[05/12/26] Higgins, Rita Ann: Jiving with Wasps

Bloodaxe Books, paperback

Publication Date: May 12, 2026

Publisher Marketing: Jiving with Wasps is a new retrospective from Rita Ann Higgins drawing on a dozen books of poetry published over four decades. This new book covers her collections from Goddess on the Mervue Bus (1986) to The Long Weekend (2024), in addition to new poems appearing here for the first time. These are provocative and heart-warming poems of high jinks and telling social comment by a gutsy, anarchic chronicler of Irish lives and foibles. Defiantly mischievous, playfully subversive, this irreverent iconoclast has been achieving even wider popularity through her regular appearances on RTÉ's Brendan O'Connor Show: "Rita Ann Higgins is the people's poet. She's magic. She's a one-off."