Can Dentists Be Trusted?

Evans Martina

Martina Evans's third collection of poems begins and ends in the dentist's chair. In between come stories ranging from an Irish childhood to present-day London, featuring voices from the poet's own to those of her family, her cat, and a supporting cast of hectoring lawyers, born bores and rambling mothers. She combines a novelist's gift for creating compelling narratives and capturing conversational idiosyncracies with a poet's ability to condense and refine, making "Can Dentists Be Trusted?" a book that will delight the many who enjoyed its acclaimed predecessor "All Alcoholics Are Charmers" (1998).

About the Author

Martina Evans was born in 1961, the youngest of ten children, and grew up in County Cork. After training as a radiographer in Dublin she moved to London in 1988. Her first collection of poems, "The Inniscarra Bar and Cycle Rest", appeared in 1995 and was followed by three further collections, "All Alcoholics are Charmers" (1998), "Can Dentists Be Trusted?" (2004) and "Facing the Public" (2009). She teaches Creative Writing at the City Literary Institute and Birkbeck College. She is also the author of three novels: "Midnight Feast" (1996), "The Glass Mountain" (1997), "No Drinking No Dancing No Doctors" (2000) and the prose-poem/novella "Petrol" (2012). She lives in London with her daughter.

Reviews

Awards won by Martina Evans
Winner, 2011 Premio Ciampi Internazionale di Poesia (Ciampi International Poetry Prize) (Facing the Public)

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