In Cath Nichols’ world Snow White has dental problems and guinea pigs lead secret lives as porn stars. This collection delights in story and place, taking a lyrical journey from the back yards of Liverpool to the skyscrapers of New York – via Woolworths. Nichols spent her early childhood in Papua New Guinea and New Zealand hearing a multitude of accents; her poems’ musicality displays her love of sound. She has worked for BBC Radio and was co-ordinator of Liverpool’s Dead Good Poets Society. In 2006 she was recorded for the Oxfam ‘Life Lines’ CD; and new work was commissioned by Lancaster litfest.

‘Cath Nichols is a mistress of disguise: her monologues come at you with an astonishing array of emotion and experience. Her perception and imagination are anchored to history and delight in the ordinary people who make it.’
Sarah Hymas, editor, Flax Books, litfest

On Tales of Boy Nancy (Driftwood, 2005):

‘These poems smell of the sea, of ropes and swilled decks, and yet they subvert our sense of what is normal, disrupt some of the orthodoxies... Ambivalence – as it is in life itself – is at the heart of Nichols’ poems.’
Matt Simpson

‘A moving account of hidden lives, both honest and sensitive’
Deryn Rees-Jones

‘The ground shifts under the reader in an unusual and intriguing way, and there are moments of great tenderness…It is almost impossible to create a poem that smells right. Read ‘Cardamom’. Cath Nichols can do it.’
Helena Nelson