This is the first book of poetry by the well-known painter, and her poetry reflects the influence of such writers as bpNichol and Tom Raworth. Downe's poems are both intimate and emotionally powerful.

Lise Downe grew up in London, Ontario, where she experienced the art of Londoners Greg Curnoe, Jack Chambers, and Patterson Ewen, among others. After completing a major in printmaking at the Beal Art Annex , she then spent a year in England studying sculpture. On her return to Canada she painted for many years before turning her hand to writing, and later, to studying jewellery at George Brown College and OCAD. She has three previously published books of poetry – A Velvet Increase of Curiosity, The Soft Signature, and Disturbances of Progress. She has exhibited her art and jewellery in Toronto and across Canada. Lise lives in Toronto, where she continues to write and make jewellery and other small sculptures.

Lise Downe's profile page

"The first book of poetry by the painter Lise Downe, is simply stunning. Its painterliness emerges in a Language that is saturated with sensual tones....Intensely lyrical, even pastoral, these poems...transport the reader...in a kind of dizzy but precise awakening to the shifting forms and colors of the world." — University of Toronto Quarterly

"This writing shimmies away from terra firma, follows tendrils of wondering...Our challenge is to enter this world of syntactic slippage, to allow that velvet increase: the rewards, I think, are as profuse as the leaves that thicken the cover." — Books in Canada