A Poet of Accessibility

Irish poet Leontia Flynn was given the label New Generation Poet, her third and latest collection Profit and Loss (shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize) is a product of the world in which we live; there is a poem for everyone. The book is separated into three sections with varying styles of format for given mood, taste, or random fancy. Her poems flitter through the public and private ideals from the personal to the political. Where her concerns are battled in extremes from one end of the spectrum of profit to the other of loss, these opposites are seen in the underlying motifs, of her father’s Alzheimer’s but also of the arrival of new life (having written Profit and Loss whilst pregnant). This circular motion has left a positive impact on many readers, where the balance is weighted on to profit rather than loss and perhaps not all is lost to capitalism.

However, Flynn questions the objects or ‘stuff’ and the importance of these belongings which we surround ourselves with where the realisation of the pointlessness of this materialism when faced with death, is instead the profit that drives the loss. The “priceless inconsequential chat” which we value far beyond when we are situalised in matters of loss. Where memories have significance due to their attachments to physical forms which made the emotional connections possible. Does profit lead to the loss or is it a question of balance and compromise? These are conflicts which segregate modern culture making her collection an interesting read; playful yet poignant.

Although not every poem suited my tastes there are moments of surprises; in particular The Vibrator. A witty poem with a ghostly undertone of the lives that merges unsuspectingly, crossing in such a depersonalised yet intimate manner.

“Oh nice surprise for next week’s settling tenants

(four Polish men paid peanuts by the hour

-for in Belfast too The Market holds its sway)

to find in some nook or niche-hole the vibrator

still beats, in the dark, its battery powered heart”

(The Vibrator – Extract)

Letter to Friends found in Part II would be my favourite in the collection, a lengthy thirty-two-stanza poem which nods in the direction of W. H. Auden’s Letter to Lord Byron; a cluttered poem of objects, forgotten memories, and the current issues that materialise in development. Although the poem’s underlying foundation is a ‘poem about poetry’, this should not necessarily put you off, you cannot please everyone as they say, but there is undoubtedly enjoyment to be had from reading Letter to Friends, where you can nod along in agreement with memories she strikes.

“It’s summer. So of course torrential rain

has fallen now for days; it’s turned the roads

to rivers, burst the river banks, swamped drains

and drowned in a cataclysm of soupy floods

a traffic tunnel opened weeks ago.

The cars are stranded on this motorway

turned waterway – the pass is an impasses.

And so to pass the time I watch the slow

drip and dissolve of stuff that floats away…

My face is reflected in the steamy glass”

(Letter to Friends – Extract)

A readable book of poems occasionally engaging and engaged in the world itself her frankness allows the complicated emotions to unfold with ease.

Celebrate Literary Belfast: Leontia Flynn