These poems are an alternative take on the genre of detective fiction. In them we have an assortment of clues and the task of sorting out the essential from the superfluous; the real from the imagined; the inside from the out. In spite of all the 'evidence', there is no familiar sense of direction.

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 jewellery at George Brown College and OCAD. She has three previously published books of poetry – A Velvet Increase of Curiosity, The Soft Signature, and Disturbances of Progress. She has exhibited her art and jewellery in Toronto and across Canada. Lise lives in Toronto, where she continues to write and make jewellery and other small sculptures.

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“In these tiny elevators, Lise Down’s tangents tighten. Context awash. Devious decorum. Quick music in cameo. Or sentences that roll down through stanzas, as we take the stairs, blind, but reassured by a careful delight in the oddities of talk. Grand.”—Phil Hall

“These verses are not meant to be decoded, but rather beckon to take the reader on a heightened passage into intuition.”—Amie Ronald-Morgan

“subtle and dreamlike; a numinous poetry that whispers of never-ending possibilities.”—Amie Ronald-Morgan

“In these tiny elevators, Lise Down’s tangents tighten. Context awash. Devious decorum. Quick music in cameo. Or sentences that roll down through stanzas, as we take the stairs, blind, but reassured by a careful delight in the oddities of talk. Grand.”—Phil Hall

“Downe’s writing uses the qualities of colloquial speech—hesitation, interjection, digression and repetition—to convey the experience of writing as an unforseen progression. Favouring intuitive progress over linear intention, these vivid, painterly poems reflect the dynamic between the known and the unknown.”—Darren Werschler

“subtle and dreamlike; a numinous poetry that whispers of never-ending possibilities.”—Amie Ronald-Morgan

“Downe’s writing uses the qualities of colloquial speech—hesitation, interjection, digression and repetition—to convey the experience of writing as an unforseen progression. Favouring intuitive progress over linear intention, these vivid, painterly poems reflect the dynamic between the known and the unknown.”—Darren Werschler

“These verses are not meant to be decoded, but rather beckon to take the reader on a heightened passage into intuition.”—Amie Ronald-Morgan