Conor Cruise O’Brien in 1973

Kevin writes:

On foot of the first part of RTE’s documentary three=part series Crimes And Confessions [examining the most notorious miscarriages of justice from the 1970s and 1980s especially the methods of the Gardai] which was aired on RTE television last evening, the coming week is going to be a stressful one for members of the broad political movement Continuity Conor Cruise O’Brien, foot soldiers and big shot columnists alike.

Last evening’s episode made repeated, and in the opinion of some in the greater Howth Hill area, gratuitous use of the term “heavy gang“, a phrase which brings your average fan of the 1973-77 Fine Gael-Labour Coalition government out in raging hives. Near the end of last evening’s episode, the great Dr O’Brien himself is shown in a most unflattering light which, in the eyes of some misguided young people, may make him look like a kind of poor man’s General Pinochet.

The second episode, which airs next Monday January 17 on RTE at 9.35pm promises to be such unpleasant viewing that many Conor Cruise O’Brien fans will spend the next week face down in dark rooms, without so much as another Fintan O’Toole column about Brexit (or how it’s all the Provos fault) to hand. If you are a carer for, or relative of, a member of Continuity Conor Cruise O’Brien, feel free to print out this poem and mop their brow with it. We owe them that much.

To The Man Who Defines Ireland

When telling us, as a nation, to cop on to ourselves
you spit the words Provo
or workers’ paradise like a lady
trying to rid her mouth of sour milk.

But your voice is church bells and sunshine
pouring down on Kingstown Harbour, circa 1913
when you put your tongue across the syllables
Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth.

The greatest thing to come out of Crumlin
since the curried chips
that made a young Phil Lynott
question his lifestyle choices.

You are politically and philosophically serious
as a second division footballer’s fashion sense,
circa 1977; or a stockbroker last seen exiting
a high-end house of great repute
wearing a thirteen gallon hat;
or a guy in a white linen jacket
who’ll end up wandering O’Connell Street
shouting against Home Rule.

And without you, we’d not be ourselves.
For you are our national anticonvulsant
without which we’d be in danger
of actually doing something.

Kevin Higgins

RTE

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair

Kevin writes:

a poem to mark  Prince Andrew’s mammy’s decision, on her own personal recommendation to herself, to say “Arise Sir Tony Blair” in the New Year’s Honours List, Here is director Ken Loach reading same. And here is PJ Harvey singing the lyrics of the Brecht poem (Ballad of the Soldier’s Wife) on which mine is based. I hope to turn up at Buckingham Palace on the day Tony is knighted and to perform my poem dressed similarly to how PJ Harvey is in that video..

What Did The Politician Get His Wife?
(after Bertolt Brecht)

And what did she get, the girlfriend,
from the student union meeting
at which he rose to his feet
and realised he could speak?
From that meeting she got
the Snickers bar he forgot to eat
so busy was he watching them listen;
and that speech, unabridged,
every other night for thirty five years.

And what did she get, his new wife,
from the time he first used a party
conference microphone to agree with both sides?
Those okay with the Moslems/Mexicans/Gypsies being here,
and those who want them kept over there.
From that microphone she took away their
invitation to dine with the Deputy Mayor
and his not new wife.

And what did she get, his no longer new wife,
when, at the second attempt,
he won that seat on the City Council?
From his election she got to drink Pinot Noir
and go swimming in their private club
with the no-so-new wives
of those who got the contracts
to make the paving stones and install
the pay-and-display ticket machines
during his years as Chairman
of the relevant committee.

And what did she get, his well-maintained wife,
the night he was elected to the big shiny
parliament? From that night she took away
an architect to re-design their new three storey pad
in the priciest possible part of the capital,
and an article about herself
in the Daily Express lifestyle pages.

And what did she get, the no longer new MP’s
no longer new wife, the morning
they made him Minister?
That morning she got to go horse riding
with the Leader of the House of Lords’
fourth (or fifth) wife.
.

And what did she get, the no longer new
Cabinet Minister’s wife, the night the landslide
made him Prime Minister? That night
she got to hold to her breast
invitations to break foie gras
with the Sultan of Brunei, the President of China;
and the chance to write husband’s speech
announcing the crackdown on beggars
who accost hard working
families who stop to ask for directions
enrouteto the nearest funeral parlour.

And what did she get, the ex-Prime Minister’s
no longer new wife, from all the depleted uranium shells
he had dropped during the Battle of Basra, all the soldiers
he sent to meet improvised explosive
devices in far Mesopotamia in the hope
of getting rid of something bigger
than the beggars and prostitutes
at Kings Cross. For these she got
white night terrors
of him on trial for all their crimes,
and the desire to never again
look out the front window of their fine
Connaught Square house
at the tree from which, it’s said,
they used to once string
traitors.

