Rita Ann Higgins: ‘I must wash down the banister’

- This content was made available on Friday 15 May -

 

Rita Ann Higgins was born in 1955 in Galway, Ireland. She has published several poetry collections including Ireland is Changing Mother in 2011 and Tongulish in 2016 from Bloodaxe.

In 2010 she published a memoir in poetry and prose Hurting God and in 2019, Our Killer City, a book of essays with poems, from Salmon. She has written two screenplays in the Irish Language: Straois / The Smirk (2018) and Í dTeanga Eile / They Speak in Tongues (2018).

Rita Ann left formal education at 14. As an adult she received a Diploma sa Gaeilge and a Diploma in Women’s Studies. Her awards include: Galway County’s Writer-in-Residence in 1987, Writer in Residence at NUIG in 1994-95, Writer in Residence for Offaly County Council in 1998-99, and Green Honors Professor at Texas Christian University in October 2000.

Her collection Sunny Side Plucked: New and Selected Poems received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Rita Ann is an Honorary Fellow at Hong Kong Baptist University, November 2006 and a member of AOSDANA.

Rita’s poetry will respond to the Covid crisis and her growing awareness of its impacts.