Of Course They Know It's Christmas

 

To mark the season I have re-written the original lyrics for Do They Know It's Christmas?

I've taken the liberty of retitling it Of Course They Know It's Christmas and it's published on Culture Matters, Socialist Unity, & We Know What's Up.

I wish you all an ecstatic Christmas. Personally I am mostly looking forward to December 30th when I will be celebrating the one hundred anniversary of the timely death of Grigori Rasputin.

Mr Rasputin's lawyers have asked me to make clear  
that he had no involvement in either Band Aid or Live Aid.

My 'New & Selected Poems' and a pamphlet of my political poems

Song of Songs 2.0 - New & Selected Poems by Kevin Higgins will be published in February by Salmon Poetry and will, it is hoped, be launched at the 2017 AWP Conference in Washington D.C. 

The book will include selected poems from my previous five collections of poems, The Boy With No Face (Salmon, 2005); Time Gentlemen, Please (Salmon, 2008); Frightening New Furniture (Salmon, 2010); The Ghost In The Lobby (Salmon, 2014); and 2016 - The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins (NuaScéalta, 2016). 

It will also include a substantial collection of new poems.

Before that, I am delighted to announce, that the new Culture Matters imprint of U.K. based Manifesto Press will this Autumn be publishing The Minister For Poetry Has Decreed, a pamphlet collecting together a tightly knit group of twenty six of my recent more politically motivated poems.  

Following recent developments I will makes sure that all metaphors, similes, and hyperbolic outbursts contained in and around these poems are approved in advance of publication by the busy boys and girls of the Disputes and Discipline Department at British Labour Party Head Office.

"As we approach the centenary of the Easter Rising, Kevin Higgins lets rip at the state of poetry and politics in Ireland"

A slightly shortened version of my article Poetically Charged Charged News Cycles, which first appeared shortly before Christmas in the U.S. based poetry magazine The Raintown Review was yesterday re-published under the new title of Poets, Presidents and Politics on the U.K. based left wing political-cultural website Culture Matters. Among many other things I discuss the "desperate rush on to find the next acceptable face of Irish poetry".

The article was originally commissioned by Quincy Lehr for The Raintown Review.

Not everyone who is mentioned favourably in this article agrees with its sentiments. However, it is my understanding that everyone who is criticised in it secretly agrees with everything I say about them.

Picture of slice of Black Forest gateau in memory of the slice of same now

President Michael D. Higgins bought me in 1982. Read article for significance.