Poet
Martina Evans
Martina Evans
(Ireland, 1961)
© Barbara Piemonte, 2007
Biography
Martina Evans was born in 1961 to a large family in County Cork, where her mother ran a pub, a shop and a petrol station. The youngest of ten siblings, family and local history is a major presence in her work. After studying at UCC and St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, she began a fifteen-year career as a radiographer. Evans moved to London in the late 1980s, where she completed a degree in English and Philosophy with the Open University and began writing poetry and novels. Awards soon followed, including the Betty Trask Award in 1995 and the Arts Council England Award in 1999 for her novels Midnight Feast and No Drinking No Dancing No Doctors respectively. Additionally, she is involved in the writing community as a creative writing teacher (London Metropolitan University), competition judge (Listowel) and journalist (Irish Post, Irish Times and The Guardian).
Indeed, her light touch shouldn’t be mistaken for flippancy or shallowness. Her work uses clarity and humour to convey meaning rather than ornate description or over-wrought philosophising. This is often delivered via a strong narrative voice, as in ‘Reprisal’: “Never trust a Palatine or a Bastard—/ and Ould Fritz was both.” In the revenge tale of this poem, we see many of Evans’s trademark approaches at work, including a personalisation of history (in this case, of the War of Independence) and observation of human flaws or failings. This knack for capturing voice and character has made her popular as a reader, and she sometimes gives performances along with two other poets as part of the Anvil Sisters troupe. Innovatively, she has created a multi-media show to enhance her readings of her award-winning fourth collection Facing the Public.
Evans currently teaches creative writing at the City Literary Institute and lives in London with her daughter, Liadáin.
© Jennifer Matthews
Bibliography Fiction
Midnight Feast, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1996
The Glass Mountain, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1997
No Drinking No Dancing No Doctors, Bloomsbury, London, 2000
Poetry
The Iniscarra Bar and Cycle Rest, Rockingham Press, Ware, 1995
All Alcoholics are Charmers, Anvil, London, 1998
Can Dentists Be Trusted? Anvil, London, 2005
Facing the Public, Anvil, London, 2009
Links
Martina Evans’s website
Biography and links on the {a href="http://www.munsterlit.ie/Writer%20pages/Evans,%20Martina.html" " title="Munster Literature Centre website"}
Martina Evans’s page on www.poetrypf.co.uk
Audio recording of Evans reading on RTÉ radio
Poems
Poems of Martina Evans
Sponsors
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère