Poetry. "To point up the obvious delicacy of Lise Downe's poems is to lowball their keening, exuberant intelligence. Like all gifted poets, Downe takes intimate, oddly familiar utterance and makes it both vertiginously strange and recklessly public, opening a seemingly private language to the cruelty and tenderness to life, and in the bargain, makes the world flower. In DISTURBANCES OF PROGRESS, Downe doesn't just rehabilitate lyric poetry, she blueprints the jailbreak. If Emily Dickinson had shown up late to the party, with an extra century of writing to draw on, she might have sounded a lot like this."—Kevin Connolly

Author City: TORONTO, ON CAN

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 jewelery at George Brown College and OCAD. She has published four books of poetry—A Velvet Increase of Curiosity, The Soft Signature, DISTURBANCES OF PROGRESS, and THIS WAY. She has exhibited her art and jewelery in Toronto and across Canada. Lise lives in Toronto, where she continues to write and make jewelery and other small sculptures.