Starting in February, Over The Edge
is offering aspiring poets worldwide a ten week online poetry workshop with poet
Kevin Higgins, whose best-selling first collection, The
Boy With No Face, published by Salmon Poetry, was short-listed for the
2006 Strong Award for Best First Collection by an Irish poet. Kevin’s second
collection of poems, Time Gentlemen, Please, was published in 2008 by
Salmon Poetry and his poetry is discussed in The Cambridge Introduction to
Modern Irish Poetry. His third collection Frightening New Furniture
was published in 2010 by Salmon and his work also appears in the generation
defining anthology Identity Parade –New British and Irish Poets (Ed.
Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010) and in The
Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed. Neil Astley, Bloodaxe, April 2014).
A collection of Kevin’s essays and book reviews, Mentioning The War,
was published by Salmon Poetry in 2012. Kevin’s poetry has been translated into
Greek, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, & Portuguese. The Ghost in The Lobby, was published in February
2014, also by Salmon. In 2014 Kevin's poetry was the subject of a paper 'The Case of Kevin Higgins, or, 'The Present State of Irish Poetic Satire' presented by David Wheatley at a Symposium on Satire at the University of Aberdeen. '2016 - The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins' was published by NuaScéalta in early 2016. A pamphlet of Kevin’s
political poems The Minister For Poetry
Has Decreed was published in December 2016 by the Culture Matters imprint of
the UK based Manifesto Press; Song of Songs 2:0 - New and Selected Poems was published by Salmon in April 2017. His poems have been praised by, among others,
Tony Blair’s biographer John Rentoul, Observer
columnist Nick Cohen, historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Sunday
Independent columnist Gene Kerrigan; been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Daily Mirror, Hot Press magazine, and on Tonight with Vincent Browne; and read aloud by film director Ken Loach at a political meeting in London. The Stinging Fly magazine recently described Kevin as "likely the most read living poet in Ireland." His most recent collection of poems, Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital, was published last June by Salmon Poetry; one of the poems from which will feature in A Galway Epiphany, the final installment of Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor series of novels.
workshop facilitator Kevin Higgins
Each of the ten weeks Kevin will email participants
a poetry writing exercise for the following week and participants will submit
one of their poems to Kevin for constructive criticism. Kevin will work with
participants on making each of their poems the best possible poem it can be.
Kevin is a highly experienced workshop
facilitator and several of his students have gone on to achieve publication
success. He has facilitated poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre for the past
twelve years. One of his workshop participants won the prestigious Hennessy
Award for New Irish Poetry; two have been shortlisted for the Shine/Strong Award for Best First Collection by an Irish poet; two have won the Cúirt New Writing Prize; and
another the Cúirt Poetry Grand Slam; several have published collections
of their poems with reputable publishers.
Kevin is the Creative Writing Director of the NUI Galway International Summer School and teaches poetry on the NUIG BA Creative Writing Connect programme. Kevin is co-organiser of the
successful Over The Edge: Open Reading series which specialises in promoting
new writers.
The workshop will run for ten weeks,
commencing Wednesday, 5th February 2020. The
cost to participants is €110. There are no refunds. The
workshop will be conducted in English only. THIS
WORKSHOP WILL BE LIMITED TO 30 REGISTERED PARTICIPANTS, SO IF YOU WANT TO ENSURE
A PLACE YOU SHOULD BOOK NOW.
For queries, email over-the-edge-openreadings@hotmail.com
YOU CAN REGISTER ONLINE NOW
