Poet Kevin Higgins
This morning.
Kevin Higgins has responded to criticism of his poem posted yesterday to mark the 5th anniversary of the Carrickmines fire.
Kevin writes:
I grew up mostly, from the age of seven, in the Rahoon/Newcastle area of Galway City. We moved here in 1974, and I have lived back here since 2004. This area has been notorious for its anti-traveller racism, much of it stoked by local politicians. The area has even added the word “Rahoonery” to the language.
I know the voice of the anti-traveller racist, which I channel for satirical purposes in my poem ‘After The Barbecue’, intimately. I am happy that this poem has provoked outrage; I think the idea that a tasteful poem should be written about such an event is itself a disgrace.
There was nothing tasteful about what happened and certainly nothing tasteful about the anti-traveller protests of those Carrickmines residents.
The Irish poetry world is awash with tasteful poets. I do not aspire to be part of that tradition. Mine is the tradition of Brecht and Swift, neither of whom, despite their very varying politics, gave any consideration to what crying liberals and closet racists considered tasteful.
In this sense, though I don’t take pseudonymous comments on the internet very seriously, I embrace the distaste of some of the commenters on this poem. I am delighted that I have succeeded in exposing the fact that they appear to be far more exercised by a poem than they were about the deaths of these travellers, and the racism of local residents.
Let them get up an online petition against this poem; I couldn’t care less. If anyone has a serious critique of this poem, let them write an article about it and publish it somewhere.
Yesterday: People Like Us
Wahaay – good man Kevin.
There’s nothing like a bit of woke-poking on here to have them up on their hind legs whining in an instant.
Great poem which had the intended effect.
The KFC line was sublime.
Note to admin – more of the same please.
+1.
To clarify are we being classed as crying liberals and closet racists ?
Good one!
I’m apparently woke now.
Don’t tell Nigel :)
Ah, so people who felt your poem crossed the line are racist and/or are more outraged by your distasteful phrases than they were by the tragic death of humans? Hmmm…maybe, just maybe, there’s different levels of outrage available for different things, but that’s far too nuanced for such a maverick wordsmith as yourself Kevin, oft mentioned in the same breath as Brecht and Swift…
Anyway, fair play for doubling down and proving beyond doubt that you have a loose grasp on reality, your poetry always hinted at it, good to have it confirmed.
Christ almighty
Poetic inspiration, poetic sentiment, insight into life and topic,poetic craft & auditory imagination are among things to consider when evaluating a poem.
……so it’s poo then
Precisely.
Seamus Heaney, he certainly is not.
“I am delighted that I have succeeded in exposing the fact that they appear to be far more exercised by a poem than they were about the deaths of these travellers”
Speaking as someone who queued to sign the book of condolence he’s wrong.
Although i’d happily sign a book of condolence for Kevin’s writing if it stopped him.
Still. he got the attention he craves for his deliberately provocative drivel, so job done presumably.
PS Kevin, when Charger is admiring your work, it’s time to check yourself.
it’s quiet the arrogant illogical binary assumption isn’t it
Ireland has one of the worst records in the EU for the treatment of black people.
Travellers come even further down the food chain.
They’re marginalised and victimised and live in horrendous Third World conditions.
No wonder so many on here get irate when it’s pointed out to them.
Even by a poet.
” But poets are one of us aren’t they ? This fellow sounds like one of those angry rapper types “
Where do trolls come, charger?
lol, half my family are not white so the racist card doesn’t work,
my mother’s first friend in the south was a travelling woman, she didn’t care my mother wasn’t catholic or had no money like her fellow prods,
I have also been on the receiving end of plenty of racism here, usually auld wans who don’t realize they are being racist or young scumbags looking for a fight ( or at least they think they are until they get a clatter ),
I’m not about to label the whole of Ireland racist, stop with the everything is black and white trolling, leave that to Kevin, you’re better than that
Is that a hangover from the 270 years we spent trading in African slaves to toil in our colonies? Oh wait, that wasn’t Ireland….
Ireland has been ranked the second worst among EU countries where black people have experienced “racist violence”.
The lowest rates were observed in Portugal and the United Kingdom.
https://www.thejournal.ie/racism-europe-4363823-Nov2018/
Of course the picture may have changed in the past two years but somehow I doubt it.
Even my white Slovakian gardener has some harrowing tales of abuse from supposedly respectable people.
Its the Developing World
and has been since early 90s
Showing your class of ‘ vintage there again Charage
as well as all the other stuff
Nope.
For some Travellers it’s still Third World conditions as they haven’t developed in decades.
Do try to keep up.
Racist troll trolls about racism.
The worlds gone mad.
there’s a sexy maths equation in there that is going to equal zero
Nope
Yourself Charage
Own your own racist narratives
Don’t dream of making them my mistakes
Providing a link to a story about an extenstive EU survey into racism is ” a racist narrative ” ?
Unbelievable.
Third World conditions.
is not a link
copy or pasted
they are still your words
own them Charage
Also, if he thinks Charger gives a tu’penny about travellers over trolling, big mistake.
