Kevin Higgins
Writer

Kevin Higgins

Show BioHide BioKevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway. He has published five full collections of poems: The Boy With No Face (2005), Time Gentlemen, Please (2008), Frightening New Furniture (2010), The Ghost In The Lobby (2014), & Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital (2019). His poems also feature in Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) and in The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe May 2014). Kevin was satirist-in-residence with the alternative literature website The Bogman’s Cannon 2015-16. 2016 – The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins was published by NuaScéalta in 2016. Song of Songs 2:0 – New & Selected Poems was published by Salmon in Spring 2017. Kevin is a highly experienced workshop facilitator and several of his students have gone on to achieve publication success. He has facilitated poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre and taught Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute for the past fifteen years. Kevin is the Creative Writing Director for the NUI Galway International Summer School and also teaches on the NUIG BA Creative Writing Connect programme. His poems have been praised by, among others, Tony Blair’s biographer John Rentoul, Observer columnist Nick Cohen, writer and activist Eamonn McCann, historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Sunday Independent columnist Gene Kerrigan; and have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Times (London), Hot Press magazine, The Daily Mirror and on The Vincent Browne Show. The Stinging Fly magazine has described Kevin as “likely the most widely read living poet in Ireland”. Kevin’s most recent poetry collection Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital was published by Salmon Poetry in June; one of the poems from which will feature in A Galway Epiphany, the final instalment of Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor series of novels. His work has been broadcast on RTE Radio, Lyric FM, and BBC Radio 4.

15 posts

we-love-the-cia
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I Am an American Leftist

Published 2y ago -

by Kevin Higgins     Since I got to Congress I say: #MedicareForAll with the seagull stare of someone – gender unspecified – supple enough to have relations with Governor Gavin Newsom while wearing an Even My Dog Hates Gavin Newsom t-shirt   In ... More »

barb wire
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Utopia American Moderates Dreamt Into Being

Published 2y ago -

Executions, if they continue, as they must, for public opinion demands them, and who are you to disagree with people like you, will be carried out in a timely and efficient manner: injections of genetically modified wasp venom to the heart, eye, or groin rathe... More »

Joe Biden
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The Biden Monologues: Day 457

Published 2y ago -

America as a notion can be defined as a single word. Most days that word is: Meatloaf gasoline hamburgers Cher or Batman others days it’s cowgirl sunglasses alligator spandex motel though those allegations are unproven. America is a saxophone that denies eve... More »

Ireland
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The Plutonium Isle

Published 2y ago -

“Ireland must reassess military power” —Simon Coveney In the absence of Seamus Heaney, if Ireland is to be renowned for anything other than bog water, cabbage and our negligible corporate tax rate, we must invest in at least one intercontinental ballisti... More »

man typing
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The Acquisition

Published 2y ago -

by Kevin Higgins  No longer exactly young but still in a hurry to board the bus bound for what they call somewhere. Emerging poet acquires agent so sang the update. Or is acquired by, it neglected to add. From now on they will focus less on the bits that don... More »

Apartment 5E

Published 2y ago -

by Kevin Higgins after Rod McKuen   The old woman upstairs is again engaging in multi-partner Sadomasochism. I set my watch by the yelps and screams wafting through my ceiling. I see her often abseiling down the side of the building in her bloodstained ov... More »

well-made-poem
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This Is Not a Well Made Poem

Published 3y ago -

by Kevin Higgins The well made poem puts on its dicky bow, walks to the top of the hill, and has what it calls an epiphany. The well made poem sees every side of the argument, except those proscribed by the BBC. The well made poem has between twelve and twenty... More »

poem
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Essay on Vagueness

Published 3y ago -

by Kevin Higgins after Ocean Vuong   Because the poodle’s polka dot collar lying luminous at the bottom of the stairs was an exclamation mark discarded from a poem. Because all your relatives kept turning up — & the kettle exploded from our ov... More »

typewriter
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Creative Writing – Induction Speech

Published 3y ago -

by Kevin Higgins It’s not all hanging around the college bar pretending to be Ted and Sylvia; or escaping to Italy with your lover, like the Barrett Brownings; or head-butting rivals in the green room during what you’ll later call your Norman Mailer phase;... More »

man holding cellphone
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The Joke

Published 3y ago -

By Kevin Higgins after Walter Benjamin A barrel of industrial waste poured into a suit donated by a casino owner who knows people with a tangerine tea towel tossed strategically on top because it was the only available metaphor for hair was running for re-elec... More »

protests
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The Problem with History as I’ve Experienced It

Published 4y ago -

by Kevin Higgins     It interferes with the right of people like me to dine as we see fit. Whenever I visit England 1649, the sound of it taking just one swing of an inarticulate axe to abolish monarchy puts me off my coffee. After that, with every m... More »

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