"In Panicle , Sze writes, 'people grew alphabets / and found a way / to make voice / into marks / just so we could see / sounds.' But it is she who makes these black slashes sing with query, surprise, and longing. In letting us bear witness to her looking, she allows us to see. Sze wakes us and we are both warmed and disquieted by a singular and remarkable voice." - Michael Blouin, award-winning author of Chase and Haven and Wore Down Trust "Beneath its enticing delicacy, Sze's most potent work simmers with eroticism and, often, danger. Through such means as fairy tales, ekphrasis, and urban voyeurism, she evokes situations and settings all the more immersive for their potential risk. With their (and our) senses on high alert - the standard five, plus intuition - these poems chart modulations too subtle for most instruments." - Stephanie Bolster, Governor General's Award-winning author of White Stone: The Alice Poems "From the sounds of 'an inkstick grinding against stone' to that 'small gasp / a small a'' of the closing poem, 'Panicle,' Gillian Sze takes you on a journey, like Du Mu's traveller, to break the heart with its lyric grace and staggering beauty.

" - Mary di Michele, author of Bicycle Thieves "Sze manages to slice into a moment to see all the working parts, letting each of those moments branch into another, creating a complex, surreal landscape. Poems that grow to the size of the world and shrink down to a pin prick. One of my favourite poets writing today, who always delivers." - Daniel Zomparelli, editor-in-chief of Poetry is Dead " Panicle by Gillian Sze is a collection of poems that are like jewel boxes: precise, specific and perfectly contained. People are changed by landscape and the small still-lifes that appear and then disappear. It is this poetic space that Panicle inhabits, with a voice that observes, charts and translates with just the right words." - Jen Sookfong Lee, author of The Conjoined.