Tag Archives: Kevin Higgins

Afghans protest troop withdrawal at the White House, Washington DC, USA yesterday

Kevin writes:

A poem I wrote almost twenty years ago. It seems an appropriate one for this week.

September 2001

Now those geopolitical chickens
have coming winging home to roost,
it’s like roaming the back-streets of Vienna
one of those fateful, unravelling days,
Gavrilo Princip’s lethal itch
having just made its shattering entrance.
From kitchen tables and café bars
everywhere, military strategists
are springing up. My mother’d
invade Afghanistan this minute,
if only she knew where it was.

Kevin Higgins
September 14th 2001

Pic: EPA

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…

From top: Niall Stokes, editor and founder of Hot Press; the magazine endorses Ivana Bacik, Labour candidate in today’s Dublin Bay South by-election

Kevin writes:

In the 2016 General Election Hot Press also endorsed the Labour Party, who had at that stage been in government for five years, implementing austerity, attempting to impose water charges, and getting the housing crisis going. Hot Press did this on the basis that only with Labour in government would the 8th amendment be repealed. This turned out not to be the case. Labour lost all but 7 of its 37 seats and were out of government. But the 8th amendment was repealed in any case in 2018. Labour actually were in government when the 8th amendment was introduced in 1983…In this poem I pay tribute to the intellectual giant that is Hot Press Editor Niall Stokes. This poem should be read while prostrating oneself in front of a large colour photograph of Michael D. Higgins, or failing that Ruairi Quinn, preferably while naked.

Soliloquy in Voice of Ageing Rock Journalist

There I was on the meditation mat
Jackson Browne gave me to mark
the year of the rat, naked apart
from what’s left of my tremendous
hair, incantating the word
“progressive” to my holy self
and the tiny birds at
the window, who are always
my best first audience,
when the truth came to me:

no other combination of parties
can deliver the certain
(and required) surge
inwhole family suicide
among those made live in the kind of hotels
not frequented by Keith Richards,
that will occur
if this government is returned,
as it must be.

I’m most famous
for having once, allegedly,
shared a hot tub, and my thoughts
on the heroic death
of Salvador Allende,
with Ireland’s baldest
living intellectual.

I’m what happens when you take
not quite enough cocaine.
During a session at Lille’s Bordello,
I once pulled Bono’s finger;
or what I thought was
Bono’s finger.

I offer these words as evidence
that I’m not actually dead yet. Satan
be good to me and what remains
of my hair.

Kevin Higgins

RollingNews

Former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn after voting in the British General Election on December 12, 2019

Kevin writes:

My tenth, and final, poem responding to the new series of Reeling In The Years. Last evening’s episode covered 2019. This poem was written in the immediate aftermath of the UK General Election defeat of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour by Boris Johnson’s Conservatives.In those few days it seemed like every wine-soaked, politically (and probably actually) constipated centrist swarmed onto my Facebook page to say: I told you so!

Now, under the late Keir Starmer, despite, to put it mildly, much more favourable media coverage, UK Labour is actual further behind the Tories than was the case under Corbyn and the diagnosis seems far more terminal as the huge enthusiasm that was there for Corbyn, despite all the smears, particularly among young voters is absolutely not there for Starmer. But no matter. Hope is off the table and the aforementioned centrists can get back to soaking themselves in wine and failing to properly go to the toilet but living in the hope of an invite to next year’s Spectator garden party….

After The Defeat

People who never did anything in the first place
talk about giving up; text you
from the ruins of their overworked armchairs,
while you’re stuck breathing in diesel
and death on the beach at Dunkirk.

TV studios crowd with
suddenly undead experts, all come to tell you,
now we know the chemotherapy
hasn’t worked as you’d hoped,
it’s time you took up smoking again
to see if that helps.

Devils prowl internet and Earth,
dressed in clothes almost identical to yours,
and whisper in voices
part Siren picking her lyre, part bark of jackal,
part your worst self whining,
that the only way you’ll be rid
of war, Jacob Rees Mogg, and poor people
dying of being poor

is if you desist from further silliness
and click the box to sign up
to their generous introductory offer

of a little more war, Jacob Rees Mogg
and poor people dying because they deserve it.
Terms and conditions to follow.

Kevin Higgins

Getty

Leo Varadkar with then British Prime Minister Theresa May in Brussels, Belgium on September 17, 2018

Kevin writes:

My poem ‘Island’ in response to Sunday’s episode of Reeling In The Years. A major theme that year was the continuation of Theresa May’s Brexit stalemate.

Island

(after Wislawa Szymborska)

Where men with shiny scalps
fight for the right to dye
hair they no longer have
any colour they want.

