The Radio

In The Radio, Leontia Flynn exercises her signature wit, formal inventiveness, bitter irony, and unique blend of vernacular speech and literary allusion. In the title poem, the radio is a portal from the outside world, piping “explosive news” of the Northern Irish Troubles into the poet’s childhood home, her mother constantly turning to “field the blow” from her children’s ears.

“Such currents of difficult feeling, beneath the wise, glittering fronts of her poems, make them all the more remarkable.” –Frances Leviston, The Guardian "Flynn's is one of the most strikingly original and exciting poetic voices to have emerged from Northern Ireland since the extraordinary debut by Muldoon 35 years ago . . . She doesn't put a foot wrong on the page." –Fran Brearton, Queen’s University Belfast "Leontia Flynn disentangles complicated feelings with extraordinary elan and maturity. She has a natural's feel for cadence and melody, and launches her singing line boldly and with a propulsion that energises her often elaborate syntax . . . Affectionate and truculent by turns, disenchanted but relishing the world around her, quick-witted and big-hearted, Leontia Flynn looks like the real thing." –Michael Longley

Leontia Flynn was born in County Down, Northern Ireland. Her previous poetry collections—These Days (2004), Drives (2008), and Profit and Loss (2011)—have won much acclaim, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the Eric Gregory Award, as well as being shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize.