Frayed Linens

Marilyn Bowering casts the poet as a traveler, and Frayed Linens is a poet’ s exorcism of the nightmares that haunt today’ s world. She writes of beauty and resilience within darkness, from the ruins of Greece to the horrors of Mariupol, showing how History echoes itself at every turn. She is accompanied in these poems by ancestral and mythic figures, beloved poets, and the ghosts of her own life-story as the body and spirit – the frayed linens of the title – are worn and renewed over time. From a mother’ s sorcery, to a satyrical abduction, to a Celtic saint’ s interventions, and the stone hands of a gargoyle, the range and energy of Bowering’ s new collection cannot conceal the tenderness that propels it. These are poems of witness, empathy, and compassion, clear-eyed in their confrontation of failure and in the capacity of friendship, love, and will, to retain redemptive power. Cover and interior photographs by Xan Shian.

Marilyn Bowering of Sooke, B.C. has received many awards for her writing (both poetry and fiction) including the Pat Lowther Award, the Dorothy Livesay Prize and several National Magazine awards. Her work has been short-listed for the Governor General’ s Award and for international awards including the Dublin Impac Award, the Orange Prize, the Sony Award and the Prix Italia. She was a 2008 Fulbright Scholar at New York University and currently teaches at Vancouver Island University. Her most recent books are Green (poetry, with Exile Editions) and What It Takes to Be Human (novel).

This was Dark Horror / This is What Happened Mangle Neighbourhood Rapist Gargoyle / Mute Dark Rooms Equinox Frayed Linens of Another Life They Sailed To Lesbos Deep Dark Questions Stopping at Tiryns The Invisible Life of Feeling Storm Lost / Amnesia Gargoyle / Saskatchewan Cloudy Provinces Slepen The Invisible Life of Feeling On the bus to the ferry Condolences Black Bus on a Winding Mountain Road Cycling Mariupol Dark Driving Dark Love / Fairy Dark Gargoyle / Nest Life by Water Love and Enema Prayer to St. Moluag: Overdose St. Moluag: Night School Finding Voznesensky (but not St. Moluag) in the UBC Library, 1968 Shadows Confession Gothic Path of Totality Night Shift Buffalo Gaze Notes and Acknowledgements