Venue:
New Park
Centre
New Park
Road
Chichester
West Sussex
PO19 7XY
Kevin
Higgins facilitates poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre and teaches creative
writing at Galway Technical Institute. He is also Writer-in-Residence at Merlin Park
Hospital and the poetry
critic of the Galway Advertiser. He was a founding co-editor of The Burning Bush literary magazine and is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary
events in Galway City.
His poetry collections include The Boy With No Face (2005), Time
Gentlemen, Please (2008), Frightening New Furniture (2010) all published by Salmon. His work also features
in the generation defining anthology Identity
Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Ed Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010). Mentioning The War, a collection of his
essays and reviews was published in April 2012 by Salmon and has been described by prominent member of the Irish Parliament (Dáil)
Clare Daly as “a really good and provocative read. It will jolt you; it will
certainly touch you; make you laugh; maybe make you snarl a little bit as well,
depending on where you come from or what your background is.”
Kevin’s poetry has been translated into Greek, Turkish, Spanish,
Italian, Japanese & Portuguese. The
Ghost In The Lobby is his fourth collection of poems.
Praise
for Kevin Higgins’s poetry:
“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”, Eamonn 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
“Higgins
picks apart the human condition, its disappointments and indulgences, with
vigour and acumen.” Roddy Lumsden
“good
satirical savagery”. The Cambridge
Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry, 1800-2000
