The title of this collection of poetry stems from a combination of terms from Greek: the word skropos, meaning a watcher or spy and a mark to shoot at, and the verb krateo, meaning to be strong, to rule. This implies not just rule by surveillance, but the tyranny of the gaze and the condition of being looked at?'speculated'?and being constructed by the gaze. Taking her cue from narratives of melodrama and film noir, where female hysteria is provoked and contained by male paranoia, Nancy Shaw investigates the hidden and liminal spaces of these constructions.

Nancy Shaw was an award-winning poet, scholar, art critic, and curator. Author of Affordable Tedium (1991) and Scoptocratic (1992), Shaw frequently collaborated with poet Catriona Strang, with whom she also co-authored two books of poetry: Busted (2001) and Cold Trip (2006). Shaw received a Ph.D. in communications from McGill University in 2000 and held a post-doctoral fellowship at New York University. Her doctoral dissertation, “Modern Art, Media Pedagogy, Cultural Citizenship: The Museum of Modern Art’s Television Project, 1952–1955,” was judged as a superior work. Just prior to her death in 2007, she was engaged in new research on McLuhan and the visual arts. During the 1980s in Vancouver, she was at the centre of interdisciplinary collaborations, contributing as a writer, artist, curator, and critic.

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