NEW POEM 'Advisory Epistle From Literature Quangocrat'

(Picture taken at meeting of Central Heating Committee of LITERATURE EIRE)

My latest poem 'Advisory Epistle From Literature Quangocrat' is published on The Bogman's Cannon. May the Lord have no mercy at all on my soul, and Satan have his way with me for all eternity.

"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.  

Stinging Fly magazine tries to get me assassinated

In a wide ranging article in the special 'In The Wake of The Rising' issue of The Stinging Fly magazine I am described as "likely the most widely read living poet in Ireland". Here I was, trying to keep a low profile and not offend anyone, and then they go and call me that. The bastards. 

Given the state of my my lungs, I had been hoping to at least live to see my fifty sixth birthday, and the 2023 celebrations to mark the centenary of Eoin O'Duffy's appointment as Garda Commissioner.

However, I now fully expect to be assassinated by some poet I've never heard of between now and next month's Cúirt Festival. In all probability I will be gunned down during the festival itself, one bright night in the House Hotel, by an insanely jealous, but little read, villanelle writer with an avant-garde haircut.

The weapon will likely be one borrowed earlier that day from an old Official IRA arms dump in the Cork North Central constituency.

"Unfashionable Ireland's dead and gone. It's buried with the Stickies' guns"

Speaking of The Sunday Independent, last Sunday the above mentioned Stinging Fly article got a mention in that paper's always hot and heavy pages. In his review, John Boland appears to take exception to the idea of me succeeding Seamus Heaney as the nation's most read living poet. I agree. It's a bloody disgrace. And a sign of the ongoing cultural decline against which men, and women, like John Boland of The Sunday Independent must continue to bravely fight the neccessary the fight.

According to his article, Boland had apparently never heard of me before, describing me as "someone called Kevin Higgins" which makes a nice change from this article which appeared in the same newspaper in October 2014. It's always good to be forgotten by people who previously seemed to know who you were. Perhaps John Boland knew who I was eighteen months ago but just doesn't know who I have become since. I often feel that way myself.

After my upcoming assassination at the end of April, I look forward to being forgotten entirely. 

UPDATE 
Garda Intelligence have been in touch to say that an online meeting of my potential assassins has in fact taken place. The usual gathering of the hairy-palmed brigade. The officer I spoke to did express some surprise though to see Mr Patrick Cotter, Director of the state funded Munster Literature Centre, openly involving himself in this sort of street level codology. I hope Mr Cotter didn't put that 'like' on there during office hours.

The Free David Drumm Campaign

This is Fintan O'Toole, one of the great brains of liberal Ireland. His mind is said to contain a detailed blueprint of the country Ireland could be if only we stopped voting Fianna Fáil, which of course we already have.

This is David Drumm, former CEO of Anglo Irish Bank, currently in jail in Massachussets pending an extradition hearing. The authorities here in Ireland would like to (ahem) talk to David about some stuff. 

Last week, in the hallowed and posh pages of The Irish Times, Fintan O'Toole launched a campaign to get David Drumm released from jail. 

I agree with Fintan. In fact I'd go further. I think David Drumm is the Nelson Mandela of our time. He should be released immediately and allowed roam freely through whatever countryside he wishes. 

I have composed a small poem The Lonesome Incarceration of David Drumm to support Fintan O'Toole's campaign. This is one of the great injustices of our time. It's time we made a stand. 

Nelson Mandela, the David Drumm of his time.

The Day Bowie Died - a poem in response

I have a very new poem 'The Day Bowie Died' just published on The Bogman's Cannon. It is 'after' Frank O'Hara's poem 'The Day Lady Died', which O'Hara wrote about the day Billie Holiday died in 1959. 

Lulu, Gary Barlow, Mick Hucknall, Cliff Richard, Kanye West, and Noel Gallagher - cultural and philosophical heroes of mine every one of them - all get a mention. 

Kanye West - still alive

Noel Gallagher - still alive (at least in theory)

Our cat Ziggy makes a guest appearance at the end. 

'Poetically Charged News Cycles' - my essay in The Raintown Review

I have an essay titled 'Poetically Charged News Cycles' in the current issue of the American poetry journal The Raintown Review. 

 

The individuals and publications mentioned in this essay include: Dante Alighieri, Seamus Heaney, Hillary Clinton, Rhona McCord, Clare Daly, Don Share, Luke 'Ming' Flanagan, Irish Left Review, Sarah Clancy, The Truth & Other Stories (Salmon Poetry), Dave Lordan, The Bogman's Cannon, Barack Obama, King Charles I, Walt Whitman, Vladimir Mayakovsky, John Milton, Maria Johnston, Gerry Murphy, My Flirtation With International Socialism (Dedalus Press), Stephen Murphy, Gerry Adams, Michael D. Higgins, The Irish Times, David Bowie, Charlie Hebdo, Derek Byrne, Elaine Feeney, The Radio Was Gospel (Salmon Poetry), Patrick Cotter, Don Share, Poetry, Southword, Norman Podhoretz, & The 1916 Proclamation.

Here is an extract: “It’s probably best that I nail my underpants to the mast at the get-go as an active participant in the events I describe rather than pretend to be any sort of objective observer. In any case, in these fraught times here in Ireland the objective observers are mostly languishing in the particularly hot corner of Hell to which Dante consigned those who in a time of crisis, such as now, have nothing to declare but their neutrality. Since the late summer of 2013 the apparently stable edifice that was the Irish poetry world has been struck by a number of earthquakes–and several significant aftershocks–which have left the building looking shaky.

First, the death of Seamus Heaney who, whatever your poetic aesthetic or politics, was undeniably a world-class poet who dominated Irish poetry in a way that is rare. Heaney wasn’t just our best poet; he was our second, third, fourth, and fifth best poets as well; and was to a large extent the currency on which Irish Poetry Inc. traded with the rest of the poetry world. His passing was like the retirement of a great player from the team built around him; a few games into the next season the fans, media, and even the chairman of the board suddenly realize how threadbare the rest of the existing lot look without him, and the dread sets in.

          The second big happening was the going up in flames last autumn of the fantasy, beloved of many Irish media or arts liberals –our equivalent of those Americans who orgasm at the very idea of a Hillary Clinton presidency–that unlike the French and the Greeks and whoever else, the Irish never protest…" Those interested in reading more can buy copy of the magazine here.