The Colour Yellow & the Number 19 , (Negative Thoughts That Helped One Man Mostly Retain His Sanity During 2020), by Kevin Higgins, has just been published by Nuacéalta. Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway, Ireland. He teaches poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre, Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute, and is Creative Writing Director for the National University of Ireland – Galway Summer School. He is poetry critic of The Galway Advertiser. Kevin’s poetry has been translated into Greek, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, German, Serbian, Russian, & Portuguese. In 2016 The Stinging Fly magazine described Kevin as ‘likely the most read living poet in Ireland.’ He has published five full collections of poetry with Salmon: The Boy With No Face (2005), Time Gentlemen, Please (2008), Frightening New Furniture (2010), The Ghost In The Lobby (2014), and most recently Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital.
What is touching about The Colour Yellow & the Number 19 (TCYATN19) is the bravery of Higgins in surmounting the chronic auto-immune disease, sarcoidosis, with good humour and vigour. In her introduction to the book, somatic therapist Aisling Richmond explains the work's title:
The title distils the essence of these times so well; where the normal and abnormal strangely co-exist. What should be casual and mundane – the colour yellow and the number 19 – refer instead to a world that has dramatically changed; with yellow as the colour of Ireland’s public Covid signs and 19 the number of a global pandemic.
The cover image resembling two trees on fire could be taken as the poet's lungs working with reduced oxygen intake capacity. The irony in this is how the trees provide us with oxygen. How connected we all are in this world. In his Irish Times essay Sarcoidosis and Me Higgins writes 'Most of my recent poems have been satires on the crazy state of the world at the moment' and in TCYATN19 he is certainly in satirical form again. In Of the Coming Plague he vows to go out and catch COVID in mortuaries, hospitals or nightclub toilets. Of death he writes
For, Death, what do I know of you,
never having died before?
You’ve had a terrible press,
but could be victim
of the smear campaign.
Higgins is never one to shy away from tackling the political events of the day. His poem The Shipping Forecast predicts an ominous future for the ships of 'Britannia, Eurasia, and Sweet Land of Liberty', 'if certain particulars aren’t fixed'. Waiting for Boris is a scathing reflection on the British PM, while Look What I Found at the Triangle in Ranelagh (after Frances Fitzgerald) and The Day Stephen Donnelly Joined Foster and Allen are wry comments on the Irish political scene. In an interview with Kate Dempsey (2011) on Writing.ie Kevin had said 'From the age of 15-27, I was an active member of Militant, the predecessor to Joe Higgins’s Socialist Party, both here in Galway and then later in London, where I was very involved in the anti-poll tax movement in the early nineties.' It is clear that politics is very close to his heart.
Higgins' passion for Galway shines through in The Kind of City I want Galway to be After COVID-19, which also demonstrates his support of youth and the arts. In poems such as Death Bed Amends, The After Life and The Haunting the poet is unafraid to confront mortality. The excellent Today is Brought to You was written after the making of a will, and the poem is brilliantly explained in the collection. I found these notes about the poems in the book to be very insightful and helpful to the reader. Higgins says:
Today is brought to you,
and tomorrow is probable.
But next week
and the week after are dreams
in which only the monsters are real.
One final piece I will commend is the lovely, The Vulnerable. There is a sadness and a grace to the opening lines, 'I dream I’m watching the morning train/ rattle down the platform without me.' I'm thankful for spending the afternoon with Higgins' poetic voice in The Colour Yellow & the Number 19. I am enriched culturally and spiritually by the experience. Other readers would glean further observations, having richer political minds than mine. I have no hesitation in recommending the book as a real treasure of this year past. It speaks strongly of the times in an authentic way.
The Colour Yellow & the Number 19 is available here.
