This week on the Pickle Jar we are joined by Martina Evans to talk about her PBS Choice book Drunken Driving.

Martina Evans is one of Ireland's most distinctive contemporary poets and novelists. Raised in County Cork and now based in London, she is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose. Her collection American Mules won the 2022 Pigott Poetry Prize, while The Coming Thing was shortlisted for both the Derek Walcott Prize and the PEN Heaney Prize. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Evans is celebrated for her exhilarating blend of narrative, wit, lyricism and dark humour.

Her new collection, Drunken Driving (Carcanet, 2026), is a bold, darkly comic sequel to The Coming Thing. Set against the backdrop of Pentonville Prison, the book follows its protagonist Imelda as she navigates motherhood, work and power through a sequence of inventive sonnets threaded with quotations from Dracula and prison regulations. Funny, unsettling and formally daring, Drunken Driving confronts questions of control, justice and survival with Evans's trademark verve and originality.

this is a wonderful conversation and i hope you enjoy it as much as i did.

If you feel like you want to subscribe to PBS use PODCAST as the discount code and get 10% off your order.