Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2025
A Poetry Book of the Year in The Sunday Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian
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.
That sense of stability ended with the Covid pandemic, which Gillian Allnutt lived through in the former pit village of Esh Winning in Co. Durham, her home for the past 30 years, the landscape of much of the middle section of the book.
The poems in the book’s third part, Earth-hoard, are raids on the new Unknowable, drawing on the habitual resources of the old known world, informed by spiritual traditions, especially Christianity; by English literature; and by the old habit of writing about a natural world which is now threatened as never before.
‘...the best poetry collections were both serious and strong. Perhaps that’s down to maturity. Tipped for the T S Eliot Prize, British poetry’s crown, is the 76-year-old British poet Gillian Allnutt […] Deft and lovely, her 10th collection zips between her uncle’s death, fighting in the RAF, to her meeting with Elizabeth II in 2016 (“majestic, merciful, / the moon’s own soul”).’ – The Telegraph, Poetry Books of the Year 2025
‘...plain speech made devastating. [...] Allnutt’s poems move between playfulness and austerity, eccentricity and anonymity. […] 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
'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 (Poetry Books of the Month)
'…there’s no better poet alive in England, and no better poet of England, either. […] At its best – which is most of it – Allnutt’s poetry is lovely, strange and wise. These are profound and beautiful meditations on ordinary lives and the miracle of everyday language.' – Victoria Moul, The Times Literary Supplement, on Lode
'In spider-spun, effortless lines Allnutt voices a grace hidden to most. [...] Through unearthed, or invented worlds, spiritual traditions, and early modern herbals, Allnutt’s communion with the natural world is processed through older ways of knowing in our threatened present. Her imagery throughout is Edenic, pastoral and nostalgic. This new world is not for the likes of her, it seems. There is little space left for meditation, contemplation and grace that is central to Lode.' – Tom Branfoot, Poetry Salzburg Review
'Allnutt's power is in her restraint. [..] The last line of verse in the collection is 'World without edge'; a fresh doxology for a still unknowable modern world, and the perfect final note for a quietly boundless collection that confirms Allnutt as one of the best English poets writing today.' – Mary Anne Clarke, The Little Review, on Lode
‘…Gillian Allnutt is humble, minimal: her quiet work has often gone unnoticed by contemporary town-criers (though it bagged the Queen’s Gold Medal in 2016). Allnutt has been writing for some decades, and deservedly possesses a devoted following. Her latest volume, Lode, will feel familiar to long-time readers: here we find God, small things, anchoritic loneness, history, the North; and a simple, firm poetic texture, short lines and glinting abstractions in strawbeds of solidity.’ – Camille Ralphs, The Tablet
‘This is her 10th collection, showing work that becomes ever more closely focussed, not only on her immediate surroundings but on connections — both material and spiritual — to a larger world. [...] In recent collections Allnutt’s poetry has settled into a close and quiet attentiveness to the minutiae of life, and how this informs our relationship with things of the spirit. She is writing of herself, of her own observed experience, but this expands to become universal. This is in sharp contrast to much of what is published in the third decade of the twenty-first century and we should treasure her work, reading it slowly and giving it the contemplation it deserves.’ – D.A.Prince, The High Window, on Lode
‘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 2016
Gillian Allnutt was born in London but spent half her childhood in Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1988 she returned to live in the North East. Before that, she read Philosophy and English at Cambridge, and then spent the next 17 years living mostly in London. From 1983 to 1988 she was poetry editor of City Limits magazine. Her 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. This was followed by three further collections from Bloodaxe: indwelling (2013), wake (2018) and Lode (2025), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2025. She has also published Berthing: A Poetry Workbook (NEC/Virago, 1991), and was co-editor of The New British Poetry (Paladin, 1988). From 2001 to 2003 she held a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship at Newcastle and Leeds Universities. She won the Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award in 2005 and received a Cholmondeley Award in 2010. Since 1983 she has taught creative writing in a variety of contexts, mainly in adult education and as a writer in schools. In 2009/10 she held a writing residency with The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (now Freedom From Torture) in the North East, working with asylum seekers in Newcastle and Stockton. In 2013/14 she taught creative writing to undergraduates on the Poetry and Poetics course in the English Department of Durham University. She lives in County Durham. Gillian Allnutt was awarded The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, 2016. The Medal is awarded for excellence in poetry, and was presented to Gillian Allnutt by HM Queen Elizabeth in February 2017. In 2025 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