Here, garbage can by magicked
into its opposite by the mere act
of attaching to it the word: Great.

Proud nation that pays
redundant assembly-line operatives
to sell photo-shopped versions of itself
to tourists from its former colonies.

Raised voices in its cathedral city tea rooms.
So shrill a cup gets chipped
in the course of the argument
and a scone is left behind on the plate.

The roses around its cottage gates try to forget.
But, elsewhere, the dead factory remembers.

And the disgraced estate agent tries to secure the door
on what was once British Home Stores
but can’t fathom the lock.

Kevin Higgins

Reeling in the Years: 2018 (RTE)

RollingNews

The Grenfell Tower fire occurred on June 14, 2017 at a block of public housing flats in North Kensington, west London, England

Kevin writes:

My poem below in response to last evening’s episode of RTÉ One’s Reeling In The Years, which covered 2017. I wrote it in the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire. The “woman made of wood” referred to in the title is Theresa May.

Pity The Woman Made of Wood

Crowned temporary Empress
of this tragic bit of chipboard floating
off the northernmost coast
of what used to be Europe.

Open please your hearts, empty your heads
and pretend not to notice the predictable few
disfigured old bastards who operate her,
yanking the all too visible wires
that make her jaws clack
awkwardly up and down. Pity please
this woman made of wood
now she’s too well understood
and gets all the kicks and expletives,
when she tries to speak about
anything other than the quarterly accounts.

Her back burdened and bent.
Respect please the enormity
of the pearls she must bear
about her splintering neck.
And don’t be behind with the rent
or petition her to save you when you again
characteristically fail to save yourself.

When smoke curls black under your door
you can snore on unperturbed in your narrow little bed,
bought with a pay-day loan obtained – quite legally –
from a bloke reputed to give defaulters
cement flip-flops for Christmas, to take them safely
down one of the larger pipes that joyfully
pour shit into the River Styx.

But the woman made of wood,
must at all costs avoid
unguarded flames for she would go up
like a cheap deckchair that picked the wrong
day to go sunbathing at Hiroshima.

Think of this, please, when bawling
your lucky human screams
as the fire arrives quite matter-of-fact
to oxidise you to a small hill of ashes
around what looks like
a collar bone. No such luck
for the woman made of wood.

Kevin Higgins

Reeling In The Years: 2017 (RTÉ)

RollingNews

Then Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny prepares to make a statement on the Brexit result on June 24, 2016

Kevin writes:

My poem in response to yesterday evening’s episode of Reeling In The Years deals with the Brexit referendum. I wrote this poem a couple of weeks before the vote. It is dedicated to my friend Darrell who lives in Portsmouth and was a big fan of the cheap French wine EU membership facilitated.

Exit
(for Darrell Kavanagh in his hour of need)

There will be no more thunderstorms
sent across the Channel by the French,
no acid rain floating in from Belgium.
Pizza Hut will offer a choice of
Yorkshire Pudding or Yorkshire Pudding.

You’ll spend the next twenty seven bank holidays
dismantling everything you ever bought from IKEA.
The electric shower your plumber,
Pavel, put in last week will be taken out
and you’ll be given the number of a bloke
who’s pure Billericay. Those used to caviar
will have jellied eels forced
down their magnificent throats.
Every fish and chip shop
on the Costa del Sol will in time
be relocated to Ramsgate or Carlisle.

All paving stones laid by the Irish
will be torn up to make work
for blokes who’ve been on the sick
since nineteen seventy six.
Those alleged to be involved in secretly
making spaghetti bolognaise
will be arrested and held
in a detention centre near Dover. Sausage dogs
will be put in rubber dinghies
and pointed in the general direction
of the Fatherland. Neatly sliced
French sticks topped with Pâté
will make way for fried bread
lathered with Marmite.

There’ll be no more of those new
names for coffee your gran
can’t pronounce. The entire royal family
will be shipped back to Bavaria, with the exception
of the Duke of Edinburgh who’ll be given
a one way ticket to Athens. Curry
will no longer by compulsory
after every twelfth pint of Stella,
which itself will only be available
by special permission of the Foreign Office.

We’ll give India back its tea, sit around increasingly
bellicose campfires in our rusting iron helmets,
our tankards overflowing with traditional Norse mead.

Kevin Higgins

RollingNews

Thousands gather to celebrate the Yes result in the Marriage Equality Referendum in Dublin Castle Courtyard on May 23, 2015

Kevin writes:

My poem in response to yesterday evening’s episode of [RTÉ One’s] Reeling In The Years, which covered 2015. I wrote the poem below in the immediate aftermath of the (overwhelming) passing of the Marriage Equality referendum in that year.

