‘A brilliantly spiky, surreal blend of humour and social issues. Her poems are a witty mix of the erotic and the upfront political from a female perspective, with wonderful rhythms that effortlessly incorporate direct speech.’ – Ruth Padel, Independent on Sunday

'Silly, funny, and at times deeply discomfiting, these poems use vibrant and buoyant anecdote to invite you in, only to sadden and unsettle you with what might be hiding behind the linguistic misdirection.' – Susannah Dickey on The Long Weekend

'Higgins makes brilliant the banal, spins music from the mundane, and speaks truth to power in her celebration of the everyday lives we lead. For decades she has been one of the most powerful and emphatic voices in writing, balancing despair with hope, love with loss and our internal landscapes with the beauty of the natural world… This collection confirms Higgins as one of our greatest poets.' – Elaine Feeney on The Long Weekend

‘Higgins has always been a poet with a distinctive stance, never shirking her responsibilities as a public voice speaking on behalf of those who do not possess such a platforms.  She is… both jocular and jugular, two traits that combine to make her a singular voice in Irish poetry… Passion and conviction walk hand-in-hand in these poems.’ – Gerard Smyth, Poetry Ireland Review, on Tongulish

‘Rita Ann Higgins’ Tongulish continued to show this artful, innovative poet taking liberties with the language, her disenchanted politics matched with an enchanter’s way with words…’ – John McAuliffe, The Irish Times (Poetry Books of the Year)

‘Rita Ann Higgins’s Jiving with Wasps: New & Selected Poems – a 350-page cornucopia of wit, wisdom, challenge and tenderness – represents four decades of output from one of Ireland’s major writers. Offering generous selections from her 11 collections to date and a pamphlet-length set of new poems, this publication demonstrates the extraordinary psychological insight, moral depth and social vision of a body of writing that puts human vulnerability, resilience and responsibility front and central stage. Jiving with Wasps allows us to track the evolution of this multi-tongued poet’s inimitable poetic style. Higgins’s voice – acutely alert to the strange within the familiar – communicates through unrivalled command of tonal nuance in polysemous verbal play. Plain-spoken anecdotal reportage and reflection is charged with multilevel meaning through this poet’s unerring ear for tragicomic timing. […] Jiving with Wasps presents an indispensable mirror to death-dealing cultures of neglect and abuse. By also communicating the basis of effective resistance to them in compassion, solidarity and willingness to confront self-deception, this book is required – and hugely stimulating – reading.’ – Catríona Clutterbuck, The Irish Times

Rita Ann Higgins was born in 1955 in Galway, where she still lives. She has published many books of poetry and prose, including Sunny Side Plucked (Poetry Book Society Recommendation) (1996), An Awful Racket (2001), Throw in the Vowels: New & Selected Poems (2005), Ireland Is Changing Mother (2011) and Tongulish (2016) from Bloodaxe. Her 2026 Bloodaxe retrospective, Jiving with Wasps: New & Selected Poems draws on all of these, plus her collections from Salmon Press. She is also a playwright, and her most recent plays. Her plays include The Plastic Bag (2008), The Empty Frame (2008) and The Colossal Longing of Julie Connors (2014). Her many awards include a Peadar O’Donnell Award in 1989, the Living Poets Society Award in 2021, and several Arts Council bursaries. She is a member of Aosdána.