“When I read Allison Grayhurst’s poetry, I am compelled by the intensity and strength of her spirituality. Her personal experience of God drives her poetry. With honesty and vulnerability, she fleshes out the profound mystery of knowing at once both the beauty and terror of God’s love, both freedom and obedience, deep joy and sorrow, both being deeply rooted in but also apart from the world, and lastly, both life and death. Her poems undulate through these paradoxes with much feeling and often leave me breathless, shaken. Allison Grayhurst’s poems are both beautiful and difficult to behold,” Anna Mark, poet and teacher.

“A river is in Allison Grayhurst’s poems. Sometimes it rages over boulders hidden beneath rapids. Sometimes it is as calm and placid as a summer day reflecting skies so blue they are as unusual as a Stellar Jay’s wings. Sometimes it is as unpredictable as the rhythm of clouds gathering before a storm. Made up of words, emotions, thoughts, thoughts crystallized into ideas, this river, like most rivers, is unforgettable. One poem cascades after another into a flood of poetry. As in the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Allison Grayhurst’s work can be dense with meanings hidden beneath the flowing surface of words. The emotions in her poems sear with the power of Sylvia Plath. One layer reflects light over another layer of thought and emotion that leads to yet another layer. This is as serious a poet as is writing poetry today. For those adventurous enough to venture into a river wild, deep, calm, beautiful, shadowed, light, filled with moods and emotions of both an inner and the earth’s landscape, then this is a journey worth taking. It leads to experiences that have the texture and substance of life,” Thomas Davis, poet, educator, scholar, playwright, and novelist.

Reviews of Into My Mortal

“Her (Allison Grayhurst’s) poetry appears visceral, not for the faint of heart, and moves forward with a dynamism, with a frenetic pulse. If you seek the truth, the physical blood and bones, then, by all means, open the world into which we were all born,” Anne Burke, poet, regional representative for Alberta on the League of Canadian Poets’ Council, and chair of the Feminist Caucus, 2014.

Review of Into My Mortal, by Allison Grayhurst

(Edge Unlimited Publishing, 2004)

111 pp paper.

“Although the iron mask resembles that of the Count of Monte Crisco, she expresses the poetic nutrients that keep her/mind’s eye vivid (“It is told again”), and declares, “I am thirsty, still/a poet” (“Desperation/Affirmation”). This collection is primarily devoted to the conception, gestation, delivering, and raising of children. A foremost wish “as we walk, born as one” (“Vacant Underground”) for a home of three turned into four” (“SomeOne New”). As she makes room for the newborn, she learns laughter from an unborn child (“I Do Not Try To Understand”), feels a kick, does not fear “the boy you will be” (“Under My Skin”) or a babe that needed constant tending (“In The Name”). Rather, she welcomes the infant sound (“New Tree in the Garden”), harkens “little boy, welcome” (“Six Months Pregnant”). However, she feels the weight of preparation (“For Life”), as with a child and another child (“Kind Escape”). There is a child’s mind: “One little girl”, “One little child”, “One little heart” (“One Little Heart”). Elsewhere, a child is peering (“Storm”), there are nursing infants (“Listening to the Talk”, and the hands of a child (“Pure and Plastic”). I spot some children (“Tribe), when hope feels like a new body (“Legacy”); children weeping (“On this Dock”), playing games (“Mustard Seed”), changing body (“Overpass”), like my children (“I see the things”). Birth contains the death that brings rebirth (“I Sleep in The Rain”), “to be alive with you there (“Always There”), a child’s gift (“Slice the Pony”), a perfect lullaby (“A Place For You”), a child watching (“Learning Temperance”). At your stroller side (“Little boy born”), my children (“Dad, I think of you”), and of “Siblings”, a thousand parents but their only child (“Turned”. My children autumn born (“Into My Mortal”), a baby’s teething (“The Bane of My Hypocrisy”), the smell of my baby’s neck (“Just Believing”), a baby’s mouth (“What Can?”). A child surging (“Friend”), my happy family (“Happy Summer Coming”), the thrashing of children” (“Junkie”), the bloody aftermath (“The Thing Ahead”), children wait (“Weather”), third birth (“The Hand That Came”), my children (“A Better Life”), two children (“Because”), funerals and baby births (“The Flood”). I would recommend “Six Months Pregnant”, “Born” “that wondrous child”, “Days Before Birth” of a wonderful new creation. “Little Boy Born”, “Son, Almost One” infant glory, and especially “Daughter Almost Five”, a friend like no other,” Anne Burk, poet, regional representative for Alberta on the League of Canadian Poets’ Council, and chair of the Feminist Caucus.