In Fish Bones, 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 is the author of multiple poetry collections, including Peeling Rambutan, Redrafting Winer and Panicle. Her work has been nominated for the QWF’s A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and has received awards such as the University of Winnipeg Writers’ Circle Prize and the 3Macs carte blanche Prize. She studied creative writing and English literature at Concordia University and received a PhD in études anglaises from the Université de Montréal. Originally from Winnipeg, she now resides in Montreal, where she teaches creative writing. The Night Is Deep and Wide is her first board book and was inspired by her son who was a challenging sleeper as a baby.

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