The Norman Nicholson Archive
The archive is held at the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester and can be explored here
Nicholson is also listed in the National Register of Archives
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/searches/subjectView.asp?ID=P34603
Faber & Faber
Publishers of Norman Nicholson. You can purchase Nicholson books: click here
Amazon's Norman Nicholson page
click here
BBC Radio Cumbria documentary
A 60-minute documentary, Norman Nicholson: Something to Tell, was broadcast on BBC Radio Cumbria on August 25th 2014 and repeated on December 30th 2015. As of early 2020 the programme was still available on the BBC iplayer
Nicholson is also listed in the National Register of Archives
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/searches/subjectView.asp?ID=P34603
Faber & Faber
Publishers of Norman Nicholson. You can purchase Nicholson books: click here
Amazon's Norman Nicholson page
click here
BBC Radio Cumbria documentary
A 60-minute documentary, Norman Nicholson: Something to Tell, was broadcast on BBC Radio Cumbria on August 25th 2014 and repeated on December 30th 2015. As of early 2020 the programme was still available on the BBC iplayer
Norman on the Net
'A unique, revisionary perspective' - Dr Andrew Frayn, 2024
The roll call of British war poets doesn't usually include the name of Norman Nicholson, but that is to overlook significant influences on his writing and an important element of his poetic output. That's the view of Dr Andrew Frayn of Edinburgh Napier University, whose latest paper on Nicholson has been published by Modernist Cultures, the journal of the British Association for Modernist Studies.
In the paper, to quote from the abstract, Dr Frayn argues that Nicholson's 'position in his lifetime home of Millom, an industrial town on the periphery of the tourist Lake District, gives his writing a unique, revisionary perspective on both modern/ist and war poetry: he is a non-combatant rural poet who focuses not on contested ground overseas, but on the rural and wartime industry on the north-western English coast'.
The paper goes on to examine Nicholson's credentials as a modernist poet (about which Nicholson himself was somewhat equivocal) with particular reference to his early work, something which coincides with our upcoming online talk by Dr Antoinette Fawcett on the poems written before his 1944 collection Five Rivers, to take place on Thursday week, December 5th.
'On the Perimeter and Fringe of War' - Norman Nicholson, Rural Modernity and Wartime by Dr Andrew Frayn can be accessed free of charge here: https://www.euppublishing.com/toc/mod/19/1. Scroll down to find the paper under 'Articles' on the left-hand side.
Also available online is Dr Frayn's previous paper on Nicholson, Rural Modernity, Rural Modernism and Deindustrialisation in Norman Nicholson’s Poetry, published in English Studies by Taylor & Francis, March 2023, here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0013838X.2023.2180593#d1e229
posted 27/11/24
In the paper, to quote from the abstract, Dr Frayn argues that Nicholson's 'position in his lifetime home of Millom, an industrial town on the periphery of the tourist Lake District, gives his writing a unique, revisionary perspective on both modern/ist and war poetry: he is a non-combatant rural poet who focuses not on contested ground overseas, but on the rural and wartime industry on the north-western English coast'.
The paper goes on to examine Nicholson's credentials as a modernist poet (about which Nicholson himself was somewhat equivocal) with particular reference to his early work, something which coincides with our upcoming online talk by Dr Antoinette Fawcett on the poems written before his 1944 collection Five Rivers, to take place on Thursday week, December 5th.
'On the Perimeter and Fringe of War' - Norman Nicholson, Rural Modernity and Wartime by Dr Andrew Frayn can be accessed free of charge here: https://www.euppublishing.com/toc/mod/19/1. Scroll down to find the paper under 'Articles' on the left-hand side.
Also available online is Dr Frayn's previous paper on Nicholson, Rural Modernity, Rural Modernism and Deindustrialisation in Norman Nicholson’s Poetry, published in English Studies by Taylor & Francis, March 2023, here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0013838X.2023.2180593#d1e229
posted 27/11/24
Antoinette Fawcett, editor of Comet, has updated this list of online links to include material inspired by the NN Centenary, January 2014.
Max Long, an NN Society member and an MPhil student at Cambridge University, has written a fascinating article (February 2018) for the website of the John Rylands Library, where Nicholson's archive is stored. Max visited the Library to research Nicholson's original notes and discovered a 'small blue notebook which is labelled ‘Topographical Notes: Morecambe Bay etc.’
