Poem by Cath Nichols

Eyewear is delighted to welcome Cath Nichols (pictured here) to its storied pages this Friday.

Nichols has a new collection out, Tales of Boy Nancy - a pamphlet of poems published by Driftwood (2005). Another recent project has been a film with commissioned music, launched at the National Maritime Museum during last year’s Homotopia festival.

For four years Nichols co-ordinated Liverpool’s Dead Good Poets Society, but has left to pursue her writing career and commence an MA in the autumn at Lancaster University.

Previous roles include mental health work, artists’ model, journalism and waitressing (indeed she has even been a drag poetry waitress).

Her forthcoming project examines the history of various characters associated with the Woolworth’s empire in Liverpool and New York. A full-length collection, My Glamourous Assistant, is forth-coming from Headland Press in 2007. She recently recorded poems for the Oxfam Poetry CD, out in June, titled Life Lines, which I edited.

Calenture

In the tropics some succumb to calenture:
it is a sickness of heat and hallucination,
a home-sickness for verdancy where

lapping green turns grassy. So sailors
in the grip of calenture jump ship
to bathe in meadows sweet

with furling paths and waving trees.
They dream a dappled walk
through lanes of missing memory,

a time before the press gangs came,
stole their lives, and placed them
in the keeping of mermaid droves.

poem by Cath Nichols

Comments

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