{"id":14848,"date":"2023-01-16T17:59:42","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T17:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=14848"},"modified":"2023-01-16T17:59:42","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T17:59:42","slug":"kevin-higgins-1967-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2023\/01\/16\/kevin-higgins-1967-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Higgins: 1967-2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the recently deceased Kevin Higgins: \u2018Poets may be divided into three types: those of us who must be and are, or have been, suppressed, at least until after we are dead; those whose subject matter is so commonplace\/banal that it doesn\u2019t matter either way; and then those who become pure decorations of the Regime.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Responding to his assessment by email (sadly, I never met Kevin in person despite publishing over twenty of his poems<\/a><\/span>) I wondered whether the three archetypes he had identified could be located in the Romantic canon as the suppressed Percy Bysshe Shelley, the rather banal John Keats and the decorative Poet Laureate William Wordsworth.<\/p>\n

He replied from his death bed on Tuesday, January 3rd<\/sup>:<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t count Keats among the banal. I would more be thinking of the older academicised poet of the post WWII world, who is mostly locked into an Irish Times\/Guardian\/NY Times world view whereby the only permitted historical variables are their own divorces and their parents\u2019 deaths. Keats wasn’t that. Though you have categorised Shelley and Wordsworth right in that regard.<\/em><\/p>\n

Note to self: read more of John Keats.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Paul Muldoon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kevin\u2019s final poem for Cassandra Voices \u2018Congratulations\u2019<\/a><\/span> responded to what he regarded as \u2018a terrible, long poem taking one side in a war in a most crude and unthinking way\u2019 by Paul Muldoon in the Irish Times<\/em>. As he saw it, for establishment poets:<\/p>\n

Life will be mostly festivals
\nof enforced grinning,
\nduring which you\u2019ll pass the hours
\ncounting each others\u2019 teeth.<\/em><\/p>\n

If not actively suppressed, Kevin Higgins was certainly blacklisted<\/a> <\/span>by the so-called paper of record for having the temerity to question that newspaper\u2019s coverage of the War in Ukraine<\/a><\/span>. He would be amused to find the appreciation he had anticipated<\/a><\/span>, and another from the President himself, Michael D. Higgins<\/span><\/a>, who was also not spared his satire.<\/p>\n

In the poem \u2018Presidential\u2019<\/span><\/a> he chided:<\/p>\n

I had no option but to vote for
\nthat tax on women\u2019s shoes
\nbut greatly admired the fight you put up against it;
\nhave kept all the press cuttings,
\nespecially those that took care not to mention me.<\/em><\/p>\n

Another barbed poem, which he confided was written in the voice of Michael D. Higgins (as he imagined it), \u2018having known him for forty years\u2019 was Memorial to Myself<\/a><\/span>:<\/p>\n

I was not bought and sold at the market stall
\nwhere you can get (third hand)
\nFianna Fail senators cheaper
\nthan Mayo flags two weeks after
\nan All Ireland defeat.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kevin Higgins was a poet unusually animated by political events. Invariably, he took the side of the oppressed, whether desperate migrants<\/a>, <\/span>or Travellers<\/a><\/span> on the fringe of Irish society.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Advisory Epistle From Literature Quangocrat<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His verse took aim at those poets who engaged with what he considered the commonplace and banal. The first poem he ever published with Cassandra Voices Advisory Epistle From Literature Quangocrat<\/span><\/a> offers a caricature of a contemporary Irish poet:<\/p>\n

I only read novels
\nwhich interrogate the relationship
\nbetween gout and Islamist terrorism,
\ntranslated from the obligatory French;
\nand poets whose words make me sink
\nmore comfortably into
\nmy brown swivel chair.<\/em><\/p>\n

More of this contempt flowed from ‘The Most Risk-Taking Poet In Ireland’<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Under the influence of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
\nI once took one more Paracetamol
\nthan I should have.<\/em><\/p>\n

