Collected Works Volume Six, Creative Non-fiction

I know not of the veracity of the contents of this book because I am but a poet.

This book is an attempt to create thematic continuity within a generic division into memoir, prose-fiction, and poetry, as is the tendency with memoirs in the postmodern epoch it is fragmented. Having said that all the material of whatever genre has a material base in 'lived experience', but it is also the work of a creative mind. Therefore, it is for the reader to engage. As Jean-Paul Sartre argued in What is Literature

The dialectic is nowhere more apparent than in the

art of writing for the literary object is a peculiar top

this exists only in movement. To make it come

into view a concrete act called reading is necessary,

and it lasts only as this act lasts. Beyond that, there

are only black marks on the paper.

- Sartre (2010) What is Literature, p. 29.

Nigel was born in autumn 1959. His life has been 'colourful' or 'chequered' depending on whom you ask. His GP of some decades has said 'writing and studying are your therapy, Nigel. They are what saved you.' He left home for the counterculture as a child and was subsequently placed in the 'Care' of the County Council but was soon transferred to the psychiatric system where he has been since in one manifestation or another. However, in 1988 he began studying at the Open University where his first undergraduate degree was in Political and Social Science, he received a 2:1 and his biological parents attended the graduation, his father saying: 'This is the greatest day of my life.' However, he would then experience a close call after a toxic state caused by prescribed medication. This set him upon another path academically, although he had written creatively from a very early age. Consequently, he gained a BA in Humanities with Creative Writing 2:1. Then a Master of Arts in English with Merit and a Master of Arts in Creative Writing with Merit last academic year.