Wednesday 5 April 2017

You are invited to the Galway launch of Song of Songs 2.0 - New & Selected Poems

The Cúirt Festival of International Literature and Salmon Poetry invite you to the launch by Dr Philip Coleman of Trinity College Dublin of Song of Songs 2.0 – New & Selected Poems by Kevin Higgins at The House Hotel, Spanish Parade, Latin Quarter, Galway City Centre on Monday, April 24th, 7.30pm.

Dr Philip Coleman
Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway. He teaches poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre, Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute, and is Creative Writing Director for the NUI Galway Summer School.

Kevin has published four collections of poetry with Salmon, The Ghost In The Lobby (2014), Frightening New Furniture (2010), Time Gentlemen, Please (2008), and his best-selling first collection, The Boy With No Face (2005), which was short-listed for the 2006 Strong Award for Best First Collection by an Irish poet. His poetry is discussed in The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry and features in the generation defining anthology Identity Parade –New British and Irish Poets (Ed. Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010) and in The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed. Neil Astley, Bloodaxe, April 2014). A collection of Kevin’s essays and book reviews, Mentioning The War, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2012 and 2016 – The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins was published by NuaScéalta in early 2016. The Stinging Fly magazine recently described Kevin as “likely the most read living poet in Ireland.”

Song of Songs 2.0: New & Selected Poems is published by Salmon and includes a substantial number of new poems as well as selections from his six previous poetry collections, poems written between 1996 and 2017. 

Praise for Kevin Higgins’s poetry:
Ireland’s accomplished political poet and satirist Kevin Higgins”,

Diarmaid Ferriter, The Irish Times

I read this twice. Now, will make a coffee and read it again.”

Gene Kerrigan of The Sunday Independent

The satirist trades balance for excess, overstatement and savagery, uncovering the hidden dissonances of the social process. Prominent among the younger poets to have set themselves this challenge is Kevin Higgins…Satire is a form of war by other means, and…Higgins shows himself an enthusiastic (verbal) combatant”. David Wheatley

Likely the mostly widely read living poet in Ireland”,

The Stinging Fly magazine

As nasty a man as he is poor as a 'poet'

John McTernan, former advisor to Tony Blair

good satirical savagery”. The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry, 1800-2000

Higgins picks apart the human condition, its disappointments and indulgences, with vigour and acumen.” Roddy Lumsden

His contribution to the development of Irish satire is indisputable…Higgins’ poems embody all of the cunning and deviousness of language as it has been manipulated by his many targets... it is clear that Kevin Higgins’ voice and the force of his poetic project are gaining in confidence and authority with each new collection.” Philip Coleman

With backstage guardians in Paul Durcan (see his titles) and Patrick Kavanagh, Kevin Higgins's work has a buoyant spoken immediacy (often taking the form of dramatic monologues), his poems springing out of colloquial address and celebrating the ordinary through a use of quotidian bric-a-brac, which he often pits - with positive effect - against larger (but no more important) forces…Comedy is part of his poetics, and what I especially like in his work is its swiftness of wit, its tone of buoyant contrarianism and jubilant disappointment”, Eamon Grennan, The Irish Times

It is a profound compliment to the quality of Kevin’s writing that you can disagree with the content and yet find yourself still reading on and appreciating the style. You’d have to say that he is one of the lead poets of his generation in Ireland at this stage.” Clare Daly T.D.

Gil Scott Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised as re-told by Victor Meldrew”. Phil Brown, Eyewear

Fluent and often as laugh-out-loud funny as Paul Howard's Ross O'Carroll-Kelly”, John McAuliffe, The Irish Times

Higgins is a genius, because he does something only great poets do: he writes with a voice that is entirely his own, in a style he has invented, about themes and concerns that now are instantly recognisable as his terrain.” Todd Swift

Ireland's sharpest satirist my arse.” Fergus Finlay

 Ireland's best political poetMike Jenkins former editor of Poetry Wales 

brilliant satirePeter Tatchell

 Kevin Higgins writes political poetry of the highest order, telling truth to power with Swiftian savagery and satirical humour, dissecting and denouncing political doublespeak, pretension and hypocrisy.” Mike Quille, Culture Matters