“Where the Lines Meet”: A Night of Irish Poetry Launching Two New Poetry Collections from London-based Irish Poet, Martina Evans Northern Irish Poet, Michael McCann

Talks / Ideas / Philosophy

Join us for what promises to be a night of sublime poetry from two wonderful Irish Poets, both who’ll be launching their new poetry books. Drunken Driving By Martin Evans – ‘A Poetry Book Society Choice’ Drunken 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 from Dracula and prison security rules, providing ironic commentary on the main narrative exploring issues of control. This timely collection delivers dark comedy as it raises serious questions about human society during the present international prison crisis, with the UK prison system on the verge of collapse. ‘Drunken Driving is a masterpiece. Evans’ poetic voice is in full force here – compulsive, gripping, bristling with rage, intensely dark but also very funny. Through Imelda’s eyes, Evans’ shows us 90s Pentonville Prison – the X-rays of drunken drivers, the dark room and its chemicals, the dubious and dodgy men on all sides – prisoners, guards, doctors, her husband, and Dracula who lurks behind every line, threatening to surface in the faces of those she encounters. This is good, uncanny, galvanising stuff. I couldn’t put it down.’ Ella Frears (Poet and Artist) Lives of the Saints by Mícheál McCann ‘Mícheál McCann’s debut collection, Devotion , is a stately book — courtly, even.’ Declan Ryan in The Irish Times. In that rapturously received first book the author applied a modern setting, sensibility and set of references to a classic Irish lament. In his new collection Lives of the Saints he builds on biographical details of Christian figures and situates them in contemporary states of experience and emotion. Centrepieces of this eclectic collection are an ode to a recycling centre and ‘The Impossible Request’ in which the poet’s grandmother forgets that he has told her that he is gay (‘I know, pet, I know’) and asks if he has any girlfriends yet. Assured in its risks, vigorous in its enthusiasms, from its first ecstatic injunction Lives of the Saints is a collection to make one think and feel, then think again.