The Coming Thing by Martina Evans Jacob Polley 'These poems engage with hard

'These poems engage with hard rather than 'soft' knocks: death and art

or a shout comes up to the window

taut and explosive that the book might shatter into fragments without form’s stern control over this primal material

moving from the early symbolist work

Tender men

The Coming Thing by Martina Evans Jacob Polley 'These poems engage with hardThe 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