Nicky Beer is the author of the poetry collection The Diminishing House (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2010). She has received a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a scholarship and a fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a Campbell Corner Prize, and a Discovery/The Nation Award. She is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver.

Other poems by Nicky Beer in Verse Daily:
May 1, 2013:   "Phlogiston Footage" "The lights dim. We creak in our seats...."
May 2, 2010:   "The Exquisite Foreplay of the Tortoise" "Every movement of my body..."
September 9, 2008:   "Ventouse Sous Verre" "Those empty, aubergine-edged saucers, her best..."
April 12, 2005:  "Cardinal Virtue" ""At first, I can't name the bird falling deliberately..."

Books by Nicky Beer:

Other poems on the web by Nicky Beer:
"The Demolitionists"
Eight poems
"Ad Hominem"
"Prairie Octopus, Awake"
"Laboratory Model"
"Rural Spring Poem"
Six poems
"Octopus Visiting Your Garden"
"Post-Mortem"
"Still Life with Half-Turned Woman and Questions"
"Spring Lures"
"Octopus vulgaris"

Nicky Beer's Website.

About The Octopus Game:

"I can’t help but 'succumb to the enamored, oceanic maw' of these poems. I love their horror and humility, their playfulness. Implicating me in the mysterious beauty of the universe, Nicky Beer connects the reader to the octopus, connects the octopus to the reader, and connects us all to her poems' surprising subjects. Drawing insights from least predictable places, these poems are 'a lesson in how ardor ignites not in unlikeness, but unlikelihood.'"
—Camille Dungy

"I read The Octopus Game while searching for octopods on a scientific cruise in the Gulf of Alaska. I was delighted to be inspired by Beer's passion for octopods, and her unpredictable and refreshing poems. I love this book."
—Dr. Elaina Jorgensen