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S.C. Flynn

@flynnsc

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Poet. The Colour of Extinction (Renard Press, October 2024) - Observer Poetry Book of the Month. An Ocean Called Hope (May 2025).

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Italian holiday by @flynnsc

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a month ago

Each month we ask an author to recommend a book in our list that they think is brilliant; the only rule is that it should have been published more than a year ago.

Last month’s spotlit author, @flynnsc, recommends for your delectation fellow Irish poet @steverinod, whose powerful and wide-ranging 2023 collection As If It Meant Something looks you in the eye and tells life straight.

For the Shuffling the Shelves feature (link in bio) we have a quickfire round of questions for Steve, and he shares the poem that gave the book its title…

🌞 (50% off this month with #summerreading promo - use coupon summerreading on our site)

#beautifulbooks #poetsofinstagram #irishpoetry by @flynnsc

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2 months ago

I discovered this proofreading classic nine years ago today

#books by @flynnsc

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2 months ago

A proofreading classic from nine years ago. Of course I bought it...

#books by @flynnsc

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2 months ago

This month for our #shufflingtheshelves feature (brilliant books in the backlist that might have passed you by) we caught up with the wonderful @flynnsc, who told us about the inspiration behind his acclaimed #ecopoetry collection The Colour of Extinction. (Link to Shuffling features in bio) 🍁🌍

ICYMI the first time round, here’s @jadecuttle’s powerful review in the @obsnewreview. May the line ‘Flynn’s pen strikes the page like flint, stoking the fire of hope within’ resound! 🔥

#bookstagram #beautifulbooks #climatepoetry by @flynnsc

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2 months ago

Just published in @thebelfastreview:

FACT-CHECK

The outside world was once so far away,
but now my screens are full of wounded life,
as if towns on maps cry out and bleed
while brightly painted robots dance
to the pounding beat of history.
My neighbours might as well be stones that dream;
only the blazing fringes seem real
and not the calm, familiar centre.

I am a sea pulled by two moons, stretched
between my memories of places
that no longer exist, or never did,
and AI-generated stories -
ideograms signifying emptiness
pasted over an abyss of silence -
or, rather, one of those captive moons
torn apart by the planet’s gravity.

#poetry by @flynnsc

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3 months ago

Threshold

The homesickness you felt when still at home
is disappearing from the outside in
and from the inside out, each world drinking
the shadow of the other. Enchanted
nihilism, misplaced sincerity;
the night of their eyelids falls across you.
The hour when the house forgets your name;
a little shiver trembles through the dark.

Published in New Feathers anthology

#poetry

Previous

Next by @flynnsc

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3 months ago

Four poems for the sad people, published in Synchronised Chaos:

GREEN AND YELLOW

Without those colourful floating pills you sink –

bones dropped by a chemical vulture –

to shatter on the rocks of a dead planet.

The pieces of you left intact then wander

through the ruins of lost civilisations

hung with leathery shrunken heads

before boarding a plague cruise ship

to an island of abandoned labyrinths.

After that, it’s dinner with fires all around

while cruel regrets appear like species thought extinct

and wait as snipers for the next mass killing

in this permanent opium war.

EXTRADITION

These little white pills photoshop your mind,

taking you beyond facial recognition

to where anxiety is a distant tremor,

then just a dog stirring in its sleep

and into the fog and silence

of peaceful, invisible zodiacs

where you are the only citizen:

a limpet sheltering on a rock

a trilobite calmly cruising forever

a jellyfish drifting free

a dust mite in a desert.

CLICKBAIT

The most solid thing I remember

of that day is the gleam, the honest face

of life’s dwindling. I could not keep you,

but only suffer alongside for a while

and then confront the geography of pain,

lost as a lighthouse in the sun.

Maybe I am just inventing a dream

that only a digital clone could give,

but I hope you are still really somewhere

in perfect convergent evolution.

INTROVERSION

An endless silent ceremony

before the white ashes of vanity.

Living in a world of your own words

until everything is a mirror.

The cries of a fabulous creature

hovering pitilessly overhead.

Clinging on like weeds around barbed wire

or birds nesting among spikes and syringes.

Fearing an embassy from another planet

or looters profiting from disaster.

#poems #depression #poetry by @flynnsc

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5 months ago

A poem just published in Antipodes

#poetry by @flynnsc

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8 months ago

Happy New Year from me (and from Philebus) by @flynnsc

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10 months ago

A great time was had at the inaugural @dublinsmallpressfair… and a wonderful excuse to hang out with some Dublin pals.

Here’s @flynnsc in the brilliant @hodgesfiggis, who keep his brilliant Colour of Extinction in stock – with hearty thanks to @jadecuttle for making it @obsmagazine poetry book of the month when it was published 🙌 by @flynnsc

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10 months ago

MOSAIC G2
Alpha Island, Western Australia

Thousands of secret years created this place
and now I can only stay an hour
due to one microsecond of rage.

The 1950s were still Australia’s childhood,
a warped chrysalis, and independence
was a schoolchild’s optimistic poetry,

a naked abstraction to dream about;
sixty kilotonnes ripped that doll to pieces
and the radioactive dust from its heart

floated in a fourteen-kilometre cloud
across the continent like a giant hand
knocking on every door to distribute toys.

Published in @newwordorderlit

#poetry #australianpoetry by @flynnsc

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10 months ago