Here the theme of a tallying of private and public balance sheets, of different kinds of profit and loss, widens to include poems of motherhood and marriage, the possibilities of hope and repair.
Celebrated as an unusually original poet - nervy, refreshing, deceptively simple - Leontia Flynn has quickly developed into a writer of assured technical complexity and a startling acuity of perception. In Profit and Loss, her third collection, Flynn examines and dismantles a fugitive life. In a remarkable extended sequence, she takes a long hard look at time spent in the shared and rented flats of a 'half-baked Belfast demimonde' - places of cheap wine, dodgy landlords, potted plants and neglect - from a position of relative safety. The poet then takes another leap: showing a mastery of formal rhyme as she relaxes into the effortless, rangy rhythms of the long title poem - an extraordinarily moving reflection on mutability and mortality prompted by the spring-cleaning of a life's detritus. Going though the memento mori of cassettes, old photographs, address books, 'boarding passes, rail cards, ticket stubs', the poem evolves from a private reliquary to a public obsequy - for a life unexamined until now. Beginning with flood and ending with the gold of an opening sky and a baby daughter, 'Profit and Loss' offers the possibilities of hope and repair, and casts its raking light over the whole collection - throwing it all into a deep, satisfying relief.
