This is Not a Stunt

A bold, intimate and celebratory poetry collection, filled with ‘alternative’ voices – and bodies.

Embracing the ordinary (‘We’re middle-aged, of course. Life rolls on’) and the remarkable, Nichols revisits her childhood in New Zealand and her teenage years in Kent, before crossing several decades (and haircuts) on the gay scene in Manchester.

At the heart of the collection is a sequence, ‘Bo(d)y-in-waiting’, a forthright and intimately observed narrative about a boy growing up trans in the 1970s, thwarted and misunderstood at every turn by vacuous doctors and oblivious teachers. Readers will discover why ‘each body is an act of becoming’, and be left with a new appreciation of what makes us human.

‘A ground-breaking collection ... accomplished and skilful. Nichols doesn’t subvert our sense of what is normal, she shows us difference is normal’
– Angela Topping, Stride