Ireland Is Changing Mother

By Rita Ann Higgins

Ireland Is Changing Mother is the latest collection from Rita Ann Higgins: provocative and heart-warming poems of high jinx, jittery grief and telling social comment by a gutsy, anarchic chronicler of the lives of the Irish dispossessed, before as well as since the demise of the Celtic tiger. '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, writing in The Irish Times on Ireland Is Changing Mother.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Mar 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781780370323

Book preview

Ireland Is Changing Mother

Don’t throw out the loaves

with the dishes mother.

It’s not the double-takes so much

it’s that they take you by the double.

And where have all the Nellys gone

and all the Missus Kellys gone?

You might have had

the cleanest step on your street

but so what mother,

nowadays it’s not the step

but the mile that matters.

Meanwhile the Bally Bane Taliban

are battling it out over that football.

They will bring the local yokels

to a deeper meaning of over the barring it.

And then some scarring will occur –

as in cracked skull for your troubles.

They don’t just integrate, they limp-pa-grate,

your sons are shrinking mother.

Before this mother,

your sons were Gods of that powerful thing.

Gods of the apron string.

They could eat a horse and they often did,

with your help mother.

Even Tim who has a black belt in sleepwalking

and border lining couldn’t torch a cigarette,

much less the wet haystack of desire,

even he can see, Ireland is changing mother.

Listen to black belt Tim mother.

When they breeze onto the pitch

like some Namibian Gods

the local girls wet themselves.

They say in a hurry, O-Ma-God, O-Ma-God!

Not good for your sons mother,

who claim to have invented everything

from the earwig to the slíothar.

They were used to seizing Cynthia’s hips

looking into her eyes and saying

I’m Johnny come lately, love me.

Now the Namibian Gods and the Bally Bane Taliban

are bringing the local yokels

to their menacing senses

and scoring more goals than Cú Chulainn.

Ireland is changing mother

tell yourself, tell your sons.

slíothar: hurling ball

Lottie Kelly Hot

I could see the way you were

when you were texting him

at the bus stop – sheepish way.

Your school bag thrown there

the way you threw me – forsaken way.

You leaning backwards using the bus shelter

the way you used me – slovenly way.

And when the bus came

you tossed your mane