Community Employment Scheme
I am the thin fat man woman
you have been assigned to,
henceforth known as
The Co-ordinator.
Before the afternoon’s out
I’ll have you counting toilet rolls;
or guarding the traffic cones
that live at the bottom of the canal.
You will say nothing
about the blank cheques
you’ll never see me sign.
Play the cards I deal you right,
and I’ll have your back
fitted with a hunch. The others will know
you as my lovely assistant. You’ll spend
your best years penning post-it notes
to yourself, here in the office
with me. You’ll get to drink
on the job and hardly ever turn up
and know nothing
about the blank cheques
you never saw me sign. The rest
will be time in the loo.
Malcontents will be dispatched
to my friend the Independent Mediator.
I’m a social inclusion seminar
in a windowless room
no one leaves;
the thin fat man woman
you have been assigned to,
evermore known as
your Co-ordinator.
Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway, Ireland. He facilitates poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre; teaches creative writing at Galway Technical Institute and on the Brothers of Charity Away With Words programme. He is also Writer-in-Residence at Merlin Park Hospital and the poetry critic of the Galway Advertiser. His first collection of poems The Boy With No Face was published by Salmon in February 2005 and was short-listed for the 2006 Strong Award. His second collection, Time Gentlemen, Please, was published in March 2008 by Salmon. One of the poems from Time Gentlemen, Please, ‘My Militant Tendency’, featured in the Forward Book of Poetry 2009. His work also features in the anthology Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Ed Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010). Frightening New Furniture is his third collection of poems and was published in April by Salmon Poetry.
Latest posts by Kevin Higgins (see all)
- Alternative Proposals - April 22, 2013
- Chairman, Galway West Labour Youth, April 5th, 1984 - October 5, 2012
- Anatomy of a Public Outcry - June 13, 2012
- Son of Capitalism - May 14, 2012
- George Orwell: Anything But a Saint - March 21, 2012
September 9, 2010 9:56 am
Terrific poem, Kevin. I honour Jack O’Connor for something he said recently, in an interview in Look Left Online:
“There is level of class consciousness in France and Greece that we just don’t have here. Irish trade unions are also not that confident of maintaining a sustained mobilisation over a long period. We embarked on a ballot on the 24th of February 2009 with a view to a campaign beginning at the start of March and you could see support for that ebbing away as the right, through its media, launched its attacks. As a movement, we had nothing to counter their arguments – social partnership had neutralised us.”
I thought that kind of openness and directness was something we needed to hear from Trade Unions here.
http://www.lookleftonline.org/2010/03/jack-oconnor-interview/
September 9, 2010 11:49 am
Hi William, thanks. Glad you like the poem. Very best wishes, Kevin
September 11, 2010 8:05 pm
Great poem Kevin. ‘A social inclusion seminar in a windowless room noone leaves’ is a good metaphor and versatile enough to morph into any of the many other kinds of seminars/meetings/conferences intended to fix one of the many groups of us at any given time…. Thanks for saying it!