An excellent article by poet Mary Robinson describing her relationship with Nicholson’s poetry and prose works, and setting his writing in a wider context. She makes the point that the time is now ripe for a reassessment of his poetry: http://maryrobinsonpoetry.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/norman-nicholson-centenary.html
Another Cumbrian poet, Mike Smith, writes about Kathleen Jones’s new biography of Nicholson and about the Eric Robson Radio Four documentary: http://bhdandme.wordpress.com/tag/norman-nicholson/
Poet, writer and academic Grevel Lindop, who contributed to the discussion about the importance of Nicholson’s work on the Eric Robson documentary has written an article about Nicholson’s poetry which can be read here: http://grevel.co.uk/poetry/norman-nicholson-essential-poet/
A young writer, Nathan Richardson, who appears to be based in Southport, has written an intriguing article about Philip Larkin and Norman Nicholson: http://nathanrichardson.wordpress.com/tag/norman-nicholson/
Fran Baker, Archivist at the John Rylands Library, has written an article about Norman, the Society’s visit to the Archives in September 2013, and the amazing and amusing ‘Limitations Album’, co-authored by Norman Nicholson and his close friend Ted (John Edward) Fisher. Ted Fisher later became Ted Hughes’ teacher: http://rylandscollections.wordpress.com/2014/01/08/centenary-of-norman-nicholson/
The letter from Ted Hughes to Norman Nicholson in which the relationship between Hughes, Fisher and Nicholson is mentioned can be read in the John Rylands Archive (reference: GB 133 NCN1/2/13/14).
There have been several reports in local newspapers about the events surrounding the centenary of Norman Nicholson’s birth on the 8th January 1914, including this one in the North West Evening Mail: http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/celebrating-work-of-millom-poet-1.1108656
Two little posts by Roy Peachey, an English teacher who used to teach in South Cumbria: http://catholicenglishteacher.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Nicholson%20Norman
You can find an article written by Ann Thomson, a Society member, here:
http://www.ulverstoncircuit.org/Grapevine/Small/gv2013_12s.pdf
Ann has also written an excellent article about Nicholson’s dramas in the journal Radius, produced by the Society of the same name. There is information about Nicholson’s involvement with that Society on page 3 of their ‘About Us’ pages: http://www.radius.org.uk
And Norman shares his centenary with a number of other writers and poets:
http://literarytourist.com/2013/10/lots-of-big-name-authors-have-centenaries-in-2014/
Two little posts by Roy Peachey, an English teacher who used to teach in South Cumbria: http://catholicenglishteacher.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Nicholson%20Norman
You can find an article written by Ann Thomson, a Society member, here:
http://www.ulverstoncircuit.org/Grapevine/Small/gv2013_12s.pdf
Ann has also written an excellent article about Nicholson’s dramas in the journal Radius, produced by the Society of the same name. There is information about Nicholson’s involvement with that Society on page 3 of their ‘About Us’ pages: http://www.radius.org.uk
And Norman shares his centenary with a number of other writers and poets:
http://literarytourist.com/2013/10/lots-of-big-name-authors-have-centenaries-in-2014/
Poem 'The Motion of the Earth' featured in teaching materials for 10 to 14 year-olds in Chicago
http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/documents/curriculum-resources/gravity5-8.pdf
and for 14 to 18 year-olds:
http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/documents/curriculum-resources/gravity9-12.pdf
Poem 'St Bees Sandstone' quoted by Ann Lingard in her website 'Solway Shore Stories':
http://www.solwayshorestories.co.uk/shore-stories/sandstone-of-st-bees/
Poem 'Windscale' used as part of a poster produced by CORE (Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment):
http://www.corecumbria.co.uk/poster.htm
'Windscale' also appears quoted in a response to a travel blog reporting on a peace walk to Sellafield:
http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Cumbria/blog-177904.html
And it is referenced in this campaigning website:
http://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/category/norman-nicholson/
And here, in the blog of a former Greenpeace diver:
http://adjohnstone.com/wp/2011/03/
Poem 'Cleator Moor' features on the Peace Pledge Union website:
http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/poetry/poetry_ww2_4.html
Open University project:
http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/browse_reader_readings.php?s=Nicholson&f=N
NN Society committee member and former chair Dr David Cooper:http://www.hssr.mmu.ac.uk/centre-of-research-in-english/dr-david-cooper/
