The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Flynn, Leontia. "The Furthest Distances I've Travelled." These Days (Jonathan Cape, 2004).

Note that all parenthetical citations refer to the line number from which the quotation is taken.

"The Furthest Distances I've Travelled," a poem by Leontia Flynn originally published in her 2004 collection These Days, is composed of eight quatrains. As a whole, the collection deals with childhood memories, the instabilities of young adulthood, and the pull of elsewhere. Flynn's identity as a Northern Irish person is an integral part of her writing, giving the collection a geographical context. "The Furthest Distances I've Travelled" thematically parallels the genre of travel writing, which describes places the author has visited and the experiences he or she had while there. However, Flynn's poem skims over the various places the speaker has visited. Instead, the poem is concerned with what led the speaker to make the decisions that she did, and what she learned overall as a result of her travels.

In the poem, the speaker recounts the various far-flung places she has visited while backpacking. Traveling in a somewhat risky manner gives the speaker a sense of uniqueness, and she constructs her identity based on her backpacking experiences. However, upon reflecting on all the objects the speaker has accrued while traveling (as well as the memories they carry), she realizes that the people she met are far more important to her than the places that she visited.