These Days

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

These Days represents one of the most strikingly original debuts in recent years. A Gregory Award winner, Leontia Flynn - still in her twenties - writes about Belfast and the north of Ireland with a precision and tenderness that is completely fresh. While her subject matter ranges from memories of childhood to the instabilities of adulthood, from the raw domestic to the restless pull of 'elsewhere', her theme throughout is a search for physical and mental well-being, for a way to live a life. A number of exquisitely moving poems about her father highlight her extraordinary gifts: her exact ear, her heightened, filmic sensibility, her bittersweet tone - all of which combine in poems that are accessible but not obvious, witty and serious, delicate but tough, and always surprising. These Days is not simply a first book of great promise; it marks the arrival of a new, exciting and important voice. 'The morning after Ruth's going-away party the state of this place is its witness, like Pompeii. The needle snags on the record and then snags again and Karen Carpenter sings we've only, we've only just begun.'

Reviews

Bursting with tender, witty, punchy poems about the tender aftermath of a love affair. -- Christina Patterson * Independent *

Author Bio

Leontia Flynn was born in County Down in 1974. Her first book These Days (2004) won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize, and saw her named one of twenty 'Next Generation' poets by the Poetry Book Society. Her second collection, Drives, won the 2008 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and a major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Her third collection, Profit and Loss, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She was awarded the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry in 2013 and the AWB Vincent American Ireland Fund Literary Award for 2014.