In Pathogens Love A Patsy, Rita Ann Higgins bears witness to
a moment in Irish life unlike any seen in a century: the Covid-19 crisis. Many
of these pandemic poems, broadcast on Brendan O’Connor’s RTÉ Radio 1 show, were
composed weekly in direct response to the emerging crisis.
At the centre of the collection, a
devastating sequence celebrates the memory of Hanna Greally, wrongfully
incarcerated in an Irish psychiatric hospital for almost two decades. Then,
completing an informal triptych, a selection of work written before the
emergency marks the point when everything changed.
Rita Ann Higgins’s wry, conversational style
serves a serious purpose: to tell it like it is. Together, the poems in
Pathogens Love a Patsy form a narrative that spans eighty years, from a past
that is still being addressed, to a present moment that is still unfolding.