William’s muse is dyslexia. Though his is a mild disability, it creates a continual tension between the mind, the eye and the page. A printed page can have as many possibilities as a blank one, as the letters slowly swim into words, possibilities are discarded, and meanings emerge. In reverse, the idea can come clear before the words to express it. Language stays fresh and always potentially treacherous. The technical precision required of regulatory writing is in contrast to the emotional clarity he seeks in his poetry, although each has certainly contributed to the other.
~ dyslexicadvantage.com

William Nichols calls his mild dyslexia “his muse” in the notes to his <em>Fallacies of Motion</em>, thus giving a name to the wonky, occasionally sublime, poetics that trademark his civic-minded observations.
~ Globe and Mail

Here is contemporary wisdom in verse. Imagine ancient Solomon revived and even more cynical, witty, precise, and scathing. These lyrics are delightfully arch and delicately stern. They range from wry takes on technology and white-collar conundrums to introspective riffs on grief, loss and the compensations of travel.
~ Jury, Dektet 2010

William Nichols has created a series of poems here that challenge readers to re-examine their views of the most fundamental of relationships – those between us and all living things. Whether they are in our human existence or in the natural world surrounding us, the reader will soon recognize the broad convergence employed to appreciate the transitory nature of all living things. Human pack rats, stray dogs and damaged, doomed shorebirds find their way into our consciousnesses. Nichols’ poems are neither obsequious nor sentimental. His long- practiced objectivity finds its way through the inner worlds of reactionaries, bureaucrats and magpies, as he shares this storehouse of observations. There is a long vision to this work.
~ Dean Morrison McKenzie