The Galway-based, London-born satirical poet Kevin Higgins, who has died at the age of 55, was described in an article in The Stinging Fly literary magazine in 2016 as “likely the most widely read living poet in Ireland”.
And while that view can be disputed, there is no doubt that Higgins was impactful both with his words and personality. President Michael D Higgins said that he could not think of anyone “who did more to bring the public to [the] appreciation and joy of poetry, to make the case for performed poetry and who encouraged others to read broadly and, most of all, to make poems and find their meaning in their lives”.
The author of six collections of poetry including The Boy With No Face (2005), The Ghost in the Lobby (2014) and Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital (2019), Higgins was a leading public literary figure in Galway city. He won the Grand Slam award at the Galway poetry festival Cúirt in 2003. And in 2010, he contributed to an e-book collection of political poems entitled Emergency Verse — Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State, edited by English poet Alan Morrison.
To read the full obituary see the following link – www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2023/01/21/obituary-kevin-higgins-a-poet-with-forensic-insight-and-that-common-touch/
