Life
Nicholson was natural withinside the Victorian terraced home in the little industrial town of Millom in Cumbria, on the edge of the Lake District. He was to sleep in a equivalent home for virtually all of his life & simply left his native town another time. He bore big & distinctive side whiskers which gave him the slightly nonconcentric air. His writing career stretched from either 1940 higher until a period of his dying. He was awarded a Queen's Gold Decoration for Poetry withwithin 1977, & a OBE in 1981. His works include a occasionally coroneted Rock Face (1948) & a down the road Sea to the West (1981). The memorial to the poet may be noticed around St Georges church inside Millom in the form of the specially accredited stained glass window.

Work
Nicholson's act is characterized per simplicity & directness of his language. He attempted to write around the vernacular of the folk in his native town. Lot of his operate caring mining, quarrying & ironworks—the dominant industries around his vicinity. Religion & faith was an additional aspect of his operate. His poetry besides abounds using direct discourse from either everyday life, skillfully weaved into a body of a verse form. A opening of Husband at the Cricket Match, is average:

'It's mending worse.' He said, Bending west his head . . .

Nicholson is non typically associated by using any of the poetic movements of the twentieth century. rather, like Charles Causley, he seems to be considered extra of an isolated figure, working in his poetry outside of the mainstream of poetic trends. Maybe because of this, Nicholson's operate has received comparatively little critical attention. He is non forswearing his admirers though. Seamus Heaney has said "Nicholson's diction and images realise the texture and pieties of a whole way of life….A domestic world of bereavements and nostalgias, riddles and catch-phrases, is caught in poems that are half-humorous, half-melancholy written in a relaxed and colloquial style."

Publications
Five lakes (1944) Rock Face (1948) The pot geranium (1954) A local habitation (1972) Sea to the west (1981)