Gillian Allnutt interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Front Row in 2018 & on Radio 3's Free Thinking in 2017; plus podcast interviews with READ & The Poetry Review. Interview...
I carried the earth, its poor inscription, on my back
who will remember it
who will remember the sun and the moon
my pillow stones
III
silent the settlement of stone
IV
cuthbert alone
hwaet
my whole assent, my heart, my hut
of stone unhewn and turf
and bent
ferann
V
or priory or prayer the wind blows through
VI
in gertrude jekyll’s garden
am drawn, an old reluctance, like the moon
the sea, for example, sings to itself alone its nunc dimittis
we are bound to one another, God, my own anon
and of our solitude we are the guardian
VII
perpetual arrival of the sea and of the king acquisitive his people
*
Hereford Hop
(for Tom)
Meanwhile, I said, I have brought you a hundred grammes of Hereford Hop
from the expensive farm shop
at Stretton under Fosse
where the legions pass and pass
on their way from Bath
to Lutterworth.
Meanwhile, you said, according
to the Samsung
in the beginning
even kings
were led by the nose,
by the plosive
light of stars
that pales and passes, passes
as the soul upon its way
in perpetuity.
Who knows what
will come Hubbleward from the heart’s
deep field,
from Cotswold
or from Bredon Hill?
Meanwhile
the table,
the makeshift vase, the improbable
orange blouse of the rose,
the cheese
without wine.
Imagine,
I said. Who knows
but we’ve rings on our fingers and bells on our toes?
Contents List
10 York Way
11 again
12 lindisfarne: the roughs
14 King Edward II
15 Grief
16 Bookshop, London
18 Hereford Hop
20 1950s Childhood
21 Among Women
22 ‘O my chevalier!’
23 Stranger
24 Fleuve
25 abutment
26 the displaced child
27 Near the Peace Garden
28 magdalen
29 medlar, meditation
30 ‘as it were hunger…’
31 Stars
32 Nearing Warminster
33 belsen
34 music
35 early spring
36 The Quince Tree
37 Song
38 Prodigal
39 ‘We have tret one another…’
40 in a field of oats
41 silence
42 prayer (‘impromptu’)
43 meditation
44 The Word Quire
45 my seventeenth-century heart
46 haunt
47 Portrait of Hester by her husband
48 Harnham
49 prayer (‘may I make amendment’)
50 desuetude
51 considering
52 Home
53 My Competence
54 Going to Gloucester
55 Wedding-dress
56 Elias
57 Ignominy
58 Eliza Bowes
59 birthday
60 Predictive Text
61 ‘Light will come anyway…’
62 healing
63 The King’s Men
64 Beech in Lineover Wood
65 Amplitude
66 wake
66 Notes
Related Reviews
‘She’s an original, though, ascetic and startling.’ – Sean O’Brien, Sunday Times
‘[Her] reticence has increased with each book of poetry and forms the clearest line of development in her work.’ – Stephen Matterson, Metre
‘Gillian Allnutt is a quietly original poet who has followed an uncompromising path. In its inwardness, its emblematic use of nature and its intense spiritual quest, her poetry is in the line of Hopkins and Geoffrey Hill. Her tone and verbal music is quite her own.’ – Peter Forbes, Contemporary Writers
'What is most attractive about her work is that she is never solemn about the spiritual life which fascinates her.’ – Helen Dunmore, Observer [on Lintel]
'Hers are original poems, scrupulous, unflashy, meditative, pushing at the ineffable, peculiarly inside language, earning their hard-won spiritual insights and flaring with sudden illuminations that are sustaining for all of us.’ – Michael Laskey, Aldeburgh Poetry Festival
'Allnutt’s wonderful poems allow in ever more silence, figured on the page by a double space between lines and the meditative force of her images.' - Adam Thorpe, Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year 2013
‘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, on behalf of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry Award Committee
