Brought up in her grandmother's Lincolnshire cottage during World War Two, Judith Nicholls has lived in Wiltshire since 1970. Her first collection of poems, Magic Mirror, was published by Faber in 1985, and she has written or compiled more than forty poetry collections for children; her poems have also appeared in hundreds of anthologies. Judith sees poetry as pattern, understanding, exploration, exhortation and explanation. Her interest has always remained in crafting words, in finding echoes in the poems. In many hundreds of visits to schools, she would always unfold the sequence of the drafts that usually preceded the smallest poem. Although her poems are still to be found in many anthologies, Judith's books are now largely out of print, so it has been lovely, she says, to have been able to make a selection from them for Hobnob Press.