Leontia Flynn ‘Profit and Loss’
Every three months I get a lovely Jiffy-bagged packet form The Poetry Book Society with a newly published book of poetry.
Their book choice is often of a new-to-me poet. This time it was Leontia Flynn.
When I first started reading I thought that this might be one of the few PBS choices that I wouldn’t want to keep. But I was dead wrong. The more I read, the more I found in it, the more I loved it.
Now I’ve reached the end and am starting to reread all the poems again – a careful, slower read, savouring her rhythms and ideas.
She does one of the things I think poetry is best at: taking the everyday and making it important. Anyone who can write about lost Post-it Notes and greasy ovens and make them exciting, even beautiful, has a powerful gift.
e a m harris 