Full Description
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 Toibin. He says of
her inimitable narrative style, 'Slowly, a poem that seems animated by
random thoughts and images takes on a strange, concentrated power; the
lines begin to feel like pure style, the narrative voice holding and
wielding the hidden energies that Martina Evans consolidates, and then
releases with such energy and confidence and verve.'
Imelda, the
book's central character, is immersed in challenging new worlds where
old customs still somehow survive. It is the 1980s and the poem takes
shape among punks in Cork City. The 'coming thing' refers to the arrival
of computers which were taking hold and beginning to effect their
transformations of data and then of lives; but ultimately the title
identifies the abortion which Imelda will have in a Brixton clinic.
Imelda, who Evans's regular readers will recall from her earlier narrative Petrol (2012),
narrates the story with a light touch, even when the book's
preoccupation with abortion, suicide and euthanasia provides a strong
and compelling undertow. The Coming Thing looks hard at the
duplicity surrounding received ideas about the sacredness of human life
and how economic change runs counter to the values of 'old' Ireland.
