welcome
Winner of The Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition 2006, Allison’s collection, The Night Trotsky Came to Stay (Smith/Doorstop), was shortlisted for the Forward Best First Collection Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Review, The Guardian, The Times and PN Review, have been broadcast on BBC radio and appear in the Forward anthologies 2007 and 2008 and in the Forward Poems of the Decade 2002-2011.
Allison has an MA in Poetry and was a finalist in the MMU Poetry Prize 2008. Her second collection, Miming Happiness (Smith/Doorstop), was published in 2010. She read at Ledbury and Aldeburgh Poetry Festivals in 2011.
Her poem, To the Lighthouse, won the 2011 National Poetry Competition:
"In three stanzas, this poem captures not just the movement of time (that so obsessed Woolf) but also the passing of
time in the poet’s life, the journey from the girl in her exams, to the motherless woman at the end. It is a tour de force.
It takes huge leaps and yet shimmers with small details: Minta’s missing brooch. It is a meta-poem."
Jackie Kay
"she invests her confident clear-sighted narratives with real vitality "Aldeburgh Festival
"her voice is clear and strong, her poems perceptive and moving"Ledbury Festival
"a poet at the height of her powers" Poetry Book Society
"hymns translating to glory the everyday struggles of ordinary people" Tribune
"vivid and sensual" Vicki Feaver
"McVety at her most singular and best" Magma