London-born poet Gillian Allnutt spent half her childhood in Newcastle upon Tyne. She read philosophy and English at Cambridge and lived for the next 17 years mostly in London. In 1988 she returned to the north-east. From 2001 to 2003 she held a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship at Newcastle and Leeds universities. Since 1983 she has taught creative writing, mainly in adult education and as a writer in schools. She was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2016 and now lives in Co Durham.

The ‘lode’ in the title of this collection picks up on a number of definitions which offer many meanings of the word: a course, a way, a journey, a road; a watercourse, a natural or man-made channel, an open drain in fenland; a vein of metal ore. Consideration is also given as to its incorporation in longer words such as lodestar: a star that serves as a guide for navigation or, figuratively speaking, a person or thing on which one’s attention or hopes are fixed; and lodestone which, in a figurative sense, can also mean a thing that is a focus of attention or attraction. There is plenty to think about here.

The collection is divided into three distinct sections,‘Postwar’, ‘Lockdown’ and ‘Earth-Hoard’. In the first section there are poems addressed to family and friends and some personal reminiscences of Allnutt’s early days in Northumberland. The final poem in this section, ‘note’ reveals a predilection for wordplay and rhyming sound:

 

     thank you for the little pewter elephant

 

     he is my heart’s content

     inlaid mislaid in me like a parent

     part of the memory of my mother’s brother’s life unspent

 

     he is christmas past and christmas present

     patient as the little doors of advent

     as the ancient of days invariant

 

The second section is centred largely on the former pit village of Esh Winning in Co Durham, the poet’s home for the last 30 years, and her time spent in lockdown. I was particularly drawn to ‘The walk (allowed)’ which speaks of the consolation to be found in nature at such a time. Here the speaker is stilled by “First lambs in the field on the far side of the hill …/ ... The light, alert / and growing.”

In ‘Azuma Meditation’ Allnutt writes of the companionship to be found by courtesy of Zoom. Above all, the strangeness of the whole experience of lockdown is evoked effectively in the opening stanzas of ‘My Garden in Esh Winning’:

 

     The sheep are loud about their lambs

     and no cars come.

     It’s tea-time

     in the small eternity of lockdown.

 

     Nor does the tractor come

     in no uncertain terms of trundle-clatter.

     Nor do trucks come

 

     shifting down a gear

     near the bottom of the garden.

 

Several lines in this book are informed by scripture. One poem, ‘The way she remembered it’, gives an account of the anointing of Jesus written in the first person singular from the perspective of Mary Magdalene during the festival of the Passover, before his arrest and crucifixion. There are also references throughout the book to music, mythology and other works of literature.

In the final section, ‘Earth-Hoard’, Allnutt’s voice really comes into its own. Many of her poems in this section contain some wonderful lines which reveal real imaginative power. Who could not fail to revel in “the dear inconsequential circumlocution” of the wood-pigeon, or the blue glance of the germander speedwell that is “lark-long, half-known, another ounce of song or rain”?  These are fine lines indeed.

The inclusion of notes at the end helps to add to our understanding of some of the more cryptic and elusive poems in the earlier part of the book. The ‘lode’ is a journey in time, our time as well as that of the poet. It is also the guidance and solace that is to be found in scripture, the message of the medieval mystics that ‘all will be well’, and the restorative power of the natural world.

 

Gillian Allnutt, Lode, Bloodaxe, £12