Our Killer City – read ‘that’ Rita Ann Higgins’ poem

You’ve read snippets of the poem; you’ve heard praise and much criticism of it; now here, in a Bradley Bytes’ exclusive, read city poet Rita Ann Higgins’ controversial Galway 2020 poem in full for the first time in a newspaper.

Our Killer City

Galway’s bid to win Capital of Culture

is all twenty twenty give the horse plenty.

We’re in with a great chance,

until they hear about

the legionnaire’s disease outbreak

in the fire station,

where our life savers need saving.

The birds are tweeting

about the arrival of the jury this July.

The word is out they’ll rule on the bid.     

Best to keep them councillors out of sight,

with the malarkey they go on with, in City Hall.

Govern, govern my arse

they wouldn’t govern a sly fart on a runway.

We’ll end up crowned the capital of fools.

Accusations of nepotism, potassium.

a host of other isms, chisms, chasms and schisms.

I sent you that letter by mistake

said the CEO, buckling under pressure.

You are not actually co-opted

onto those committees,

FYI, you are co-workered off.

My ogyny, your ogyny, misogyny.

We laugh about it at bus stops.

We say, aren’t some of our

elected representatives a laughing stock.

We’ll never get Capital of Culture

if they look through that window.

Some people live their lives

so they can die on a trolley

in Galway’s A&E.

Just wait and wait and wait

and you’ll die waiting.

Eighteen million on a new block

and not a new bed in sight or on site.

The car park police in the hospital grounds

are a culture shock unto themselves.

Don’t die on a trolley in the bidding city

the forbidding city,

before you have paid your parking

or we will kill your next of kin

with the weight of their parking ticket.

Culture Capital or no Culture capital.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune