Monday 21 December 2015

Friday 18 December 2015

2016 - The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins - Now on sale


Just published by Nuascéalta in time for both the upcoming Irish General Election campaign and the 1916 Rising Centenary commemorations "2016 – The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins" is a timely collection of 16 topical satirical poems plus Kevin’s re-write of the 1916 Proclamation. Everyone is in here: Lucinda Creighton (or Lucy as Kevin calls her), Denis O’Brien, Angela Merkel, Enda Kenny, Michael D. Higgins, Joan Burton (God rest her), Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton…Fox News, Irish Water, her Holiness Cora Sherlock of the Pro-life Campaign, and the monument to high liberal seriousness that is his excellency Sir Fergus Finlay all also get dishonourable mention. If some people had their way, this book would be banned. Be sure and buy as many copies as possible before it is. 

Copies can be purchased here

Launch details soon. 
 

Wednesday 16 December 2015

'Premature Elegy for Hilary Benn' published in The Morning Star

I've written quite a few elegies this year. Most of them for people who, at least technically, aren't dead yet. 

The most recent is my 'Premature Elegy for Hilary Benn' which appeared this day last week in the British daily newspaper The Morning Star.  

This is the seventh poem I've had in The Morning Star since May when the paper's Arts Editor contacted me and asked if they could re-publish my poem 'Blair's Advice'.

Wednesday 9 December 2015

Jailing of Mick Wallace TD

Mick Wallace, the Independent TD for Wexford, has today been jailed for attemping last Summer to inspect a U.S. military aircaft at Shannon airport to see if there were any arms on board. 

Mick Wallace was kind enough to launch my most recent collection of poems at the 2014 Cúirt Festival, having previously published one of my poems, about the abortion issue, on his website

Here is an article I wrote last Summer on the occasion of Mick's arrest, alongside Clare Daly TD who participated in the same action.

What Mick Wallace and Clare Daly did that day stands in the proud political tradition of direct action and civil disobedience. It is the sort of thing people such as James Connolly and Constance  Markievicz would have done, and in their time, did do; it is an action most TDs are far too cowardly to even contemplate, even for a cause they notionally support. 

I re-dedicate this poem to Mick Wallace because I think, in the circumstances, it is appropriate.

It says a lot about our political system that Mick Wallace is in jail tonight for taking part in a protest, while other people are not in jail and, as things stand,not likely to ever end up in jail. Not even for a night.