The Coming Thing by Martina Evans Jacob Polley moving from the early symbolist

moving from the early symbolist work

and rejection

incantatory phrasing with startlingly powerful visual qualities

Published posthumously in 1971

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

The Coming Thing by Martina Evans Jacob Polley moving from the early symbolistThe 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