"‘Your poems, you know, / you’ve really got something there’: Rita Ann Higgins as Irreverent Observer."

• The poetry of Rita Ann Higgins focuses on contemporary Irish society and especially Galway where she was born and lives. Higgins is an unafraid and irreverent observer who gives a working-class female perspective on everyday events and issues, in a humorous and effective manner. Using what Ruth Padel refers to as a “witty mix of the erotic and the upfront political,” Higgins juxtaposes the humorous and the tragic, causing the reader a certain sense of unease as he/she is forced to recognise that behind the humour is a disturbing story of the ironies and injustices of society. This paper will examine Higgins’s collection Throw in the Vowels, in light of the idea of poetry as cultural text that on an aesthetic level explores issues of a social nature, thus giving voice to what Fredrik Jameson calls narrative as a socially symbolic act. In this way, the voice of the woman poet moves from that of “the poet / girlie missus / the one with the fancy words” (“Space Invader”) to become an important literary act that plays a subversive force in society. As the speaker in “Poetry Doesn’t Pay” puts it: “Your poems, you know, / you’ve really got something there.”

Keyword

Redefinitions of Irish Identity in the Twenty-First Century: A Postnationalist Approach

Publication and Content Type

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