8.00pm at the Tanyard Bar. All welcome. Free.
The Speakeasy Sessions are delighted to welcome internationally renowned poet Kevin Higgins, debut contributor and local author Karen Billing, comedian Dakota Mick and spoken word veteran Cormac Lally to The Tanyard for the August event.
There will also be four open mic slots for anyone who would like to have a go on the night. All welcome.
Kevin Higgins
‘Likely the mostly widely read living poet in Ireland’, The Stinging Fly magazine.
‘The sinister fringe’s bard in residence’, Rabble.ie
Kevin Higgins’s first collection of poems The Boy With No Face was published by Salmon Poetry in February 2005. This was short-listed for the 2006 Strong Award for Best First Collection by an Irish Poet.
His second collection of poems, Time Gentlemen, Please, was published in March 2008 by Salmon.
His fourth book, The Ghost In The Lobby, was published by Salmon in 2014. He won the 2003 Cúirt Festival Poetry Grand Slam and was awarded a literature bursary by the Arts Council of Ireland in 2005.
Higgins is primarily a satirical poet.
His latest book is Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital.
About Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital
“In Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital Kevin Higgins uses the blackest humour to throw some occasionally bizarre but mercilessly honest light on the vexed, and often absurd, subject of his chronic illness. In this, his fifth full collection of poetry, he also gives his readers, as they have come to expect, in poems steeped in the influence of Brecht, Swift, and Zbigniew Herbert, his views in undiluted form on everything from homelessness and identity politics to anal sex and comedians who used to be edgy during the 1990s.
The book includes the satire on the marriage of Tony and Cherie Blair which led to his suspension from the British Labour Party in 2016. And in the final section, he presents us with a contemporary Dunciad which lacerates the poetry scene, both in Ireland and internationally, and takes out several journalists along the way. “He is at home in the post-modern world, and moves with ease through his bewildering cast of characters and concerns… Higgins’s poetry engages with this world, making fun of it but with the full intention of making serious points… It is this ability to wring the ridiculous out of the sopping clothes of everyday life that makes Higgins’ work essential reading.”
Poetry Ireland Review