Nigel is an award-winning Irish poet and author of five collections of poetry, including Chora: New & Selected Poems (Templar Poetry, 2009). His research interests and academic writing include the creative process, creative writing pedagogy, and cognitive stylistics. He holds postgraduate degrees in Creative Writing, Literary Linguistics, and Neuropsychology.
In 2011 he was awarded a prestigious UK National Teaching Fellowship Award for teaching excellence, and he was elected a Fellow of the RSA in 2005.
National Teaching Fellow
University Teaching Fellow
Fellow, Higher Education Academy
Fellow, RSA
Member, Poetics and Linguistics Association
Member, International Association of Literary Semantics
HM7108 Cognition, Language and Literature
Nigel’s current research focuses on cognitive stylistic approaches to poetry, with a particular interest in ambiguity and liminality, and the mechanisms by which poems create these effects. His most recent publications have used Text World Theory, Conceptual Integration (Blending) Theory, and Cognitive Grammar as approaches to analyse imagery, metaphor, style, and ambiguous, liminal, and uncanny effects in poetry. His research also explores what writers can learn from these approaches, and how they might be creatively deployed as tools for creative writing and in teaching creative writing.
Creativity
Writing poems
Teaching creative writing