There will be a very special evening on March 20th at The Town Hall Theatre celebrating the work of poet Rita Ann Higgins. Readers of her work on the night will include writers Elaine Feeney, Mary O’Malley, Eva Bourke, Michael Gorman, Sarah Clancy. There will also be a public interview with Vincent Woods.

Rita Ann is looking forward to this evening, which will be the first event celebrating decades of wonderful writing. “The forthcoming celebratory event in the Town Hall makes me believe there is still great warmth and goodwill out there. To be held in such high esteem in my own town by poets and other artists whose work I have admired and respected for years is deeply humbling. I have nothing to compare this event to, I am overwhelmed with love and gratitude to all concerned.”

Rita Ann Higgins is a gusty, anarchic chronicler of Irish lives and foibles, whose poems are a witty mix of the erotic and upfront political. Described by Peter Porter as ‘a quiet untameable poet, Higgins roams the provincial countryside of Ireland fomenting rebellion’.

Rita Ann Higgins was born and lives in Galway. Pathogens Love a Patsy (Pandemic and other Poems) is her11th book of Poetry. Our Killer City in 2019 (essays and poems) and a Memoir Hurting God in 2010 are all from Salmon. In 2020 Rita Ann became the Poet Laureate of The Brendan O’Connor Show on RTE Radio 1. Bloodaxe Books published several of her collections including; Throw in the Vowels (New and selected poems 2005. Ireland is Changing Mother 2011/14. Tongulish in 2016. In 2025 Bloodaxe will publish her Collected poems for her 70th birthday. She has written both plays and screenplays and in 2021 she received The Living Poets Society Award. She was shortlisted for The Ireland Professor of Poetry in 2022. She is a member of Aosdána.

photo by Andrew Downes