Indeed, he recently contemplated starting a new Irish Literary Awards in \u2018When I\u2019m Allowed Leave The Cancer Ward<\/span><\/a>\u2019:<\/p>\n

Categories will include: least authentic
\npoetry collection, most intellectually empty
\nnovel, most cowardly book review,
\npublisher who made the biggest
\neeijt of themselves this year<\/em><\/p>\n

And in \u2018Formation of a Young Irish Intellectual\u2019<\/a><\/span> he expressed deep concern about what he considered a homogeneity of thinking around a damaging consensus reigning ascendant in Irish universities:<\/p>\n

We have a library of pre-existing think pieces
\nfrom which you can choose your opinions,
\nwhich we\u2019d like you to massage
\nso they seem different at first
\nbut end up being exactly the same as the rest of us. <\/em><\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly perhaps, he expressed indifference for \u2018grunts of approval \/ from fully clothed minor male poets\u2019 in ‘My Approach to Literary Networking<\/span><\/a>‘.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Continuing Story of \u00d3glaigh na h\u00c9ireann<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kevin unmercifully pilloried what he perceived as latent fascistic tendencies in Ireland directed against the forces of radicalism he identified with. As he put it in ‘The Continuing Story of \u00d3glaigh na h\u00c9ireann’<\/a><\/span>:<\/p>\n

All around the snot-nosed parishes of Ireland
\nsmall people of both genders, and neither,
\nare flapping open
\ncopies of The Sunday O\u2019Duffy
\ngetting worried
\nabout the continued existence
\nof the Citizen Army, Fenian Brotherhood,
\nOfficial IRA.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s fair to say Kevin Higgins despised advocates of neoliberal policy in Ireland. In ‘The Ballad of Lucy Kryton’<\/span><\/a> he described her fiscal policy as\u00a0 \u2018dampness moving \/ down other people\u2019s walls.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"
‘Homage to Henry Kissinger<\/span>‘<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Further afield, Kevin reserved particular scorn for realpolitik <\/em>pragmatists such as Henry Kissinger<\/a><\/span>, who as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State presided over a particular brutal phase of US foreign policy under Presidents Nixon and Ford. Kevin seemed to have little faith in karma catching up with Kissinger:<\/p>\n

Someone dies of politically necessary starvation
\nbut that someone is never Henry Kissinger
\nA bomb is dropped on someone whose name you\u2019ll never have to pronounce
\nbecause it\u2019s not Henry Kissinger<\/em><\/p>\n

He also railed against ‘the adults in the room’ of this neoliberal era, depicting an anti-democratic slide in \u2018After Recent Unfortunate Results<\/a><\/span>\u2019:<\/p>\n

So when all\u2019s said and counted,
\npeople who shouldn\u2019t matter
\ncan go back to not mattering.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
The Joke<\/span><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unsurprisingly, the spectacle of Donald Trump offered ample opportunities for his satire<\/a><\/span>:<\/p>\n

A barrel of industrial waste poured into a suit
\ndonated by a casino owner who knows people
\nwith a tangerine tea towel tossed strategically on top
\nbecause it was the only available metaphor for hair
\nwas running for re-election as CEO of South Canadia
\nagainst an old coat with holes in it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, he viewed the phenomenon of Trump as symptomatic of a sick American society, rather than the causative agent necessarily\u00a0\u2013<\/em> the ‘old coat’ \u2013<\/em> which he saw as embedded in power.<\/p>\n

Such people agreed with each other that the barrel of waste
\nmade the raging boil on the nation\u2019s privates
\nway too obvious, and hoped by throwing
\nthe old coat over it they could again
\nforget it was there.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kevin was a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, and actually expelled from the UK Labour Party following satirical poems about Blair and the Labour right<\/span><\/a>. In \u2018Tribute Acts\u2019<\/span><\/a> he wrote<\/p>\n

