Leontia Flynn

Anybody with an interest in poetry should be reading Leontia Flynn. Those with no interest should be reading her too: she has what it takes to overcome resistance. All mothers - especially new mothers - should read her... Her thinking is complicated but never arrogantly inaccessible. I was bowled over

Flynn captures the tension between poetry as a personal impulse for freedom, and the human tethering to world events… A thought-provoking, calming response to this 'intricate, coping life'

Michael Longley, author of The Slain Birds

One of the most original and accomplished poets of her generation

One of the most strikingly original and exciting poetic voices to have emerged from Northern Ireland since the extraordinary debut by Muldoon thirty-five years ago... She doesn't put a foot wrong on the page

Fran Brearton, The Great War in Irish Poetry

Surefooted and unsettling, Leontia Flynn's poems negotiate the cracks that lie below the surfaces of things. Reading them, we see the world differently

Ciaran Carson, author of Belfast Confetti

A poet who is not only one of the best writers of her generation but who seems, more and more, to be the voice of that generation

John McAuliffe, author of The Kabul Olympics

Makes clear what many people have known for the best part of two decades: she is one of the very best poets writing in Ireland in the twenty-first century. Taking Liberties is a consolidation of various strands of her poetic lives: musical without being conventional, funny without playing to the choir, scholarly without being exclusionary, dark without being morbid

A collection about motherhood at a time of continuous crisis - from one of Ireland's most important poets 
 
'Everyone should be reading her' 
OBSERVER 
 
'One of the most accomplished poets of her generation' 
GUARDIAN 
 
These poems emerge from the experience of being a single mother in Belfast, and against a background of seemingly continuous crisis. Political upheaval and anxiety, violence and death are all registered in these poems, which ask questions about where independence is balanced by our relationships with others, and where our inner lives meet the globally connected world. 
 
These are poems about cities - living, travelling and working in cities, getting sick and dying in cities - but also about retreating from all that: to her daughter at home, the budgie, cat and tortoise, or escaping to the park, the municipal pool, the Irish countryside, Newfoundland, or Paris, or into a Nina Simone song. 
 
This is a necessary book - a book very much of our time - with a consistent tone that is brave and bleak, but which also carries with it some much-needed humour, and a wealth of beautiful writing.

Leontia Flynn

Praise for Taking Liberties

Anybody with an interest in poetry should be reading Leontia Flynn. Those with no interest should be reading her too: she has what it takes to overcome resistance. All mothers - especially new mothers - shoul ...

Flynn captures the tension between poetry as a personal impulse for freedom, and the human tethering to world events… A thought-provoking, calming response to this 'intricate, coping life'

The real thing

Anybody with an interest in poetry should be reading Leontia Flynn. Those with no interest should be reading her too: she has what it takes to overcome resistance. All mothers - especially new mothers - shoul ...

Flynn captures the tension between poetry as a personal impulse for freedom, and the human tethering to world events… A thought-provoking, calming response to this 'intricate, coping life'

The real thing

Anybody with an interest in poetry should be reading Leontia Flynn. Those with no interest should be reading her too: she has what it takes to overcome resistance. All mothers - especially new mothers - shoul ...

Flynn captures the tension between poetry as a personal impulse for freedom, and the human tethering to world events… A thought-provoking, calming response to this 'intricate, coping life'

The real thing

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