Gillian Allnutt was born in London but spent half her childhood in Newcastle upon Tyne. Nantucket and the Angel (1997) and Lintel (2001) were shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and poems from these collections are included in her Bloodaxe retrospective How the Bicycle Shone: New & Selected Poems (2007), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Lode (Bloodaxe Books) is her tenth collection. Since 1983 she has taught creative writing in a variety of contexts, mainly in adult education and as a writer in schools. In 1988 she returned to live in the North East. In 2009/10 she held a writing residency with The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (now Freedom From Torture), working with asylum seekers in Newcastle and Stockton. She won the Northern Rock Foundation Writer’s Award in 2005 and received a Cholmondeley Award in 2010. In 2025 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Allnutt received The Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry 2016. Photo © Phyllis Christopher
Shortlisted Works
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We’re finding it hard to wait until January for the T. S. Eliot Prize Shortlist Readings at the Southbank’s Royal Festival Hall… so we thought we’d relive some of the previous events by asking those involved about their experiences. Ted Hodgkinson is Head of Literature and Spoken Word at the...
Gillian Allnutt, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2025 with her collection Lode (Bloodaxe Books), is the featured poet in this week’s Eliot Prize newsletter. The newsletter tells you about the wide range of content we have just published to help you get to know Gillian and her work....
We’re delighted to announce the T. S. Eliot Prize 2025 Shortlist, which offers ‘something for everyone’ in collections of ‘great range, suggestiveness and power’. Judges Michael Hofmann (Chair), Patience Agbabi and Niall Campbell chose the Shortlist from 177 poetry collections submitted by 64 British and Irish publishers. The diverse list...
