Three Poets – An Extravaganza

James Byrne

James Byrne is a poet of Irish heritage, he’s also an editor, translator and visual artist living in London. This event marks the publication and launch of his new collection of selected poems, Nightsongs for Gaia, (July 2025) which spans over twenty years of his writing. His previous poetry collections include The Overmind (2024, Broken Sleep Books); Places you Leave (Arc Publications, 2022) and Of Breaking Glass (BSB, 2022). 

Byrne was the editor of The Wolf, an influential, internationally-minded literary magazine between 2002 and 2017. In 2012, he co-translated and co-edited Bones Will Crow, the first anthology of contemporary Burmese poetry to be published in English (Arc, 2012) and I am a Rohingya, the first book of Rohingya refugee poems in English. Byrne is the International Editor for Arc Publications and co-editor of Atlantic Drift: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics (Edge Hill University Press/Arc, 2017). His co-translation with the author Ro Mehrooz of Rohingya poems, Poems Written Through Barbed-Wire Fences, was published by Arc in 2024.

Chris McCabe

Chris McCabe, also of Irish heritage, was born in Liverpool in 1977 on the site of a Victorian workhouse. His work spans artforms and genres including poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama and visual art. His work has been shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and the Republic of Consciousness  Prize. His most recent poetry collection, The Triumph of Cancer, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and he is the editor of several anthologies including Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages and The New Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century (with Victoria Bean). His novels are Dedalus and Mud. He is working on an epic series of psychogeographical prose books documenting the lost poets buried in London’s Victorian cemeteries, the most recent of which is Buried Garden, which was chosen as a White Review Book of the Year in 2022. His latest book is Dreamt by Ghosts was recently published by Tenement Press (2025).

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 her 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 fellowship 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.