Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway, Ireland. He facilitates poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre; teaches creative writing at Galway Technical Institute and on the Brothers of Charity Away With Words programme. He is also Writer-in-Residence at Merlin Park Hospital and the poetry critic of the Galway Advertiser. His first collection of poems The Boy With No Face was published by Salmon in February 2005 and was short-listed for the 2006 Strong Award. His second collection, Time Gentlemen, Please, was published in March 2008 by Salmon. One of the poems from Time Gentlemen, Please, ‘My Militant Tendency’, features in the Forward Book of Poetry 2009. His work also features in the anthology Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Ed Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010). His third collection of poems Frightening New Furniture was published in March by Salmon Poetry.

You Tube Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULUCGo9xZag

Bookshop Romance

The girl behind the counter whispers: “Yes, Mother”,
then puts the phone down with a cosmic sigh.
You look up from your D.H. Lawrence.
Something rustles in your corduroy trousers.

You want to shout: “Let me through!
I’m an existentialist”; to take her hand
and tell her: your own family Christmases
often resemble the aftermath of an embalming;
that your brother’s a fully paid-up member
of V-neck Sweaters for the Bomb;
that most years you honour them
with your absence.

That you’d like her to come up
this evening to see your haiku
and the life you keep
in the shoebox under the bed.

That you’ve been admired
by women with bad judgment
all your life…

KEVIN HIGGINS

This poem appeared on www.nthposition.com (October, 2007)