American Mules

Martina Evans' Mules is a collection of poetry that explores the possibility of a different world, highlighting her own intensely lived experiences and re-imagining family trauma through the prism of classic American cinema. It was winner of the Pigott Poetry Prize 2022, a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2021, and a Sunday Independent (Ireland) Book of the Year 2021.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 160 pages
Publication date: 29 April 2021
Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd

Martina Evans' Mules are a pair of shoes that were given to her as an exotic present by an American relative. They hint at the potential of a very different world, one that the poem's speakers set out to discover. As is typical in her poetry, new and invented experiences highlight Evans' own intensely lived experiences: the radiography departments of hospitals and their ruthless work culture, in which the speakers must survive; a London that is teeming with human and animal characters whose colors and features she vividly evokes; and we revisit locations her readers have previously visited, most notably Burnfort, County Cork, with its pubs and gossip and childhood difficulties, a subject of her lyrics. And, in the aftermath of the success of her 2018 book-length sequence, Now We Can Talk Openly About Men, she presents us with a new long poem, Mountainy Men, which re-imagines family trauma through the lens of classic American cinema. American Mules is two books and two or more worlds in one. Evans' English creates distinct musics in the imagining of Ireland, England, and America, but the same wise, wry, inventive mouth speaks them all.

Martina Evans' Mules are a pair of shoes that were given to her as an exotic present by an American relative. They hint at the potential of a very different world, one that the poem's speakers set out to discover. As is typical in her poetry, new and invented experiences highlight Evans' own intensely lived experiences: the radiography departments of hospitals and their ruthless work culture, in which the speakers must survive; a London that is teeming with human and animal characters whose colors and features she vividly evokes; and we revisit locations her readers have previously visited, most notably Burnfort, County Cork, with its pubs and gossip and childhood difficulties, a subject of her lyrics. And, in the aftermath of the success of her 2018 book-length sequence, Now We Can Talk Openly About Men, she presents us with a new long poem, Mountainy Men, which re-imagines family trauma through the lens of classic American cinema. American Mules is two books and two or more worlds in one. Evans' English creates distinct musics in the imagining of Ireland, England, and America, but the same wise, wry, inventive mouth speaks them all.

Weight: 214g
Dimension: 135 x 215 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781800170896