GEORGE Higgins
George Higgins is a poet, improviser, former trial lawyer, and teacher. He has published a book of poems, There, There, and appeared in the Best American Poetry anthology. He was the Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at Cornell Law where he taught for four years. He currently teaches trial skills and applied Improv at Berkeley Law. He also teaches Beginning Improvisation at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre where he also performs.
Featured Work
There, There
There, There, George Higgins’s first collection of poems, is a search for that something more, that something that was promised: justice, equality, progress, and truth. The speaker seeks this promise through seeing, defending, and distinguishing. His is made among family members, The Constitution is cited, and poetry, that earnest genre, tries its damnedest to name.
Seeing is practice, both literal and figurative; it is personal and political, a practice for him as both poet and lawyer. We glimpse at the origins—parents, ancestors, prisoners, judges, and poetic traditions—comprising this poet. Sometimes they deny each other. For example, In “Reading Hayden’s Frederick Douglass to the Alleged Dealers,” the speaker shares a poem by one of his favorite authors, Robert Hayden, but the accused won’t give the lawyer their attention, even after he’s bought them ties and showed them how to make the loops and turns. These tensions and operatives abound in Higgins’s work.
