George Sipos hears the frog song at two in the morning and wonders if it is passion that drives it or the loneliness of spring. In another poem, the wet leaves of fall are described in language that cuts two ways: "I work the rake, / you the wheelbarrow. when we get tired we will change."

With quiet humour, he writes of nature, the land, and the tasks of an ordinary day. Alive with sublety, The Glassblowers quietly turns images and metaphors the way we might turn a small stone between our thumb and fingers to see its facets and colours.

George Sipos was born in Budapest, raised in London, Ontario, and has since lived in British Columbia. Formerly the owner of Mosquito Books in Prince George, Sipos now lives on Salt Spring Island. He is the author of Anything but the Moon, which was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 2006.

George Sipos' profile page

"The essence of Sipos's work is its honouring of evanescence, its surprising alloy of grief and gratitude, its light hand, its astute eye."

Jan Zwicky

"We need more writers turning mind and ear to the world's 'dark solidity.' George Sipos attends 'the calendar of the fields' through squall and leaf-fall and eclipse, offering in The Glassblowers a glittering assemblage, fragments of music and memory."

Marlene Cookshaw

"Sipos doesn't have much truck with romanticization, and is quite content to poke fun at our pretensions to the sublime ... Although there are points in the book at which the interiority of perspective does begin to feel insular, more often Sipos redeems these quiet meditations by looking out and beyond the self. Most readers will find themselves more than satisfied with the adroit intellect and sensual richness of these poems, which generate 'a heat which draws the mind out beyond the window' of perception."

<i>Globe and Mail</i>