15 Years Reviewing for The Galway Advertiser

My review of Hellkite, the recent short story collection by Geraldine  Mills, is published in this week's Galway Advertiser.

“SINCE 2001, Geraldine Mills has published six books - each its own particular kind of gem - and yet she is much less famous than she should be.” You can read the review in full on The Galway Advertiser website. 

My first ever book review was published in The Galway Advertiser way back in June 1999, exactly fifteen years ago. The book reviewed was Kerry On My Mind, a collection of essays by Kerry poet Gabriel Fitzmaurice. You can read my first effort at literary criticism in Mentioning the War: Essays & Reviews (1999-2011), which was published a couple of years ago by Salmon. 

No one else has mentioned this anniversary, so I thought it only appropriate to send myself a card. 

Poem For Anniversary of Leon Trotsky's Murder

                                         You Are The Old Man In The Blue House

                                             after Bertrand M Patenaude

                                         Making impossible promises to yourself.

                                         Outdoors the cactus, the wolves.

                                         The hour of nowhere else to go.

                                         It’s a decade since the new god stamped

                                         your passport ‘invalid’.

                                        Your fifty-ninth birthday is candied plums

                                        and two small orchestras.

                                        Out there your friends welcome

                                        bullets in the back of the head.

                                       An August storm batters the porch

                                       with the Chief Prosecutor’s words:

                                       Down with the vulture, these miserable hybrids

                                       of foxes and pigs!

                                       In your hand

                                       the pistol with not enough ammunition.

                                       You wait for you know not who

                                       to hug your skull and whisper.

                                       “Everything is finished”;

                                       indulge in just one more

                                       promise that won’t come true over

                                       the candied plums and two small orchestras

                                       in the hour of nowhere else to go.

                                       KEVIN HIGGINS 

The poem has also been translated into Spanish and the translation published in the online Mexican literary magazine Cuadrivio. 

Today is the 74th anniversary of the murder in Mexico City, by an agent of Soviet Military Intelligence, of the exiled co-organiser of the Russian Revolution.

Above is a poem I wrote a few years ago about Trotsky's last years. He wrote extensively about literary and artistic matters, co-authoring (with André Breton & Diego Rivera) a 'Manifesto For an Independent Revolutionary Art'.The poem originally appeared in The Galway Advertiser in 2009.

Let Us Rise! The Dublin Lockout - its impact and legacy

Here, strategically placed in one of Mick Wallace's restaurants, is a poster for the recent Dublin launch of Let Us Rise! The Dublin Lockout - its impact and legacy. The book has a foreword by Joe Higgins T.D. and is published by the Socialist Party with contributions from Oisín Kelly, Cillian Gillespie, Ray McLoughlin, Fiona O'Loughlin, Dominic Haugh & Councillor Ruth Coppinger.

I will be reviewing Let Us Rise! for the September Biblio book review page in The Galway Advertiser and attended the Galway launch at Charlie Byrne's bookshop last Friday week. The process of obtaining a review copy was, well, circuitous.

All going well, the review should appear on Thursday, September 5th.