The Evening Entertainment is Matthew Paul's debut full-length collection, roughly thirty years in the making. 
Moving between personal narrative and anonymous figures pursuing happiness in everyday life, its poems weigh the drudgery and drama of work against the pleasures of leisure. Arranged in three sections, the book travels from contemporary workers and entertainers—a locum dental hygienist in Dubai, a medieval scriptorium—to the poet's childhood in London and Northern Ireland, and finally to tender reflections on his father's dementia. Witty, precise and humane throughout.