Norman Nicholson (1914-1987) wrote poetry, plays, novels, topography, criticism, memoirs and radio talks. Humanity, the natural world, and the relationship between them were abiding concerns. He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1977.
Classic: Norman Nicholson: Collected Poems (Faber, 2008)
Try this first: A Local Habitation (Faber, 1972). Reviewed by Seamus Heaney in the Listener as ‘poetry…sometimes as elegiac and patient as the processes of geology, sometimes intimate and free-wheeling, blessed “with a certain home-bred gumption”.’
Best biography: Nicholson’s autobiography Wednesday Early Closing (Faber, 1975) is his entertaining account of growing up in a small Northern industrial town between the wars, while Kathleen Jones: Norman Nicholson – The Whispering Poet (Book Mill, 2013) covers the whole of his life and work.
To find out more about Nicholson visit www.normannicholson.org
Alliance of Literary Societies 