Gillian Sze takes a random walk through the art museum and finds the drama of life framed in a series precisely rendered and moving artefact poems. Working from Jeanette Winterson's idea of a "constant exchange of emotion" between the artist, the painting, and the writer, Sze's ekphrastic verse is unrelenting in its commitment to action, so that each poem sparked by a picture comes to follow its own impetus, the origin of which is always a deeply felt encounter, whether familial, erotic, or strange. Vacillating deftly between the suspended space-time of a museum exhibit and the charged urgency of the lives she imagines via the art she describes, the result is a collection at once stirring and arresting, tender and coolly true.

Gillian Sze was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her poetry has appeared in such venues as CV2, Prairie Fire, pax Americana (U.S.), Crannóg (Ireland), Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), and as a featured "Parliamentary Poem of The Week" selection. She is also the author of two chapbooks, This is the color I Love You Best (2007) and A Tender Invention (2008). She resides in Montreal.