Openwork and Limestone

by Frances Boyle

Openwork and Limestone is a finely-wrought and potent new poetry collection from one of Canada’s most compelling poets. In Frances Boyle’s powerful vision, the rituals of contemporary women are seen through the lens of Celtic warrior queens, and goddesses. The natural and created worlds – as they run, as Boyle says, “through the funnel / of my palms” – are a constant source of awe and woman’s strength. A reverie that allows in the brutality of history and prehistory, as well as the joys. “The unconscious / swimming upward. What won’t stay buried rises / through rocks, rough-ridden and rusty.” Boyle’s Openwork and Limestone turns inward and outward at the same time, telling our multifarious collective human story so that it feels like our own intimate family history.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2022

About the author

Author of Seeking Shade (stories), Tower (a novella) and This White Nest (poetry).

Reviews

[Barbara Sibbald]

Charming, lyrical and wonderous. Poems of domestic clarity ("Pegging out washing") and mothering ("my mother wants to know" ... did I do you harm. glimpse but no specific image except pin pricks). An historical deep dive into 60AD Britain and revenge and explorations of nature ('The ice is melting and I sip moonlight"). A far reaching diverse collection to be savoured over and over.

[Lynn Tait · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is as beautiful as the title and cover. My favorites were the 1st and 4th sections, but the whole book is an exquisite read. Poems that I really loved are too numerous to mention, but include Madonna of Bruges, Pool, My Mother Wants to Know and pretty well the entire last section. Highly recommend this book. I own other poetry books by Frances Boyle and none of them disappoint.
I started this book before the date recorded. I could not find it on Goodreads for a time. Don't know if it was me or Goodreads didn't have it up until later in the year. I took way over a month to read it. I read only a few poems at a time. It's not a book to zip through.

[Penn Kemp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Openwork and Limestone is a celebration of the lyric at its most intricate clarity:

“wonder turns to joy in such folding
and unfolding. Aerobatic origami,
the cries and percussion of pummelled air,
smoothed into edge, the fall and rise
a singing synchronicity. In their wheeling
a whirled word of beauty, of praise.”
“Murmuration”

“I want that spiral
in a song

the pond a bowl
of light and sky”