In the title poem of this extraordinary first book, Sally Ito remembers her childhood in Alberta, when she set frogs in the rain barrel and watched them swim like stars in a "pool of still and nether depths/ whose mirrored surface was all."

Those imagined depths become a powerful metaphor in these poems, which reflect Ito's experiences as a young Japanese Canadian living and writing in Alberta, the Northwest Territories, the West Coast and Japan. Hers is a distinct poetic voice, equally at ease with such diverse images as an aged Chinese man on the train, the Inuit goddess of the sea and the first crocus of spring. Frogs in the Rain Barrel was runner-up for the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award in 1996.

Sally Ito was born in Taber, Alberta and grew up in Edmonton and the Northwest Territories. She studied at the University of British Columbia and the University of Alberta, and travelled on scholarship to Japan, where she translated Japanese poetry. Her first book of poems, Frogs in the Rain Barrel (Nightwood, 1995) was runner-up for the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award. Her second book, Floating Shore (Mercury Press), won the Writers Guild of Alberta Book Award for short fiction, and was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Prize and the City of Edmonton Book Prize. Her work has appeared in numerous periodicals such as Grain, Matrix and the Capilano Review and in the anthologies Breathing Fire: Canada's New Poets and Poets 88. Ito lives in Edmonton with her husband and son.

Sally Ito's profile page

• Runner-up, Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award