Starting to think Kevin Higgins might be Charger.
Charger is far more talented in his line of “… “
Ooof, that’s going to leave a mark.
I think Kevin is a booper boop – but I can see what he was going for.
It’s still not a great poem – but its clear from the reading what the perspective is and the intent, if you cant get that then maybe poetry isn’t your thing
I think it’s a pity. Kevin can write a decent poem – I think the last one published here was very good, so the ability is there.
I don’t think it makes me racist for disliking a poem that is so aggressively provocative that to read it feels like some silly getting in my face and asking me “Are you startin’?”.
It means I have taste, and I’ll stick by my initial comments, thank you.
If anything it demonstrated the Poet’s own inherent or possibly own default racism
Check my last post out on the original thread
or not, this is easier actually
just swap out the Carrickmines victims in the second bit verse thingie
for the Stardust victims
and lets see how cocky the Poet is to title his work a Barbeque
or Broadsheet is to host Kentucky Fried Stardust Victims
Double Standards, Twofaced n’ all that
Tell you what Kevin
I will write it up, and I will publish it elsewhere
and you won’t like it one bit
Funny enough was a racist that had Frilly Keane shuttered
didn’t hear a word of your indignation then
Double Standards and Twofaced n’all that
Boys oh Boys
I don’t think swapping in the Stardust victims would quite work Vanessa. It would be a completely different poem then. I presume you have heard of A Modest Proposal by Swift, a published satirical essay in which he proposes that poor people eat their young. If Swift had written that rich people should eat their young it might not have had the same effect and probably wouldn’t have been published.
I do think he is confronting NIMBYism rather than promoting it.
Actually I plugged in a link to that essay yesterday on the other thread
but thank you for the lesson
And I know a bit about satire meself
and stretching it until it snaps back into the face like a whip
then it gets called ‘conceit’
Funny how t’was when Bunty Twungtington McFuff (aka Norma Burke) did satire
this gaff wasn’t a bit pleased with it
Shur’ yis weren’t boys n’ girls
I seem to remember quiet a few comments, here and in the Chat Pit that wouldn’t look good today
Where’s all that talk now lads
Invoke Satire if you like, but be prepared to eat a bit of Bigoted Free Speech back-at-yas
a good bit actually
anyway, less about Satire …. double standards n’all that
I don’t like that commenters here get to pick and choose what Satire is ok with them
That denies the freedom of Satire to be allowed be exactly that
Satire on its own terms
at best this poem was bad poetry and crass
But it is most definitely exploitive
it is an old poem that the Poet himself rebooted yesterday
for no other reason than for the reaction it got here
That’s exploitive
I’m not afraid to call it cowardly and racist either
Because it is
He used Carrickmines because he could just about get away with it
Stardust barbeque
Kentucky Fried Stardust Relatives
I’d be very surprised if Broadsheet would have published that
oh, little thing about Swift btw
He coined the name Vanessa
That’s how I like my Satire
The last word
yes exploiting ..I agree
Clearly it’s a satirical poem in the vein of Swift. I wasn’t trying to give you a lesson either. I said I presume you know it because I presumed you did because you’re an intelligent woman. Your response is a bit catty, Vanessa, and there’s no need for it.
Also Broadsheet has just published your “Kentucky Fried Stardust relatives” riposte and allowed it.
I mean you have written that out and people may be offended by your riposte regardless of your intentions of using the Stardust victims to support your argument.
Maybe you should consider the intentions of the poet also.
You know I did think of that when I wrote it
That people would be offended by my Stardust Tragedy interventions
However you’ve just proved my point(s) about the Poet’s real intentions
by isolating one tragedy from another, and treating them differently
Even in a poem
at the very least he exploited one tragedy within a community that we have never done right by, and ignored another that we still haven’t done right by
For a person who’s livelihood and reputation relies on the use of words
Words are very important
the title
Barbeque
the description
Kentucky Fried Relatives
no amount of poetic licence can hide that cheap glibness
Or carelessness,
I stand by my assertions that the Poet would not have referred to the Stardust Tragedy as a Barbeque
Please don’t invoke Satire as a cloak for the poet here
Not here
“the racism of local residents”. Says it all really.
You don’t live in the real world Kevin.
The main thing is that your poem caused a fuss and allowed you to play the martyr.
It’s a crap poem Kevin. When the only publicity you generate involves about 30 on line posters you know that your desired result of causing outrage has failed, failed good but failed nonetheless.
It did get me curious about your other poetry, but to be honest that’s not great either
there once was a poet called Kevin
Who believed he was born in Heaven
He wrote a poem about death
Crass, unsensitive, tripped out on meth
His admirers then numbered 7
I think there’s one about grabbing testicles …or am I confusing him for Swift ?;)
I think that was our good friend Terry telling us his tale of auditioning for fair city and the vast extent of the chip on his shoulder
oh I confuse the two
It can’t all be “wandring lonely as a cloud”. If a young spoken word artist performed this, I wonder would the response have been the same?
