Drunken Driving

By Martina Evans, published by Carcanet

Drunken Driving by Martina Evans is an exploration of who is in control - who is in the driver’s seat. Her long narrative poem, split into a numbered sequence, writes in(to) and out of Pentonville Prison, drawing on the experience of Evans’ work as a radiographer there in the 90s.

It constructs a crackling circuit of the speaker’s experience as she teeters between uncertainty, risk and pressure in her working and personal life. Within the claustrophobic constraints of the expectations and locations she is confined within, the speaker navigates her proximity to control as a force she battles to hold onto.

She is haunted by her attempts to find this concrete grasp on her circumstances, at the opening of the sequence asking “Was I as bad as a drunk driver?” (‘1.’) and towards the close of the sequence, “Was I to be trusted at all? Was I possessed? Maybe I was the perpetrator in a hit & run too?” (‘35.’). Each fragment of the narrative is bracketed by an epigraph from vampiric horror Dracula (1897) and a regulation based in prison or road safety.

This formal constraint traps the narrative even on the page, in found language that underscores the speaker’s tumultuous days, juxtaposing the x-raying of the feet of prisoners and soothing her baby suffering with chicken pox. Loomed over by Dracula, the sense of her as caged is heightened: “The baying of wolves sounded nearer and nearer, as though / they were closing round on us from every side. I grew dreadfully afraid…” (‘18.’). The speaker questions “Were we both trapped?” (‘10.’) and pinpoints the extent of her discomfort in that “Things were so bad, sometimes I wanted to be Mr Barnsley not a ridiculous fly, half-drowned in chemicals, caught in a web.” (‘16.’).

The regulations punctuate each section in declarative blasts: “PAY PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO THE OUTSIDE WALL. / LOOK FOR CRACKS, FRESH PAINT AND TAP WALLS / FOR HOLLOW SOUNDS.” (‘6.’) and “IF DAZZLED, SLOW DOWN AND STOP.” (‘27’). Navigating the eyes of herself, of the law, of the men in her work and home lives she notes “Another one in Control of the Wheel.” (‘38.’) and later we arrive at “No one must know why I was suddenly Behind the Wheel.” (‘48.’). A balancing act of control, Drunken Driving fights to prevent itself from skidding off the road.

Reviewed by Rose Schierig