Rita Ann on a creative roll with Tongulish

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

By marrying the words ‘tongue’ and ‘ghoulish’, poet Rita Ann Higgins has created a new term which has become the title of her latest poetry collection, published by Bloodaxe Press.

Tongulish is Rita Ann’s first collection in five years and she’ll be reading from it at the Town Hall Theatre on Saturday , April 23, during the Cúirt Festival of Literature.

“The word tongue takes in so much; language and sound and it’s sensual as well,” says the popular Galway poet of her new compound word. Language can also be harsh, she adds, so the ghoulish element is relevant. “I like the sound of ghoulish, I really like it,” she muses.

“Tongulish works for me,” she says of her creation, immediately adding the caveat that “it’s a nothing word, but it can go between words”.

The book, Tongulish is broad in scope, with everything from shingles to sex abuse to suicide coming under her acerbic, honest gaze.

“Everything can be a subject, but it’s how you deal with it that matters. You have to treat a subject with respect,” she states.

That takes time.

“Although it might look like I just sat down and wrote it, I’m not that lucky with getting poems very quickly. I have to do drafts,” she explains.

Rita Ann is scrupulous about words and this precise approach gives her poems their immediacy.

“You draw in words and you may not have the right one. You’ll always get a better word if you try. Words don’t get tired, you do. If you use jaded language people will get tired of you. I like to keep it fresh, for me as well as for the reader.”

Freshness and a fierce wit have always marked her poetry. Rita Ann, who is now 61, began writing in her late 20s, after a severe bout of TB. During her recovery, she decided to embrace either flower-arranging or creative writing.

Writing won, although when she joined a creative writing group, which included the founder of Salmon Press, Jessie Lendennie, Rita Ann couldn’t have imagined where this creativity would take her. Since then, she has had 10 poetry collections and seven plays published, featuring regularly on radio and travelling worldwide to read from her work. Her droll, dry delivery makes her an excellent interpreter of her own poetry – not always the case with writers.

Salmon has given many Irish writers a platform and from the beginning Jessie Lendennie saw something special about this young woman.

“Jessie did say to me, ‘you know, you are going to end up a famous poet’. She spotted something different in me. I thought she was mad!”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.