Starting in January, Galway Arts Centre
is offering aspiring poets a choice of three poetry workshops, all facilitated
by 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. His work also appears in the generation
defining anthology Identity Parade –New British and Irish Poets (Ed.
Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010) and 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, Russian, Spanish,
Italian, Japanese & Portuguese. His fourth collection of poetry, The
Ghost in the Lobby, was published in 2014 by Salmon. 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. Kevin is satirist-in-residence with the alternative literature
website The Bogman’s Cannon. 2016 – The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins
was published by NuaScéalta earlier this year; a pamphlet of his political poems The Minister For Poetry Has Decreed is published in December by the new Culture Matters imprint of U.K. based Manifesto Press. Song of Songs 2:0 – New & Selected Poems will be published by
Salmon in Spring 2017. The Stinging Fly
magazine recently described Kevin as “likely the most widely read living poet
in Ireland”.
Each week Kevin will give participants a poetry writing exercise for the
following week and will offer each participant constructive suggestions as to
how her or his poem can become the best possible poem it can be.
Kevin is an experienced workshop facilitator and several of his students
have gone on to achieve publication success. One of his workshop participants
at Galway Arts Centre won the prestigious Hennessy Award for New Irish Poetry, two
have won the Cúirt New Writing Prize, and yet another the Cúirt Poetry Grand
Slam, while several have published collections of their poems; two being
shortlisted for the Shine-Strong Award for Best First Collection of poems. In
2013 a group of his students set up the poetry newspaper Skylight 47, which publishes new poems, reviews of poetry books and
opinion pieces about poetry related matters. Kevin teaches poetry on the NUI
Galway Summer School programme and on the NUIG BA Creative Writing Connect
programme. Kevin is also co-organiser of the successful Over The Edge reading
series which specialises in promoting new writers. Each workshop will run for ten weeks, commencing the week of Monday January 16th. They will take place on Tuesday evenings, 7-8.30pm (first class January 17th); on Thursday afternoons, 2-4pm (first class January 19th) and on Friday afternoons, 2-3.30pm (first class January 20th).
The Tuesday evening and Friday afternoon workshops are open to both complete beginners as well as those who’ve been writing for some time. The Thursday afternoon workshop is an Advanced Poetry Workshop, suitable for those who’ve participated in poetry workshops before or had poems published in magazines. The cost to participants is €110, with an €100 concession rate.
Places must be paid for in advance. To reserve a place contact reception at Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street, phone 091 565886, email info@galwayartscentre.ie, or go to GalwayArtsCentre.ie