Where the Lines Meet: An Evening with Martina Evans & Mícheál McCann

About The Two Poets

Mícheál McCann

Mícheál McCann is a poet from Derry City. He has published two pamphlets of poems, and most recently a collection, Devotion, with The Gallery Press in 2024. Devotion was highly commended in the Forward Prizes for Poetry 2024 and named a book of the year by RTÉ and the Irish Times. He is a poetry critic for the Irish Times, and he lives and works as a secondary school teacher in Belfast.

Martina Evans

Martina Evans is an award-winning Irish poet, novelist, journalist and teacher. She grew up in the village of Burnfort, in County Cork, her first poetry collection of poetry, The Iniscarra Bar and Cycle Rest, was published in 1995, and her debut novel, Midnight Feast, in 1996. Midnight Feast won a Betty Trask award, and Evans was awarded a two-book contract for further novels. But even as she made a name for herself in the fiction world, she felt impelled toward poetry.

Accolades for Martina’s poetry collections include the Ciampi International Poetry Prize; recognition as a Poetry Society Book Choice and a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year; and Grants for the Arts, Irish Arts Council, and Arts Council England awards. Evans’ book of poetry, Now We Can Talk Openly About Men (2018), was named one of the Books of the Year by The Observer, TLS, and the Irish Times, and shortlisted for the 2019 Irish Times Poetry Award and the Pigott Poetry Award. Her collection American Mules (Carcanet 2021) won the Pigott Poetry Prize 2022 and was a TLS and Sunday Independent Book of the Year. The Coming Thing (Carcanet 2023) was a TLS and Irish Times Book of the Year for 2023. It was shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2024 and the inaugural PEN Heaney Prize. Evans has held two Royal Literary Fund fellowships from Queen Mary, University of London and was a Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow from 2014-2022. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and poetry critic for the Irish Times.