Taking Liberties

Taking Liberties, Leontia Flynn's fifth collection, emerges from the experience of being a single mother against a background of seemingly continuous crisis. Whether at home in Belfast, in arts centers or in public squares, these poems attempt to locate themselves amid the disorienting " tyranny of the present, incessant discourse." This is a book on the move-- by highway, by railway, in the sky-- as well as amid the 24-hour news cycle, heightened political anxiety, and the threat of violence. Other poems retreat inward, contemplating pets and houseplants, asking where our inner lives meet the globally connected world. There is sympathy and irony in Flynn's poetic stance, one based in a literary tradition that includes Flaubert, Kafka, and Sontag, as well as Derek Mahon and Medbh McGuckian in Ireland. Flynn's poems are thereby built on persona as much as biography and social positioning. In this newest collection, a necessary book for our times, all of the themes revolve around the creation and place of poetry-- poetry as artistic privilege, poetry as travel-- and how this creativity is balanced by our relationships with and responsibility towards others.