Martina Evans's Now We Can Talk Openly about Men is a pair of dramatic monologues, snapshots of the lives of two women in 1920s Ireland. The first, Kitty Donovan, is a dressmaker in the time of the Irish War of Independence. The second, Babe Cronin, is set in 1924, shortly after the Irish Civil War. Kitty is a dressmaker with a taste for laudanum. Babe is a stenographer who has fallen in love with a young revolutionary. Through their separate, overlapping stories, Evans colours an...

From the winner of the Betty Trask Award and the Premio Ciampi International Prize for Poetry comes a collection which explores a 1960s Catholic upbringing in Cork, Ireland, set against the backdrop of Graceland and the poet's love for the music of Elvis Presley. Drawing on Evans' first five collections, The Windows of Graceland also delves into the dark recesses of Ireland's past and the violent atrocities committed by the Black and Tans, the IRA and the Easter Uprising. A leadin...

Shortlisted for the 2019 Irish Times Poetry Now Award.Shortlisted for the 2019 Pigott Poetry Award.Shortlisted for the 2019 Roehampton Poetry Prize.Featured in the TLS & Irish Times Books of the Year 2018.Martina Evans's Now We Can Talk Openly about Men is a pair of dramatic monologues, snapshots of the lives of two women in 1920s Ireland. The first, Kitty Donovan, is a dressmaker in the time of the Irish War of Independence. ...

The Poetry Book Society Summer Choice 2026Drunken Driving is the funny and subversive sequel to Martina Evans' s narrative poem The Coming Thing, set ten years on. Imelda, now a young mother, is married to Carl. When she gets a job in the X-ray Department at Pentonville Prison and learns to drive, her previous preoccupations with life and death and abuse of power are intensified within the prison walls.The sonnets are ' cuffed' by quotes f...

Shortlisted for the PEN Heaney Prize 2024.Shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2024.A TLS and The Irish Times Book of the Year.The Coming Thing is a brilliant long narrative poem. It is not Evans's first: she has become celebrated for work on this scale, spoken, dramatic, abundant. She has been justly acclaimed by, among others, Colm Tóibín. He says of her inimitable narrative style, 'Slowly, a poem that seems animated by random thoughts and images takes ...

Incredible Things Do Happen: Poetry Ireland Introductions 2019 is an anthology of poetry from Poetry Ireland, the nationalpoetry organisation. This anthology features the very best of Ireland'semerging poets for 2019, as chosen by Martina Evans, award-winning poet andreviewer. Along with a pair of superb poems, each poet provides an insightfulpiece on a favourite - a favourite poet or prose writer or musician orartist. Featuring Andrew Rahal, Angela Finn,...