Slipstream is a poem sequence and artist’s bookwork, which was commissioned by the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington. Rough notes Ruthig once intended for a larger narrative were instead, over several years, distilled into a sequence of twenty short, linked poems. First presented as a textwork of twenty panels fusing Ruthig's text and images, Slipstream was re-imagined for book form, then produced in two limited editions and launched in conjunction with an exhibition of the original artwork in September 2011.
Ingrid Ruthig is the author of This Being (Fitzhenry & Whiteside), winner of the League of Canadian Poets Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. The recipient of a Hawthornden Fellowship and a Petra Kenney International Poetry Prize, she is also author of the artist's book Slipstream, the chapbook Synesthete II, and editor of several volumes including The Essential Elizabeth Brewster (Porcupine's Quill) and David Helwig: Essays on His Works (Guernica Editions). A new book of her poetry is forthcoming from Véhicule Press.