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thinking of kevin

Like a lot of people, who knew and loved him - and I am not referring here intrusively to his closest relations or loved ones, but instead, to the poets, editors and publishers who worked with him - I am having a hard time with the death of the great Irish poet, and person, Kevin Higgins.

Though we often disagreed on politics, and though we had drifted apart, he WAS the person who wrote the introduction to my Salmon Poetry selected poems, Seaway, and he WAS the person I included in almost every anthology or event I organised for over a decade or more, starting with Poets against the War. He felt like a soul brother to me, and for many years we met relatively often, had dinner or drinks, and spoke about poetry. Our partners met with us, sometimes; and we met not only in London, but Paris, New York, Budapest, and of course, Galway.

Other than Patrick Chapman, he is the Irish poet I feel closest to, aesthetically, but also, in how we view the established order of poetic things (that charmed inner circle that often excludes the maverick). His death is shattering. I keep reading his poetry, and recalling his voice, his readings, his bitterly funny manner. Condolences to his closest friends, partner, family. What a titanic loss. No one cut through the cant, rhetoric and bs like Kevin. In many ways, he was as original and potent a voice as Heaney's, but purposefully stripped bare of classical adornment. I've never known as undeceived a poet. Kevin spoke truth to power like a chainsaw speaks to wood.

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