STAND UK

March 1998

It's quiet hard to find Rita Ann Higgins own voice amidst the multitude of other personalities that inhabit the pages of Sunny Side Plucked (Bloodaxe). This section of work from her four previous collections shows Higgins as a chronicler of the lives of her community: ordinary folk from Galway whose experience - far from poetic - is scarred by poverty, oppression and pain. Anger is the dominant emotion: most forcefully directed against the indifferent servants of a ruthless state, whatever welfare officers or prison warders. This is verbal warfare, polished with satirical bite, puns, or mesmerising repetitions:

Some people know what it's like,

. . . .

to be out of work
to be out of money
to be out of fashion
to be out of friends

. . . .

and other people don't.

What saves these poems from becoming harangues is Higgins' careful avoidance of any attempt at describing her subjects' emotions. Instead, with impressive economy, she presents a brief outline of a situation, and one or two details. She is uncompromisingly outspoken in her exposure of male violence and female submission, and witheringly witty on the realities of Catholic religious faith:

We adore thee O Christ we bless thee.
because by thy cross thou hast redeemed the world;

sincere pleas to dear Jesus, that the eldest might
get off with a light sentence, pledges of no more smoking,
and guarantees of attendance at the nine Fridays.

In Higgins' urban territory, stoical endurance, dignity and resilience are the norm; as in the hospital ward for elderly women, 'pain [is] well out of sight'. She is also a poet of great passion; when sexual desire replaces her anger, she reveals an appetite of hearteningly gargantuan proportions. In 'The Did-You-Come-Yets of the Western World'. the nervous questioner is dismissed out-of-hand ('he is smaller / than a mouse's fart') while she awaits a lover capable of sufficient awe:

In time one will crawl
out from under thigh-land.
Although drowning he will say,

'Woman I am terrified, why is this house shaking?'

And you'll know he's the one.

Higgins's poetry belongs to the oral tradition and it is impossible not to miss the three-dimensionality of a performance. However, the poems survive publication because of her verbal dexterity, wit, and the boldness with which she bends poetic form. While there is little change in her work over the years, within her chosen territory Higgins is capable of considerable range, and it is most refreshing to hear more vernacular language in contemporary poetry. Having said that, I especially like her more figurative, imaginative flights, like that of the humble, would-be suitor, smitten by the beauty of his 'Goddess in the Mervue Bus':

Once when she yawned
I saw myself
sitting cross-legged
on a lonely molar
waiting for the crunch.