Kevin Higgins

RollingNews

Migrants on the English Channel

The Death By Drowning Of Twenty Seven Migrants
In The English Channel on Wednesday

It could have been twenty seven Cliff Richard fans
who quite like that Boris Johnson really;
twenty seven Noel Edmonds lookalikes
whose wives stimulate themselves with The Daily Express;
twenty seven former double glazing salesmen from Folkestone, Kent
who blame everything on the French;
twenty seven members of the Murdoch family
(including Jerry Hall);
twenty seven known business associates of the Duke of York;
twenty seven potential Archbishops of Canterbury;
twenty seven people with Allegra Stratton accents;
twenty seven arthritic comedians who spent
four years making Diane Abbot quips;
twenty seven logical positivists
who get their political philosophy from the tweets
of Right Said Fred, Joanna Lumley, & David Baddiel;
twenty seven OBEs, MBEs, and Commanders of The British Empire.

Tragically, it wasn’t.

Kevin Higgins

Pic: Wikimedia

Telly’s Richard Madeley (left) and seagulls on a waste dump

Kevin, writes:

A short poem inspired/provoked by this story and this story…

When I Come To Power

Spiking women’s drinks
or bums with a syringe
will be an offence punishable
by having one’s body placed
in an industrial crusher
and turned into an easily
spreadable paste.

But it will be perfectly legal –
compulsory, even –
to, at least once in your life,
drug a daytime TV presenter of the male variety,
preferably Richard Madeley,
and deposit his twitching body
on the town rubbish dump
for the gulls to peck.

Kevin Higgins

“Get a professional headshot taken. You would be surprised how many professional writers have terrible headshots. If you can afford to, hire a professional and get a great shot. This will make you appear more serious and professional as a writer.”

Promoting Your Work, Dublin Writer’s Centre.

Kevin writes:

The post above, on the website of one of the country’s primary literary resource organisations, provoked me to invent a rising new Irish novelist. His name is Zenith Kane. I took their advice re: getting a headshot done that would make me look like a serious writer (see above).

Zenith

Zenith Kane is the type of guy
who, home from a challenging afternoon
in the rat eat rat milieu that is the trade
in self-rotating slurry tanks,
lowers himself into his marble bathtub
with his pet electric eel;
makes up plans

to go, first, into politics
then the global arms trade as a lobbyist,
to familiarise himself with the menus
of the better hotels in Brussels,
Beirut, the District of Columbia;

then retire to a purpose built shed
the far end of the garden to drink
Ginseng tea through a handmade straw
and draft the twenty seventh best novel
in the history of front cover blurbs written
by critics with specialist haircuts and names
translated into Gaelic;

bathe in the sunlight of the quality press
declaring it brilliant
before it’s even written.

But last things first: those business cards,
and the professionally done head shot
all the websites say a novelist of his standing
must these days have.

For now, though, the struggle to rise
pinkly out of the bathtub while feeding
an eel buzzing its discontent
frogs and crabs by the bag load,

so tomorrow he can again be Zenith
and talk a man from Anbally or Gortlusky
into a tank with a rotating paddle
guaranteed to maintain the quality of his slurry.

Kevin Higgins

From top; Jessica Traynor’s poem on 9/11 commissioned by the Consulate General of Ireland in New York; Kevin Higgins

Poet Kevin Higgins writes:

In his book Revolution Betrayed (1937) Trotsky predicted that the Stalinist era “will, in spite of individual exceptions, go into the history of artistic creation as a time of mediocrities, laureates, and toadies.” He was, by and large, correct. A cursory glance at a poem such as Pablo Neruda’s ‘To be men! That is the Stalinist law!’ is all the evidence one needs that Stalinist cultural constrictions could reduce even a great poet, which Neruda undeniably was, to momentary mediocrity.

But such Stalinist errors are not my main purpose here. What I find interesting is that Trotsky places the word “laureates” between “mediocrities” and “toadies”. A laureate is something many poets aspire to be. But no poet likes to have the word mediocrity attached to their name. And, though a good few poets are prepared in fact to be toadies, most would prefer if, in the interests of continued literary decorum, you refrained from calling their networking activities by this more appropriately pungent name.