Each witch hunt is a tribute act to the last.
\nThere is always a committee of three.
\nThe gravity in the room is such
\nthey struggle to manoeuvre
\nthe enormity of their serious
\nfaces in the door.<\/em><\/p>\n

He also expressed contempt for polite, ineffectual demonstrations in ‘Note From The Organisers’<\/span><\/a>:<\/p>\n

our gathering will resemble
\nless a revolution
\nthan a church group
\non its way somewhere
\nto pray for a cure
\nfor rheumatism,
\nor even better,
\nno cure;<\/em><\/p>\n

Time and again he expressed a serious worry about the neoliberal hegemony in comedic terms. Thus in ‘Our Posh Liberal Friends<\/span><\/a>‘ he wrote:<\/p>\n

This Future has a face that one day
\nmight raise the corporate tax rate
\nby zero point five percent,
\nand is a little too insistent
\nthat poor people be allowed live,
\ngive or take, as long as the rest of us.<\/em><\/p>\n

And mocked a neoliberal tolerance of diversity that provided cover for any manner of outrage, as in \u2018Liberals and Death<\/span><\/a>\u2019:<\/p>\n

\u2026 you\u2019re the first village
\nno-one\u2019s ever heard of
\nsuccessfully abolished
\nfrom thirty thousand feet
\nby a transgender person
\npressing a button;<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
‘The Happy Song of Us’<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

No doubt the period of the lockdowns was tough for someone in ill-health who had previously attempted to bring poetry to the people with live events and workshops. While he appears to have been generally supportive of lockdown measures, we do find worries expressed around the arrival of a techno-dystopia in \u2018The Happy Song of Us<\/span>\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Okay to buy your grandchild an ice-cream.
\nIllegal for them to lick it.
\nFine to bake granny
\na gleaming fruit cake,
\nas long as you only email her
\na high resolution photo of it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kevin Higgins was an uncompromising poet. His verse vented a deep disenchantment with the economic structures of our time. He fought against the spiraling inequality and outright cruelty he saw in the contemporary world, sparing no one he believed was collaborating with this system. Not even Michael D..<\/p>\n

He inveighed against the well made poem<\/a><\/span> that puts on a dicky bow, and \u2018which walks to the top of the hill, \/ and has what it calls an epiphany.\u2019<\/p>\n

The well made poem believes
\nnuclear weapons are necessary
\nto keep poems like it safe
\nfrom all the rough language
\ngathered ungovernable at the border
\nforever threatening to invade it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Above all perhaps, he scorned the hypocrisy of people who only speak out only when it is safe to do so, as in \u2018Safe To Say<\/span><\/a>\u2019:<\/p>\n

Sometime the century after next.
\nI\u2019ll be against giving the children of Bethlehem
\nsomething from Lockheed Martin
\nto occupy themselves with for Christmas.
\nLike I was against rhino-whipping the blacks
\ninto line in Port Elizabeth, Ladysmith, Pietermaritzburg
\nafter it stopped happening.
\nBut, for now, see no alternative.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thanks for your support Kevin! We\u2019ll do our best to keep going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the recently deceased Kevin Higgins: \u2018Poets may be divided into three types: those of us who must be and are, or have been, suppressed, at least until after we are dead; those whose subject matter is so commonplace\/banal that it doesn\u2019t matter either way; and then those who become pure decorations of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11593,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[180,2104,3392,4087,5184,5187,5190,5194,5200,5201,5206,5210,5211,5213,5214,8500],"class_list":["post-14848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-culture","tag-1967-2023","tag-culture","tag-food","tag-higgins","tag-kevin","tag-kevin-higgins","tag-kevin-higgins-blue-shirts","tag-kevin-higgins-cassandra-voices","tag-kevin-higgins-galway","tag-kevin-higgins-henry-kissinger","tag-kevin-higgins-liberals","tag-kevin-higgins-michael-d","tag-kevin-higgins-michael-d-higgins","tag-kevin-higgins-obituary","tag-kevin-higgins-paul-muldoon","tag-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}