Publisher's Synopsis
Denise Levertov described Gillian Allnutt's poetry as 'at once hard and delicate, like wrought iron'. In Blackthorn, these qualities of strength and tenderness are held in balance as she asks the question: What is real and what is metaphorical? Allnutt's quest for knowledge takes her through places close to her heart (Norfolk, Argyll and especially Newcastle) and places she re-creates with equal vividness (Anglo-Saxon England, medieval Russia, ancient Africa). Much of Blackthorn is a post-feminist exploration of the feminine - and, correspondingly, necessarily, of the masculine. It is an affirmation of human androgyny and a plea for the androgyny of God. The poems come out of worlds known and imagined, outer and inner, tracking archetypal and spiritual levels of the psyche, often within the framework of an ambivalent Christianity.
