With its publication by Faber in 1994, this ''Collected Poems'' revealed for the first time the true range of Norman Nicholson's output, as well the strength of the Christian element in his writing. All Nicholson's writing drew its nourishment from close observation of the part of Cumbria where he lived, and of which he was the most devoted, accurate and unsentimental describer and chronicler. In his introduction to this book, Neil Curry - a friend of Nicholson and a poet himself - discusses the nature of Nicholson's 'parochialism' and its paradoxical universality, demonstrating just what was meant when his ''Times'' obituarist called him 'the most gifted Christian poet of the century.'