Kevin Higgins (poet)

Early life and education

At the age of fifteen he joined Galway West Labour Party; became a member of the local Labour Youth section.

Activity

He lived in London in the late 1980s where he was active in the "anti-poll tax movement". Since the mid-nineties he has lived in Galway. With his wife Susan Millar DuMars, he co-organises the Over The Edge literary events in Galway City. He also facilitates poetry workshops at the Galway Arts Centre; teaches creative writing at Galway Technical Institute' and was recently Writer-in-Residence at Merlin Park Hospital. He is the poetry critic of the Galway Advertiser and, with Michael S. Begnal, was a founding co-editor of The Burning Bush literary magazine.

Higgins’s first collection of poems The Boy With No Face was published by Salmon Poetry in February 2005. This was short-listed for the 2006 Strong Award for Best First Collection by an Irish Poet. His second collection of poems, Time Gentlemen, Please, was published in March 2008 by Salmon. In an interview in March 2008 he sharply criticised the contemporary left. Some of the poems in Time Gentlemen, Please were in turn criticised by the Socialist Workers Party. However, others on the left have praised his work. His fourth book, The Ghost In The Lobby, was published by Salmon in 2014.

He won the 2003 Cúirt Festival Poetry Grand Slam and was awarded a literature bursary by the Arts Council of Ireland in 2005. Higgins is primarily a satirical poet. His poetry is discussed in Justin Quinn’s Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry.

In August 2010 Higgins contributed to an ebook collection of political poems entitled Emergency Verse - Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State, edited by Alan Morrison.