Bernadette Carter is an MA student at Oxford Brookes working on a dissertation about the work of Gillian Allnutt, Alice Oswald, and Kathleen Jamie and their representation of the natural world. Here she reviews a recent reading by Allnutt in Oxford.
To be present at Gillian Allnutt’s reading in Oxford recently was to experience ‘that nest of thin air – birthing what a moment ago was neither here nor there’. Her poems have few words, with plenty of space in between, but at the end of each poem she read – almost 20 – there was that ‘Emily Dickinson’ moment… (‘If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry.’)
Gillian’s poetry is naturally spiritual, but with its feet on the ground. It incorporates ancient history into the present and the new. As it stands on the page, with few notes, it can be tricky to access, but on Monday we were treated to fairly lengthy introductions, which were both insightful and entertaining. We heard how, sitting in the car eating sandwiches in London, Gillian and her partner watched a Moroccan bookseller putting away boxes of books from the street; it led to a conversation, and then to the poem ‘Bookshop’. We heard of Gillian’s work with asylum seekers, people who had nothing but the God they brought with them, and through whom ‘Stars’ and ‘Desuetude’ came to be written. Gillian had chosen a nature theme, but also an Oxford theme, starting with ‘O My Chevalier’, in tribute to Oxford man, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and moving on to a series of three poems based on the founding of the Oxford Botanic Gardens. And she read ‘Amplitude’ (my favourite), that beautiful poem about a slow spiritual awakening through life. She read from her two latest collections (of nine), wake (2018) and indwelling (2013).
The venue, Regent’s Park College, a small old college nestled in Pusey Street, added to the atmosphere of ancient and new. The room had to be changed at the last minute to the Chapel because of the numbers – they included fellow poets, ex-students of Gillian’s writing courses and a couple of old friends from Cambridge. English and Theological students from both Oxford universities came, along with many other devotees of her poetry. Gillian said later that her regular ‘followers’ seem to love her poetry for its spiritual quality. She spoke of her own journey, from ‘heavy’ religion as a child, to no religion, through Quakerism to an individualised and non-church-based Christianity. Beginning to write in London at 25, with the support of a women’s group, Beginning the Avocado,her second collection, was published by Virago. Gillian is now based in the North East and published by Bloodaxe and told us how Neil Astley ‘wickedly’ asks writers to draft the back cover for their own publications.
One of the nature themed poems Gillian read was ‘early spring’, and its last lines became something of a motif through the evening, used by Niall Munro as he introduced Gillian, and referred to by Gillian herself:
by absence astounded
by presence astounded.
Privileged to be there as part of the audience, I could personally apply the phrase to the absence of egoism and presence of authenticity in the reading. However, the poem begins: ‘am without anger wounded’ and continues later with: ‘as ash by winter bound’. It hints at the depth of some misunderstood but honourable feeling, which is artistically and masterfully understated in this age of confessional poetry. There is mystery and mysticism in Gillian Allnutt’s work. Some things even she herself doesn’t understand, saying that she sometimes writes in a way that is ‘profounder than I am at this point in life’. Of her poetry she says: ‘It remains as closed as I can and as open as I can’.
You can read more about Gillian's work on the Bloodaxe website and more about her most recent book, wake, here.
The Poetry Centre also featured 'Nearing Warminster', a poem from wake, as its Weekly Poem recently.
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