Starting
in September, Galway Arts Centre is offering aspiring poets a
choice of three online 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, Spanish,
Italian, Japanese, German, Serbian, Russian, & Portuguese. 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. He was
Satirist-in-Residence at the Bogman’s Cannon (2015-16). '2016 - The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins' was published by NuaScéalta in 2016; a pamphlet of Kevin’s
political poems The Minister For Poetry
Has Decreed was published, also in 2016, by the Culture Matters imprint of the
UK based Manifesto Press. 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; have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Times (UK), The Independent, The Daily
Mirror, Hot Press magazine and on Tonight With Vincent Browne; and read
aloud by the film director Ken Loach at a political meeting in London. In 2016 The Stinging Fly magazine
described Kevin as "likely the most
read living poet in Ireland." He has published six collections of poetry
with Salmon, including Song of Songs 2.0: New & Selected Poems
(2017). Kevin has read his work at Arts
Council and Culture Ireland supported poetry events in Kansas City, USA (2006),
Los Angeles, USA (2007), London, UK (2007), New York, USA (2008), Athens,
Greece (2008); St. Louis, USA (2008), Chicago, USA (2009), Denver, USA (2010),
Washington D.C (2011), Huntington, West Virginia, USA (2011), Geelong,
Australia (2011), Canberra, Australia (2011), St. Louis, USA (2013), Boston,
Massachusetts, USA (2013), Amherst,
Massachusetts, USA (2013), & New Mexico, USA (2018). Kevin’s most recent
poetry collection, Sex and Death at
Merlin Park Hospital, was published by Salmon Poetry (June 2019); one of the poems from which feature in A Galway Epiphany, the final instalment of Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor
series of novels. His
poems have been broadcast on RTE Radio, Lyric FM, and BBC Radio 4. His book The Colour Yellow & The Number 19: Negative Thoughts That Helped One Man Mostly
Retain His Sanity During 2020 was published in November by Nuascealta.
Kevin’s sixth full poetry
collection, Ecstatic, will be
published next March by Salmon.
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 NUIG BA Creative Writing Connect programme and is
Creative Writing Director for the NUI Galway Summer School. Kevin is also
co-organiser of the successful Over The Edge reading series which specialises
in promoting new writers.
The
workshops will all commence the week of Monday September 20th. They
will be conducted via Zoom in the usual friendly supportive manner that have
made Kevin's regular in-person poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre so
popular. Participants shouldn't worry about the technology! Full details of
precisely how the workshop will function online will be explained to
participants during the first session.
They will take place on Tuesday evenings, 7-8.30pm (first
class Tuesday, September 21st); on Thursday afternoons, 2-4pm (first
class Thursday, September 23rd)
and on Friday afternoons, 2-3.30pm (first
class Friday, September 24th).
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.
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 https://www.galwayartscentre.ie/courses/307-307-poetry-with-kevin-higgins-evening-online-remote-course
