Ecstatic

In these poems the personal and global darknesses are always lit by Kevin Higgins’s singular wit. There is lyricism, and acute vulnerability, here. But if you want reassuring, middle class epiphanies then you should immediately put this poetry collection down and run screaming from the bookshop. There is a hard-fought for subversive hope in several of these poems. And where that hope fails there is a maniacal laughter which is sometimes the only answer.

Ecstatic is Kevin Higgins’s sixth full collection of poems.

Praise for Kevin Higgins’s previous poetry collection:

“Nothing is ever seen the same way again if you truly engage with a Higgins poem.” - Dublin Review of Books.

“Some great stuff here. It’s the Dave McSavage of poetry books. The Michel Houllebecq. Sergio Ramos (crossed with Ronaldo).” - Kevin Gildea, Founder of Dublin’s Comedy Cellar.

“Expelled [from the British Labour Party] for having his poem printed in a socialist newspaper. Banning and persecution is something Irish writers have a lot of experience of. Kevin follows in the footsteps of O’Casey, Shaw, O’Brien, Joyce, Behan and so many others.” - Pamela Fitzpatrick , UK Labour Parliamentary Candidate Harrow East Constituency 2019

KEVIN HIGGINS published five previous full collections of poems: The Boy With No Face (2005), Time Gentlemen, Please (2008), Frightening New Furniture (2010), The Ghost In The Lobby (2014), and Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital (2019). His poems have also featured in Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) and in The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe May 2014). Kevin was satirist-in-residence with the alternative literature website The Bogman’s Cannon 2015-16. He has facilitated poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre and taught Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute for fifteen years. Kevin was the Creative Writing Director for the NUI Galway International Summer School and also taught on the NUIG BA Creative Writing Connect program. His poems have been praised by, among others, Tony Blair’s biographer John Rentoul, Observer columnist Nick Cohen, writer and activist Eamonn McCann, historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Sunday Independent columnist Gene Kerrigan; and have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Times (London), Hot Press magazine, The Daily Mirror and on The Vincent Browne Show, and read aloud by Ken Loach at a political meeting in London. He has published topical political poems in publications as various as The New European, The Morning Star, Dissent Magazine (USA), Village Magazine (Ireland), & Harry’s Place. The Stinging Fly magazine has described Kevin as “likely the most widely read living poet in Ireland”.

Kevin Higgins passed away in January 2023.