A Day of Just Yes

Word is:

the system of storms
building mid-Atlantic has now
obligingly cancelled itself out;

all remaining car accidents
have been put off until tomorrow;

no further bankruptcy notices
will come into existence
until at least Monday,
as there’s no one home
to open the envelopes;

the shadow on your mother’s
right lung will not be detectable
on an x-ray until next Wednesday
week at the earliest;

elected representatives
are permitted, for one day only,
to walk the streets openly
shaking peoples’ hands
without anyone wanting
to lock them in the boot
of an ancient Ford Escort
to think about what they’ve done
and what they’ve failed to do;

commentators from across
the ideological spectrum agree,
even Auntie Bridie’s sciatica
is better than it was
this time last week;

the other side’s slogans are,
this morning, flags
madly cheering
your victory;

the roof top crows for once
maintain a dignified silence
and appear to be enjoying
this sunshine,
which the old lady in the paper shop
says is promised
to last.

Kevin Higgins
23-5-15

Reeling in the Years : 2015 (RTÉ)

RollingNews

Paul Murphy TD (seated second right) during a protest against a visit to a food bank in  Jobstown, Tallaght by then Tanaiste Joan Burton

Kevin writes:

My poem in response to last evening’s episode of Reeling In The Years on RTÉ One, which covered 2014. I’ve chosen one inspired by the reaction of the common-or-garden Irish media liberal to Joan Burton’s car being blocked in Tallaght by anti-water charges protesters/

Irish Liberal Foresees Own Enduring Relevance

My words are smoother than the essential oils
the Taoiseach last week
had his parliamentary assistant rub
into his badly traumatised buttocks.
My psychotherapist insists
half the people who’ve taken
shotguns to their own heads,
during this recession, would’ve reconsidered,
if only they’d heard me talk for an hour
each week about the dangers of Sinn Féin,
or how I live in the hope of a woman Pope.

I’m all for the good people of middle Ireland
making their point in a dignified manner
with china cups of nothing stronger than tea in their hands.
But when thugs from the far parts start burning vans
and generally acting as if they owned the place;
and gurriers from the depths begin picking up bricks
and tossing words so terrible,
they’re not even in the dictionary,
at the Minister for Poverty’s hair-style.
(How would you like your wife,
sister, great grandmother,
kidnapped in her car
for two and a half hours?)

The world will not be changed by fools
banging on the bonnet of a BMW.
But by the likes of me talking
against social exclusion in TV studios.
And fundraising concerts organised
by former pop-stars.
And the well-meaning priest
with whom I regularly have dinner;
between the two us we’ve enough
concern for the poor to construct a second
Fergal Keane of the BBC,
as a back-up in case
the existing one breaks.

Trust in us. Pay no heed
to the sweary-mouthed crowd,
who if they’re not put back where they belong
will soon be eating pot noodle from scooped out skulls
confiscated from their betters
in defiance of international law.
By the likes of them,
the world must not be changed.

Kevin Higgins

Reeling in the Years: 2014 (RTE)

At the G8 summit in May 2013 at Lough Erne in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland were, from left: United States President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Taoiseach Enda Kenny

Kevin writes:

Sunday evening’s Reeling In The Years [RTÉ One] included the visit in 2013 by the Obamas, which was a spin off of the G20 summit on Lough Erne.

Around this time, I was doing two Culture Ireland sponsored poetry readings in Washington DC and Huntington, West Virginia. The poem below was inspired by our train journey from Washington to Huntington, which took us through the northern Virginia and West Virginia via the Blue Ridge mountains. At the start of our journey I spotted an Obama ‘Hope’ t-shirt for sale at a knockdown price in a shop in the train station. The poem was inspired by that journey.

Amtrak: Washington DC to Huntington, West Virginia

At Union Station hope is a t-shirt on sale
at seventy per cent off. Yesterday,
all the bow-tied barristers gathered
in the Hilton Hotel.

At the end of the street
the man from JP Morgan told Congress
investors prefer trophy real estate:
Manhattan office blocks to houses
for the little people.

Out here, the tuxedo gives way
to the pick up truck. Red winter fields
dotted with cattle that will soon be
hamburgers; demolition yards
full of cars that were once
somebody’s dream.

Out here, the taxi drivers are all local
in tiny white towns, each of which
glowers on its mountain side
like a schoolmistress.

Out here, guys
who’d have been happy
to point you in the direction
of the hunting supplies store
if they hadn’t got
killed in whatever war.

Kevin Higgins

RollingNews