part of the book.
Gillian Allnutt's earlier collections Nantucket and the Angel and Lintel were both shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Poems from these collections are included in her Bloodaxe retrospective How the Bicycle Shone: New & Selected Poems (2007), which draws on six published books plus a new collection, Wolf Light, and was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Her most recent collections from Bloodaxe are indwelling (2013) and wake (2018), with a new collection Lode published in May 2025.
Gillian Allnutt was awarded The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, 2016. The Medal, awarded for excellence in poetry, was made on the basis of her body of work. Her poetry has been published by Bloodaxe Books since 1994.
‘From her first collection published in the early 1980s, Gillian Allnutt’s work has always been in conversation with the natural world and the spiritual life. Her writing roams across centuries, very different histories and lives, and draws together, without excuse or explanation, moments which link across country, class, culture and time. The North is a constant touchstone in her work; canny and uncanny, its hills and coast, its ancient histories and its people. Her poems progress over the years to a kind of synthesis of word-play and meditation. In her work the space between what is offered and what is withheld is every bit as important as what is said. She has the power to comfort and to astonish in equal measure. In her outlook, her imagination, her concerns and her lyric voice she is unique.’ – Dame Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate, for The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry Award Committee 2016
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A review of Lode is featured in Rishi Dastidar's best recent poetry round-up in The Guardian of 2 May 2025. Read online here.
‘Allnutt’s 10th collection is divided into three parts, tracing memories of her early life after the second world war, then through into lockdown, before reaching back into a pre-industrial landscape that reminds us “We are momentary, dust. // We are neither first nor last.” There are some indelible images in the poems […] More than this, Allnutt suggests there is a space beyond time that we can sometimes glimpse, and perhaps even gain comfort from…’ – Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian
Lode is featured as Jeremy Wikeley's Poetry Book of the Month for May 2025 in The Telegraph. Read in full online here.
‘Allnutt’s poems move between playfulness and austerity, eccentricity and anonymity. These might be distinctly English qualities – there’s a line here to poets such as Stevie Smith, Geoffrey Hill and Peter Didsbury. Ultimately, though, she resists comparison. Lode isn’t a departure from anything since Blackthorn (1994), her breakthrough collection. But this latest book may yet make her a lodestar for more readers, if they find their way to it. They should.’ – Jeremy Wikeley, The Telegraph (on Lode, his Poetry Book of the Month for May 2025)
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FORTHCOMING LAUNCH EVENTS
Wednesday 21 May, 7.30pm
Lit & Phil, 23 Westgate Road Newcastle NE1 1SE
Gillian Allnutt and remembering William Martin
Free event with Gillian Allnutt launching her new collection Lode and William Martin’s Marratide: Selected Poems, presented by the book’s editors Peter Armstrong and Jake Morris-Campbell with audio recordings of Bill Martin reading and singing his poems.
Tickets available at the door.
Tuesday 27 May 2025, 7pm
Gillian Allnutt & remembering William Martin
The Chapel, St Chad’s College, 18 North Bailey, Durham DH1 3RH
Free event with Gillian Allnutt launching her new collection Lode and the late William Martin’s Marratide: Selected Poems, presented by the book’s editors Peter Armstrong and Jake Morris-Campbell with audio recordings of Bill Martin reading and singing his poems.
For more details about the Chapel, see: https://www.stchads.ac.uk/college/chaplaincy/chapel/
Friday 6 June 2025, 6.30pm for 7pm
Gillian Allnutt at The People’s Bookshop, Durham
The People’s Bookshop, Prince Bishops Place, 19 High Street, Durham DH1 3UJ.
Gillian Allnutt will be launching Lode at The People’s Bookshop.
Doors open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Tickets are £5, which includes wine or soft drinks and snacks.
Booking via Ticket Tailor here.
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Gillian Allnutt spoke about and read from wake on Radio 4's Front Row in May 2018. Click here to listen. Archived in chapters (final item). Download the podcast to hear an extra poem.
An interview with Gillian Allnutt was featured in MONK Magazine in October 2021 and is available online here.
[17 March 2025]
