Overview

Jiving with Waspsis a new retrospective from Rita Ann Higgins drawing on a dozen books of poetry published over four decades. This new book covers her collectionsfromGoddess on the Mervue Bus(1986) toThe Long Weekend(2024), in addition to new poems appearing here for the first time. These are provocative and heart-warming poems of high jinks and telling social comment by a gutsy, anarchic chronicler of Irish lives and foibles. Defiantly mischievous, playfully subversive, this irreverent iconoclast has been achieving even wider popularity through her regular appearances on RT'sBrendan O'Connor Show: ""Rita Ann Higgins is the people's poet. She's magic. She's a one-off.""

Full Product Details

Author:   Rita Ann Higgins
Publisher:   Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Imprint:   Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 23.40cm
ISBN:  

9781780377643

ISBN 10:   1780377649
Pages:   352
Publication Date:   26 March 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.
Language:   English

Table of Contents

from GODDESS ON THE MERVUE BUS (1986) 14 Consumptive in the Library 15 Evangeline 17 Mrs McEttigan 18 Tommy’s Wife 19 Unnecessary Work 20 Work On 21 The Apprentices 22 Goddess on the Mervue Bus 23 Lizzie Kavanagh 24 The German for Stomach 25 Almost Communication 26 Middle-aged Irish Mothers 28 Ode to Rahoon Flats 29 The Long Ward 30 God-of-the-Hatch Man 32 Mona 33 Sunny Side Plucked from WITCH IN THE BUSHES (1988) 37 It’s All Because We’re Working-Class 38 She Is Not Afraid of Burglars 39 It Wasn’t the Father’s Fault 40 The Did-You-Come-Yets of the Western World 42 Old Soldier 43 Witch in the Bushes 46 Anything Is Better than Emptying Bins 47 End of a Free Ride 48 Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman 49 The Blanket Man 50 No Balls at All 52 Some People from PHILOMENA'S REVENGE (1992) 55 God Dodgers Anonymous 57 Every Second Sunday 57 Him and His Terrier 58 Reading 60 Philomena’s Revenge 61 Misogynist 62 The Deserter 63 Light of the Moon 65 Old Timers 67 His Shoulder-blades and Rome 68 Between Them 70 He Leaves the Ironing-board Open 71 It’s Platonic 71 Limits 74 Rat-like Dogs and Tattooed Men 75 New York 76 H-Block Shuttle 79 Trapped Doctor on Cork to Galway Bus 81 The Power of Prayer 83 Jackdaw Jaundice 83 I Want to Make Love to Kim Basinger from HIGHER PURCHASE (1996) 88 The Flogger 90 He Could Get Radio Prague 91 Donna Laura 93 Higher Purchase 94 When the Big Boys Pulled Out 95 The Flute Girl’s Dialogue 97 The Trouble with Karen Reilly 98 Mothercare 99 The Quarrel 101 Remapping the Borders 102 Mamorexia 102 The Taxi Man Knows 104 When It Comes to the Crutch 106 Gretta’s Hex 108 Prism 108 Spiked from AN AWFUL RACKET (2001) 112 Bare Bones 113 Soft as Putty 114 You’d Know He Had a Lovely Mother 116 Pater 116 For Crying our Loud 118 Anthem 119 Our Mothers Die On Days Like This 120 The Weather Beaters 121 The Fracture 123 The Clemson Experience 125 They Always Get Curried Chips 128 The Lads Said He Was a Sissy 129 April Fool’s Day in Jerusalem 130 Lucky Mrs Higgins 131 Our Brother the Pope 133 Hey Greggie 134 City Slicker 134 My Face Goes Scarlet 135 He Knows About Cars 137 The Sentence 138 They Never Wear Coats 140 The Visionary 141 An Awful Racket 143 Succubus and Her Sisters 144 Black Dog in My Docs Day 149 They Never Clapped 154 The Jugglers from THROW IN THE VOWELS (2005) 160 Ambrose Had a Big Heart 161 After Dinner Speaker 163 The Liberator 163 Wasting Time 165 The Servers 166 The Cover-up 168 Grandchildren 168 Anto’s Inferno 170 The Real Mourners 171 Fugued 172 Throw in the Vowels 173 They Had No Song 174 Dry-mouthed and Melancholy 176 His i’s Were Empty 177 The Hedger 178 Return to Sender from IRELAND IS CHANGING MOTHER (2011) 183 Ireland Is Changing Mother 185 He Was No Lazarus 186 Guilty 187 His Brazen Hair 189 Spectre 188 The Darkness 192 No Pity for Polyneices 193 Malaga O’Malaga 195 Houdini 196 The Builder’s Mess 197 O Sole Mio 198 The Fates 199 Chinese Notebook 200 Visiting My Father at Christmas 203 Nearly Falling 204 This Was No Ithaca 206 Ping 207 The Pledge 208 The Immortals 209 Fahrenheit 210 Edict 211 Borders 211 The Púca 212 Hasta Libido Baby 213 No One Mentioned the Roofer 214 Tongued and Grooved from TONGULISH (2016) 216 The Middle Man 218 No End to the Amulets 219 Costa Del Dento 220 Mr Grave Offence 222 Shades of Truth 223 At Sea 225 The Gathering 226 Sinner 227 Caligula 229 My Claudius 231 Tongulish 232 An Octave Higher 233 A Field Day 234 Mirage 236 Spell 236 Pig Iron 237 The Party 238 Morsus 238 Glimpse 239 Chaste 239 The Odd Wasp 241 Primula Vulgaris 242 Audition 243 Testimony 245 Cryanair 248 While the Ear Worm Fiddled 249 The Search 250 She’s Easy 251 Whack 252 The Carer 255 The Mission 259 The Bottom Lash 260 The Extra Second 261 Flight 263 The Women of 1916 264 The Camp from OUR KILLER CITY (2018) 267 The Long-tired Memory 268 He Sings Happy Songs 269 They Trespass Against Us 270 It Suits a Narrative 272 No One Ever Kisses You 273 Our Killer City 277 Jiving with Wasps from PATHOGENS LOVE A PATSY (2020) I Pandemic Poems 280 I Must Wash Down the Banister 282 Cocoonery 283 Even the Con Artist Weeds 285 Pathogens Love a Patsy 287 Knee Deep in NPHET 289 A Beacon from Mars 291 A Few Morsels for the Mortals 293 Keep the R-Rate Down 294 Nothing Is Random II Poems of Isolation 297 from I’m Hanna Greally III Poems Before Covid 301 Homage 302 Scullery 303 Mimic 304 Sanctus 306 Tooth and Nail 306 Proof 308 He Fell through the Cracks 310 Oughterard-ery from THE LONG WEEKEND (2024) 312 I Thought I Saw Saint Brigid Today 313 Coming Out of Winter 314 The Alphabet of Trees 315 Saint Patrick’s Day 317 My Mother Loved Me in Red 318 The Bees Are Coming 319 The Eyes Have It 321 I Liked My Father at Halloween 322 All Saints’ Day 323 All Souls’ Day 324 The Valley of Disappointment 325 Pleione 326 Sacred as a Sepulchre 327 Saint Stephen’s Day NEW POEMS (2026) 330 Celsius 331 Pandora’s Cousins 332 Appetiser 332 Renvyle Swim 333 MRI 333 The Children of Gaza 334 Cicero 335 The Lonely Scanner 336 Unnatural Pleasures 338 The Gold Flake Gang 339 King Crab 340 Never Let the Light In 341 The Holding Pen 343 Anomalies and Homilies 345 Hector the Vector Is Living Next Door 347 Shop Around 349 Endgame

