Denise Levertov described Allnutt's poems as 'at once hard and delicate, like wrought iron'. They are both serious and light in touch, deeply humane and spiritually profound, showing the spirit surviving amongst the tatters of Christianity in a modern wilderness. "How the Bicycle Shone" includes selections from her books "Spitting the Pips Out" (1981), "Beginning the Avocado" (1987), "Blackthorn" (1994) and "Nantucket and the Angel" (1997), as well as the whole of "Lintel" (2001), "Sojourner" (2004) and a collection of new poems, "Wolflight" (2007).