Taking Liberties

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

The real thing

Michael Longley, author of The Slain Birds

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

Observer

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

One of the most original and accomplished poets of her generation

Guardian

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

Belfast Media

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'

Financial Times, *Books of the Year*