Do you think Kevin’s unpopularity in general among readers here has spurred this response ? While I’ll admit to never enjoying his style, tone or general delivery of ideas I felt something different this time, if it was my family is feel Kevin was using them to his own gain in a way I’m not comfortable talking about the dead.
Personally, I think a lot of modern
poetry is just badly
punctuated
sentences.
So I’m not the biggest fan of the poetry ouvre, but the anger in this poem wasn’t aimed at the victims or the survivors and their families, it was aimed at the nimbys and those who made those kind of “jokes” in the aftermath of the tragedy.
If I may offer another poem by Robert Frost, which I always found shocking and provocative, and it always stayed with me because of the imagery and language used. It never strays into crass or crude, in the way that Kevin’s poem did for me, which is memorable for the wrong reasons imo.
‘Out, Out—’
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
very moving
thanks Mills
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
No finer words to sum this whole episode up
Thanks Mills
And now it descends into a poetry face-off.
Iambic pentameters at dawn …
Inter faeces et urinam nascimur
something good might come from all this
By writing about one tragedy, it doesn’t mean the poet doesn’t care about other tragedies. Maybe he has a Stardust one up his sleeve. Claiming that he “isolated” one tragedy to write about and denigrate it is a bit of a wild assertion.
Having read the poem, I don’t think he holds anti-Traveller intentions. Quite the opposite in fact.
Why the need to remind what happened by repeating this ‘poem’ five years later? Any why the disgusting language? And why call anyone here ‘closet racists’ for their views on his ‘poetry’?
And as regards poetry – Kevin Higgin’s attempts are just sentences with ‘carriage returns’ placed randomly. Anyone can do that, and claim ‘Poetry!’
well Kevin why don’t you send the family the poem and see what they think, I believe how they feel about it is the opinion that counts
Better still – he could do a reading for them.
bites tounge ;)
He’s more of a petition kind of poet.
I read this poem to my Dad , he said if that was about his family someone would feel the back of his hand ( he’s a bit old fashioned that way )
Systemic racism of Travellers is very real and very subtle too.
I commend Kevin for writing such a provoking and uncomfortable poem for todays readers.
I am familiar with the Glenamuck halting site and the many different families that lived there,
from the 70’s through the 80’s and 90’s. After returning from America, I only bumped into them on a rare occasion. There were Cashs’, Connors’, Moorehouses’, Lynchs’, Nashs’, Dorans’, Redmonds’ and Joyces’ to name but a few, that were indigenous to the area.
They picked up temporary work where they could and were great trades people and crafters, selling housewares, and repairing pots, pans, farm tools and machinery. Always very helpful and obliging.
Singing, storytelling and musicianship seemed to come naturally to them too.
I’m old enough to remember at least 15 or 20 old halting sites in the general area that no longer exist. Moved on by the councils and left unused to this day in most cases.
I also remember the battles of Foxrock and Sandyford. The siege on Brighton road that went on for months.
The Sherriff’s men wouldn’t look out of place in Brownshirts or Blackshirt uniforms.
I also know the Sherriff, he lived in Kilternan and drank in the Golden Ball. A couple of his violent psychopathic deputies too. One of them described to my late father what they did to these families in great detail. He was very proud of his efforts to try annihilate these people.
I’m not surprised at the comments on here. Just the commenters.
Mincéir Abu
Italia I have absolutely no probs with travelers and deplore how they are treated, please don’t confuse that with a reaction to Kevin’s choice of words.
Exactly that Janet. There were no comments anti-traveller. The attempt to depict it as so by Italia90 is
a pure example of “I’m not surprised the of Italia90s comment on here. Just the commenter”
Hi Janet, hope all is well with you.
Unfortunately, there were a few awful jokes and jibes about bbq’ed kn**kers and KFK at that time.
This is the language of racists and xenophobes.
I believe Kevin was using this same language to provoke our collective revulsion of this racist terminology.
And you know what? It just might be working?
It’s just my interpretation, but “barbecue” used this way is also a social reference, as in the “barbecue social set”.
Darren puts it across much better than I can
https://www.broadsheet.ie/2020/10/12/people-like-us-4/
These Socodu’s are full of entitlement and exceptionalism used by temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
The loudest nimbys back 5 years ago were not the locals, but the new Socodu set, who had in recent years moved onto Glenamuck rd.
@giggidykkklu Do you know the 5 lamps?
I was unaware of the fact those phrases were being at the time,
what is wrong with people…
I thought that’s where those phrases would have come from, not Kevin coining them himself.
Welayed it!
BQuiet B9
Whoa there Kevin!
I was a bit shocked at some of the terminology used to describe dead human beings but I have interest in ‘cancelling’ you or your work and I most certainly will not be signing any petition that wants to do so.
I personally did not like the usage of certain words but that’s all, just because I do not like something does not mean I want it gone, it just isn’t for me is all.
Keep on with the poetry and I appreciate where you were coming from just not my cup of tea this time out.
To be fair though, you got people talking and in that, you’ve done a good job as a poet.