(Anvil Press, 1998)
'Evans’s great skill is in knowing how much to put into a poem. She has a talent for selecting only the most resonant memories, for not over-icing the cake of sentiment.
'All Alcoholics are Charmers' turns out to be rich in splendidly concise evocations of what it feels like to be Irish in England, in all its quiddity, including the encounters with new cultures on your doorstep… Above all, Evans puts the right words in the right order, a dictum whose simple phrasing embodies its demands.'
- Michael Dugan in PN Review
'She evokes the pains, fantasies and preoccupations of an Irish Catholic childhood and youth, with an Irish tongue for a story and Irish humour, but uses the theme to show what it’s like to be alive…The poems are little dramas and monologues that go straight to the grudges, disappointments, root confusions and hang-ups, showing the depths in trivial things and the trivial in the deep. She writes clean narratives, with nothing but factual adjectives, and all the details part of someone’s experience, making the book a pleasure to read and recommend.'
- Herbert Lomas, Ambit
