Acclaimed Galway poet Rita Ann Higgins goes underground in London
Rita Ann Higgins poem, 'No One Mentioned the Roofer' can currently be read by commuters on London's train system, as one of the featured works in Summer Poems on the Underground which went live on Monday, June 1. The poems are on display in the city’s Underground and Overground network.
Rita Ann's poem, which was dedicated to her late son-in-law, Pat Mackey, who died in 2017, is included in her latest collection, ‘Jiving with Wasps’, published by Bloodaxe Books in March. It first appeared in ‘Ireland is Changing Mother’ (Bloodaxe 2011) and later in ‘Our Killer City’ (Salmon 2020), alongside a damning essay on a new oncology ward Pat couldn’t get into during his illness.
, 'No One Mentioned the Roofer' features alongside the Clown’s song from Shakespeare’s ‘Merchant of Venice’ and contemporary works by Glyn Maxwell, Maura Dooley and Polish poets, Krystyna Lenkowska and Tadeusz Dabrowski.No One Mentioned the Roofer
We met the Minister,
we gave him buns, we admired his suit.
The band played, we all clapped.
No one mentioned the roofer;
whose overtime was cut
whose under time was cut,
whose fringe was cut
whose shoelaces were cut
whose job was lost.
We searched for his job
but it had disappeared.
One of us should have said:
Hey Minister, we like your suit
have a bun, where are our jobs?
But there was no point,
he was here on a bun eating session
not a job finding session.
His hands were tied.
His tongue a marshmallow.
Poems on the Underground marks its 40th anniversary this year, having started life in January 1986 as an experiment by three friends, the writer Judith Chernaik and the poets Cicely Herbert and Gerard Benson.
They persuaded London Underground to post a few poems on its trains, to the delight of bemused commuters.
London Underground has supported the programme ever since, allowing some three million daily travellers to enjoy poetry, old and new, familiar and unfamiliar.