Looking Through Stone is the first collection of poems in Canada devoted exclusively to geology, metals, minerals, and mining history. From volcanoes to vitamins, it presents a wealth of factual information, but also explores past, more fanciful notions about how rocks and minerals fit into our human picture. Both the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada and the Rainbow District School Board have recognized it as an educational resource where science and imagination meet.

Susan Ioannou's profile page

A widely published writer of poetry, fiction, and literary essays, for many years Susan Ioannou worked as Associate Editor of Cross-Canada Writers’ Magazine and taught creative writing for the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, the Ryerson Literary Society, and the Toronto Board of Education. In recent years, her poems have also inspired musical creations by Norwegian composer Gjermund Andreassen and Canadian composer Leslie Uyeda.

"Ms. Ioannou deserves full marks for doing her homework and ensuring that her poems are technically accurate. Where else can you find poems containing words, which are close to the hearts of mining people, such as ‘magnetometer’, ‘feldspar’, ‘GPS-gizmos’, ‘Precambrian’, ‘octahedral’, ‘reclaiming’ and ‘kimberlite.’... While the outmoded stereotype of a miner may be the antithesis of poetry in some people’s minds, perhaps it is time to update the image of the miner as more of a Renaissance Man, or Woman, who has a sensitive and contemplative artistic side. The mining sector should embrace this collection of poetry, which shows the industry from a different and enlightening perspective, as its own.” - Peter McBride, Ontario Mining Association Newsletter

"Ioannou’s best poems crystallize imagery and meaning into finely cut and glimmering stones. What holds the book together, therefore, is not its multiple and occasionally contradictory perspectives on the purposes of minerals, but rather the poet’s unswerving fidelity to earth and its language. As she listens and writes, we miraculously hear the stones speak, and ‘their syllables bristle and throb / more than full of themselves.’” - Monika Lee, Vallum Magazine.