'Writing Britain' exhibition at the British Library:http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/writingbritain/writingbritain_exhibitlist.pdf
The online New York literary magazine Big City Lit features David Boyd's introduction to the poems of Norman Nicholson "Verse Rooted Like a Tree", the Cumbrian Poetry of Norman Nicholson. http://www.bigcitylit.com/spring08/articles/articles.php?page=boyd
http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/documents/curriculum-resources/gravity5-8.pdf
and for 14 to 18 year-olds:
http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/documents/curriculum-resources/gravity9-12.pdf
Poem 'St Bees Sandstone' quoted by Ann Lingard in her website 'Solway Shore Stories':
http://www.solwayshorestories.co.uk/shore-stories/sandstone-of-st-bees/
Poem 'Windscale' used as part of a poster produced by CORE (Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment):
http://www.corecumbria.co.uk/poster.htm
'Windscale' also appears quoted in a response to a travel blog reporting on a peace walk to Sellafield:
http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Cumbria/blog-177904.html
And it is referenced in this campaigning website:
http://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/category/norman-nicholson/
And here, in the blog of a former Greenpeace diver:
http://adjohnstone.com/wp/2011/03/
Poem 'Cleator Moor' features on the Peace Pledge Union website:
http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/poetry/poetry_ww2_4.html
Open University project:
http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/browse_reader_readings.php?s=Nicholson&f=N
NN Society committee member and former chair Dr David Cooper:http://www.hssr.mmu.ac.uk/centre-of-research-in-english/dr-david-cooper/
'Writing Britain' exhibition at the British Library:http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/writingbritain/writingbritain_exhibitlist.pdf
The online New York literary magazine Big City Lit features David Boyd's introduction to the poems of Norman Nicholson "Verse Rooted Like a Tree", the Cumbrian Poetry of Norman Nicholson. http://www.bigcitylit.com/spring08/articles/articles.php?page=boyd
'At the Dying Atlantic's edge': Norman Nicholson and the Cumbrian Coast. A lecture by Professor Andrew Gibson of Royal Holloway, University of London, can be heard on a podcast from University College Dublin. A transcript is also available to download. http://www.ucd.ie/scholarcast/scholarcast37.html
Added January 2019: 'Saunterings', by retired lecturer and runner and walker John Self, is a blog which references Nicholson in two entries. No 23, The Kentmere Diatomite, draws on Nicholson's knowledge of the mineral diatomite and its production in the Lake District in his 1977 book The Lakes (Robert Hale), previously published in 1963 as Portrait of the Lakes. And No 32, Russet Rusland Valley, references Nicholson's own take on the Rusland valley expressed in Greater Lakeland (Robert Hale 1969).
Added October 2020: 'Homage to Cumbria', an introduction to the Lake District by Norman Nicholson, published in the New York Times December 2 1984.
Added October 2020: 'Homage to Cumbria', an introduction to the Lake District by Norman Nicholson, published in the New York Times December 2 1984.
Explore what others are saying about Norman Nicholson
The Poetry Society
This site includes audio of Norman himself reading his poem Wall
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7519
Poets' Graves
http://poetsgraves.co.uk/nicholson.htm
BBC 'Where I live'
'They call Wordsworth and his gang of Romantics 'The Lakes’ poets' but if you’re looking for a writer who captures the very essence of Cumbria, you need to take the road out of the Lakes and head to Millom....'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/enjoy_cumbria/famous_people/norman_nicholson.shtml
Millom
http://millom.org.uk/millom_interests.asp?ID=INT1
http://www.millomdiscoverycentre.co.uk/
http://sites.google.com/site/millomweb/
Haverigg Primary School
http://4-hps.tumblr.com/
This site includes audio of Norman himself reading his poem Wall
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7519
Poets' Graves
http://poetsgraves.co.uk/nicholson.htm
BBC 'Where I live'
'They call Wordsworth and his gang of Romantics 'The Lakes’ poets' but if you’re looking for a writer who captures the very essence of Cumbria, you need to take the road out of the Lakes and head to Millom....'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/enjoy_cumbria/famous_people/norman_nicholson.shtml
Millom
http://millom.org.uk/millom_interests.asp?ID=INT1
http://www.millomdiscoverycentre.co.uk/
http://sites.google.com/site/millomweb/
Haverigg Primary School
http://4-hps.tumblr.com/