Reviews

A brilliantly spiky, surreal blend of humour and social issues. Her poems are a witty mix of the erotic and the upfront political from a female perspective, with wonderful rhythms that effortlessly incorporate direct speech. -- Ruth Padel * Independent on Sunday * Higgins as intensively inventive and deliciously subversive as ever… The rebellious, innovative Higgins is one of his [James Joyce’s] distinctive heirs. Like Joyce, she knows just how to beat up the English language and her use of mythology, Irish language and Ireland’s past put her own inimitable stamp on her bang up-to-date present. -- Martina Evans * The Irish Times * Higgins has always been a poet with a distinctive stance, never shirking her responsibilities as a public voice speaking on behalf of those who do not possess such a platforms. She is… both jocular and jugular, two traits that combine to make her a singular voice in Irish poetry… Passion and conviction walk hand-in-hand in these poems. -- Gerald Smyth * Poetry Ireland * It shouldn't be unusual to hear a smart, sassy, unabashed, female working-class voice in Irish writing. But it is. Higgins's achievement doesn't depend on that rarity value, but it is certainly amplified by it. Higgins is, quite consciously, an artistic outsider... a unique fusion of wry, deadpan humour on the one side and absolute sincerity on the other. She doesn't congratulate herself for her sympathy with those who are (in this case literally) outside the world of art. She simply sees and writes. Her humour and playfulness keep sentimentality and self-righteousness resolutely at bay... She has made what is still the most direct and powerful statement of the class divide in Irish society... The boom years had no great effect on Higgins's voice, on her point of view or on her style. She had a manic linguistic energy long before the hysteria of the Tiger era quickened the pulse of the culture as a whole: Higgins could be regarded, in one of her guises, as Ireland's first rapper… Her political satire hasn't lost its edge, but it no longer reads as a cry in the wilderness... Now the bubble's burst, we're left with our real treasures, and Rita Ann Higgins is one of them. -- Fintan O'Toole * The Irish Times * Silly, funny, and at times deeply discomfiting, these poems use vibrant and buoyant anecdote to invite you in, only to sadden and unsettle you with what might be hiding behind the linguistic misdirection. -- Susannah Dickey * on The Long Weekend *

Author Information

Rita Ann Higgins was born in 1955 in Galway, where she still lives. She has published many books of poetry and prose, includingSunny Side Plucked(Poetry Book Society Recommendation) (1996),An Awful Racket(2001),Throw in the Vowels: New & Selected Poems(2005),Ireland Is Changing Mother(2011) andTongulish(2016) from Bloodaxe. Her 2026 Bloodaxe retrospective,Jiving with Wasps: New & Selected Poemsdraws on all of these, plus her collections from Salmon Press. She is also a playwright, and her most recent plays. Her plays includeThe Plastic Bag(2008),The Empty Frame(2008) andThe Colossal Longing of Julie Connors(2014). Her many awards include a Peadar O'Donnell Award in 1989, the Living Poets Society Award in 2021, and several Arts Council bursaries. She is a member of Aosdna.

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