The commissioned/laureate poem is always difficult, particularly for the poet who pretends/aspires to be a anti-establishment. I personally don’t expect to ever be the laureate for anywhere. I know, from excellently placed sources, that one of my poems ‘You Can Take The Man Out of Eyre Square But You Can’t Take The Eyre Square Out of The Man’ was earmarked to be displayed, carved in stone, in Eyre Square in Galway, the town where I grew up, as part of the Cúirt Festival’s Poetry Trail in 2018 but the then Festival Director intervened to make this not happen. Such things are clichés off a duck’s back at this stage. I take them as great compliments. When it comes to laureate type poems I far prefer my own suggestion that Galway City Council/Cúirt/Poetry Ireland appoint me poet laureate for the disused public toilet on Galway’s O’Brien’s Bridge. Should that great honour ever be bestowed on me, I already have my poem written.

When I recently read Jessica Traynor’s ‘What Holds: a poem in honour of Fr Mychal Judge and all first responders on 9/11’ a few things struck me. First, given the poem was commissioned by the Consulate General of Ireland in New York – a branch of the Department of Foreign Affairs whose mission is “to promote Irish interests in the USA” – for the 20^th anniversary of the successful Al Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers, this was a pretty tricky assignment. Made trickier by the fact this anniversary took place in the immediate aftermath of the American empire’s humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, after a twenty year war into which they were lured by Al Qaeda’s demolition of the World Trade Center.

The American empire is in a sensitive state right now, and a poem which in any way contextualised the Twin Towers atrocity, by making any mention of why such people might want to wound America in this way, would, it’s safe to say, not be welcomed by the diplomats at the Consulate General of Ireland in New York. Nor would they smile on any mention of the hundreds of thousands killed, most of them civilians, in the subsequent War on Terror throughout the presidencies of Bush, Obama, Trump and now Biden.

So, it is a poem which started out being unable to mention either the context or consequences of the event it commemorates. And it succeeds admirably in this. It must be said: Traynor’s poem is Shakespeare compared to Pablo Neruda’s dirge for Stalin. It is however a poem which is part of the reassuring foot rub Ireland, and other such allies, have been giving the American empire in the aftermath of its humbling in Afghanistan.

Americans are special, this poem implies, because American’s who die in imperial conflicts get poems commissioned in their memory. The ten civilians, including seven children, wiped out in a U.S. drone attack near Kabul during America’s hasty escape from that country will have no poem commissioned for them by any branch of the Irish diplomatic service.

Also, by not contextualising what happened on 9/11, the poem plays into the notion that 9/11 was an inexplicable act by crazy brown people. Whereas in reality it was a case of a group of people inflicting injury on the empire in what they felt was the most effective way they could for entirely understandable reasons.

Though liberal humanists will see the poem as being about one heroic man, and will leap to accuse this critique of it as being demeaning of that dead hero, in reality you, me, and the New York Times know that your average liberal humanist does think that a Western life is worth more than that of an Afghan, or an Iraqi, or a Yemeni. In this sense, this poem promotes the ideology of empire, the ideology of war.

To paraphrase what Karl Marx said about such inadvertent ideologues in Das Kapital: It does not know it, but it is doing it.

Laureate Poem for The Empire by Kevin Higgins  (Beir Bua Journal)

Katherine Zappone (centre)

Kevin writes:

Given Katherine Zappone’s appointment, by Fine Gael, to be guardian of our free speech, I offer this poem which I wrote on her appointment to a Fine Gael led cabinet in 2016. The above picture is of her at Jobstown in 2014 unsuccessfully trying to protect Joan Burton’s right to free speech from anti-water charges protesters.

Katherine Zappone Dreams Her Pragmatist’s Dream

Underestimate not a woman of my agility.
I once used one of my better handbags
to carry the King’s distressed head home,
when those without expense accounts, or subtlety,
rudely separated it from the rest of him.

I’ll be Minister for this, that,
anything you want; will gladly
spend my days looking into
slurry tanks, or inspecting
military parades, if the price is
adequate, which we both know
it will be.

When I visit her as part
of the celebrations to mark
the two hundredth anniversary
of the potato famine, I plan
to give her majesty a small
but exquisitely formed
figurine of me, tastefully
painted toe to head
in gold leaf. If we both live
long enough, which I now
expect we will,

for me to tell her about the time
I handed the Tsar a hanky
when all his battleships were sunk
and the families of the sacrificed
reacted surprisingly badly.

Kevin Higgins

Taoiseach left ‘blindsided’ by proposal to appoint Zappone as government envoy (Irish Examiner)

Meanwhile…

"This is a 13 or 15 grand role . . . I don't think we want to make a huge mountain out of a molehill here either"@EmerHigginsTD on the Governments appointment of Katherine Zappone to a UN role after reports that the Taoiseach was blindsided by the move. #TonightVMTV pic.twitter.com/ihkuCSXpxG

— TonightVMTV (@TonightVMTV) July 27, 2021