I attach a poem written by my former poetry teacher Kevin Higgins who died in January aged 56. Kevin is a huge loss to Galway and to the literary world.
Together with his wife Susan Millar DuMars, both published Poets and teaching Writing at University level, they started up a forum for local writers. Called Over The Edge , the monthly groups in the Library gave encouragement and opportunity for fledgling writers to come and read out their work on open mic nights.
Kevin was Poet in Residence at both the local hospitals and he brought poetry to the walls and corridors, which in all my years working in them I never saw before.
Kevin was an exceptional man that I was privileged to know a little. Like his wife Susan he had a way of making Something out of very little. He was enormously respectful of everything that was presented to him and the group in the weekly zoom classes which I attended with up to 25 others from around the world.
This poem is the one of his last. He was diagnosed with cancer and died within weeks of the diagnosis. He lived his last days continuing to observe life, the process of being human and the process of dying.
He shared the intimate experience of his forthcoming demise with his Facebook followers and in Poems. They was a profound experience for me which I will never forget. I think this is a marvellous Poem and deeply moving.
Thank you Kevin you will never be forgotten.
I always thought I’d live to learn how to swim
do the backward butterfly to Olympic standard
and see trickle-down economics deliver
at least one albeit slightly polluted drop.
I always thought I’d live to learn how to drive,
win at least one Grand Prix motor racing championship
and see the Democrats legislate for free
universal health care.
I always thought I’d live to tidy
the books off the study floor
and see fascists give up
stabbing black boys at bus stops
because peaceful protests
have eloquently made them
see the error of their ways.
But the books that made me
still decorate the study floor
and I don’t have the oxygen to shift them.
My consultants are unanimous
my days marching to places like Welling
and Trafalgar Square are over.
The risk of getting tossed into the back of a police van