DURHAM LITERATURE FESTIVAL 2000

 

GILLIAN ALLNUTT

Gillian Allnutt was born in 1949 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 English and Philosophy at Cambridge and then spent the next 17 years living mostly in London, working part time in futher and adult education but also as a performer, publisher, journalist and freelance editor. From 1983 to 1988 she was poetry editor at City Limits magazine.

Gillian has published four collections of poetry: Spitting the Pips Out (Sheba 1981), Begining the Avacado (Virago 1987), Blackthorn (Bloodaxe 19940 and, most recently Nantucket and the Angel (Bloodaxe 1997) which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her fifth collection , Lintel, is due from Bloodaxe in 2001. She co-edited The New British Poetry (Paladin, 1988) and is the author of Berthing: A Poetry Workbook (National Extension College/Virago 1991). She currently teaches creative writing and literature in adult education and works as a writer in schools.

'The Old English echoes are part and parcel of her vision, which is unusually cohert without sacrificing the modesty of doubt. I urge you in this age of brash outwardness to read her'

Adam Thorpe, The Observer

'Allnutt is a poet of considerable spiritual scope, one whose sense of 'old, forgotten bridle paths' pushes English mystical nature poetry a few inches into the next millennium, amd whose awareness that this is still "dirty England", "a land of blown plastic bags" gives her lightning visions a secure earth'

John Greening, Thumbscrew

'Witty and wise and unlike anything else you'll read this year'

Neil Powell, Poetry Review

'Allnutt's uncommon and often highly effective ear .... enables her to deploy both comic and pathetic effects in suprising ways'

Sean O'Brien, Poetry Review