The following Introduction to Kevin Higgins final collection, Life Itself, Salmon Poetry 2025, by his wife and fellow poet Susan Millar DuMars, is reprinted with permission

Kevin died on a Tuesday in January. The Sunday before, he emailed new drafts of two poems he’d been struggling with to me, for edits. I was with him in hospital all day, but in the evening went home to feed our cat and allow others a turn to visit. I had a look at the poems, made a couple of minor suggestions involving commas, and sent them back. He thanked me, and for the next three hours until I went to bed we kept up a text conversation, covering everything from how much we loved each other to what music we were each listening to. (The Beatles for me, Neil Diamond for him. Comfort music.) The next morning a nurse phoned me at seven to tell me Kevin’s condition had deteriorated. I went straight to the hospital, and was with him until he passed away the following day. Those texts were our last normal exchange. And they started with poems.

We met because of poems; I submitted three to The Burning Bush, a journal Kevin was starting with Mike Begnal, at the very start of 1999. Our love affair was bookended by January verse.

Kevin was a weirdly prolific poet. We were each other’s first editor, and regularly shared work. Usually we did this at the kitchen table, but sometimes in bed and sometimes when we were out for brunch, after the plates had been cleared. I trusted his judgement of my poems and fiction, finding him an astute, insightful and encouraging editor. He trusted me too. But he wrote so much more than me that our regular sessions weren’t enough for him. He would sidle up to me at home and say “I may have written a poem,” eyes on his shoes as if this was a confession, and I’d promise to read it as soon as I could. After I’d read it he’d hover in the doorway and ask, “Shit?” I’d assure him it wasn’t, and he’d come all the way into the room to hear my feedback. He took criticism well and followed up on the majority of my suggestions. If I had no suggestions he’d push me to come up with some; he didn’t want me to let him off easy. Second and third drafts usually came the same day (sometimes the same hour) and he would trail after me until I read the newest version.

Once hospitalised, his poetic output grew. All of the poems in this collection are new, written in the past few years. Many, including nearly all of the first section, were written in University Hospital, Galway. His poems about battling leukemia are heart-scaldingly honest, and I think they are among the best things he ever wrote. I would not say that writing these comforted him. Nor were they part of an effort at building a mythology of self. When people would say of his illness why you, he’d shrug and say why not me? He took an active interest in the status of other patients on his ward. He discussed Polish poetry with one of his consultants, Dr. Krawczyk, and later dedicated a poem to him. One of Kevin’s nurses had a child who had taken classes with Kevin, and he enthusiastically praised their unique poetic voice while their mother searched his arm for an untapped vein. Getting sick did not cause him to turn inward. Raymond Carver once said that his writing became more successful when he stopped thinking of it as self-expression and began instead to think of it as communication. Kevin’s goal was always to communicate. This is what it’s like for me, what about you? I think to him that writing poems was a way of remaining in the conversation.

I assembled the manuscript for this book in hard copy, working with folders of work marked New that I found among Kevin’s things. The poems I’ve left out are on subjects he handled better in other poems. In a very few cases, they’re on subjects about which I know he changed his mind. I’ve edited with a light touch; most of the poems had been through several drafts already and were good to go. I’ve fiddled with punctuation and stanza breaks where I thought they would make his meaning more apparent. I didn’t edit for sound because I want you to hear Kevin’s voice, not mine. In the whole collection, there are perhaps half a dozen pieces I changed substantially, again for the sake of clarity. There’s one, From a Certain Angle He is You, which I remember the two of us really struggling with. I carried on the struggle alone, and I hope have fixed the few lines that had annoyed us. It’s a remarkable poem, nuanced and heartfelt with a twist at the end that is both satisfying and haunting.

His satires often made me laugh out loud. Even those about current events have an enduring relevance; the more things change, the more they stay the same. Kevin’s ability to distil his truth into a memorable and devastating turn of phrase was breathtaking. Every week there’s another story on the news I know he would’ve gleefully sunk his teeth into.

Yet of the poems he will now never write, I most grieve for the introspective ones. As well as being witty and sharp, Kevin could access a tender melancholy in his work, wedding strong imagery with an unguarded nature. Some of the more personal poems in this collection have a tremendous maturity to them, an ability to grapple with paradox that I find very moving. One such poem is Status Update at 55 ¼. I know I must’ve read this poem while Kevin was alive, yet I was somehow unprepared for its gut punch ending. Then of course there are the hospital poems, and the piece about his dad (Friday November 18^th, 2022). In these I see my best friend, the man I loved and the man he was becoming. I will always wonder where the work would’ve taken him next.

In Tuesdays With Morrie, author Mitch Albom quotes his subject, Morris Schwartz, as saying, “Death ends a life, not a relationship.” It has felt very natural for me to edit Kevin’s poems once more. His voice, as always, was wonderful company. I hope it will be for you, too.

 – Susan Millar DuMars
January, 2025

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Susan Millar DuMars has published five volumes of poems with Salmon Poetry. The most recent, Naked: New and Selected Poems, appeared in 2019. Her sixth book is due out early in 2026. Susan has also published fiction and non-fiction pieces. A Philadelphia native, she has lived in Galway, Ireland since 1998. She and Kevin ran the Over the Edge readings series in Galway from 2003-23.
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Life Itself by Keven Higgins is available from https://www. salmonpoetry.com/ details.php?ID=630&a=108

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