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Panicle
“Succulent in its excellence, Sze’s poetry insists that cultural ‘difference’ is what can make a beautiful difference in our apprehension of the ‘beautiful.’” — George Elliott Clarke on Peeling Rambutan
In Panicle, Gillian Sze makes her readers look and, more importantly, look again. It’s a collection that challenges our notion of seeing as a passive or automatic activity by asking us to question the process of looking. The book’s first section, “Underway,” deals with the moving image and includes both poetic responses to film theory and lyrical long poems while also reimagining fairy tales. The next section, “Stagings,” takes its inspiration from the still image and explores a wide range of periods, movements, and media. Sze’s focus on the process of looking anticipates “Guillemets,” a creative translation of Roland Giguère’s 1966 chapbook, Pouvoir du Noir, which contains a series of poems accompanied by his own paintings. Sze’s approach to Giguère is two-fold: she “translates” his text, and artist Jessica Hiemstra provides a visual response to her translation. The final section, “Panicle,” continues the meditative quality of “Guillemets” in a suite of poems that ruminate on nature, desire, and history.
In Panicle, Gillian Sze makes her readers look and, more importantly, look again. It’s a collection that challenges our notion of seeing as a passive or automatic activity by asking us to question the process of looking. The book’s first section, “Underway,” deals with the moving image and includes both poetic responses to film theory and lyrical long poems while also reimagining fairy tales. The next section, “Stagings,” takes its inspiration from the still image and explores a wide range of periods, movements, and media. Sze’s focus on the process of looking anticipates “Guillemets,” a creative translation of Roland Giguère’s 1966 chapbook, Pouvoir du Noir, which contains a series of poems accompanied by his own paintings. Sze’s approach to Giguère is two-fold: she “translates” his text, and artist Jessica Hiemstra provides a visual response to her translation. The final section, “Panicle,” continues the meditative quality of “Guillemets” in a suite of poems that ruminate on nature, desire, and history.
- GenresPoetry
90 pages, Paperback
First published September 19, 2017
2 people are currently reading
50 people want to read
About the author
Gillian Sze
20 books85 followersGILLIAN SZE is the author of
Panicle
(ECW Press, 2017),
Peeling Rambutan
(Gaspereau Press, 2014) and
Redrafting Winter
(BuschekBooks, 2015), which were shortlisted for the QWF A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. She is also the author of
The Anatomy of Clay
(ECW Press, 2011) and
Fish Bones
(DC Books, 2009). More recently, she has started writing for children. Her first two picture books are
The Night Is Deep and Wide
(Orca, 2021) and
My Love for You Is Always
(Philomel, 2021). Gillian's work has appeared in a number of national and international journals, and has received awards such as the University of Winnipeg Writers’ Circle Prize and the 3Macs carte blanche Prize. She studied Creative Writing and English Literature and received a Ph.D. in Études anglaises from Université de Montréal. Originally from Winnipeg, she now resides in Montreal.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 1, 2017
The strength of these poems is the feeling of the unspoken, what is known in silence between people who have known one another a long time - parents and children, long marriages, old flames, etc. The poems with this theme were my favorite. The section with the art is a style of poetry I always struggle with. Which came first, in this case? I'm not sure.
Thanks to the publisher for providing early access through Edelweiss.
Thanks to the publisher for providing early access through Edelweiss.
December 31, 2017
Disclaimer: Received a free digital copy of the book through Netgalley.
Eloquent, poignant, divine - something that will leave itself etched on your skin.
This poetry collection was everything I expected and more, so much more! Throughout my reading, I was in awe of Sze's capability to turn everyday events into something complicated, deeper than an ocean and amazing like an untold famous tale. The raw emotions encapsulated in every poetry piece made it easy to connect with the author's words - I danced with every cheery poem and cried with every melancholic one!
I have an affinity for poetry with exquisite vocabulary. It makes the poetry sound formal, mysterious, and it makes me feel like the poet is true to their words. The fact that this collection included that made me instantly love it. However, this in no way made the poetry less tangible to be grasped by non-readers of the genre - take my word on this one, I've read my fair share of elusive poetry that goes over your head! The structure of the book was amazing - divided into four portions, it really made everything seem precise and clear, giving a sense of direction to the reader. Special mention to the "Guillemets" portion of the book because of how it combined poetry with art (hint: sketches in the book - what even!).
Sze effortlessly made use of a variety of poetry forms (experimental ones included) which kept the collection refreshing and captivating as something new popped up every time I scrolled to the next page. However, one common trait shared by every poem in this collection was they seemed to have a soul of their own, calculatingly put into perfectly crafted words by Sze - it really is something that resonated with me and put me into a literary trance.
Overall, I feel great that I picked this up because it's good to have that feeling when you can't describe how wonderful you found something, whilst pushing yourself to describe it, if that makes any sense.
Some quotes: (you can thank me later)
“The wind knows flaws, knows the infinite routes of everything it blows and how nothing comes back the same way.” – Calligraphy, Underway.
“In this dance of mirrored impressions
even my shadow is a different me.” – Guillemets.
(I want to write entire poems in this review urgh!)
Eloquent, poignant, divine - something that will leave itself etched on your skin.
This poetry collection was everything I expected and more, so much more! Throughout my reading, I was in awe of Sze's capability to turn everyday events into something complicated, deeper than an ocean and amazing like an untold famous tale. The raw emotions encapsulated in every poetry piece made it easy to connect with the author's words - I danced with every cheery poem and cried with every melancholic one!
I have an affinity for poetry with exquisite vocabulary. It makes the poetry sound formal, mysterious, and it makes me feel like the poet is true to their words. The fact that this collection included that made me instantly love it. However, this in no way made the poetry less tangible to be grasped by non-readers of the genre - take my word on this one, I've read my fair share of elusive poetry that goes over your head! The structure of the book was amazing - divided into four portions, it really made everything seem precise and clear, giving a sense of direction to the reader. Special mention to the "Guillemets" portion of the book because of how it combined poetry with art (hint: sketches in the book - what even!).
Sze effortlessly made use of a variety of poetry forms (experimental ones included) which kept the collection refreshing and captivating as something new popped up every time I scrolled to the next page. However, one common trait shared by every poem in this collection was they seemed to have a soul of their own, calculatingly put into perfectly crafted words by Sze - it really is something that resonated with me and put me into a literary trance.
Overall, I feel great that I picked this up because it's good to have that feeling when you can't describe how wonderful you found something, whilst pushing yourself to describe it, if that makes any sense.
Some quotes: (you can thank me later)
“The wind knows flaws, knows the infinite routes of everything it blows and how nothing comes back the same way.” – Calligraphy, Underway.
“In this dance of mirrored impressions
even my shadow is a different me.” – Guillemets.
(I want to write entire poems in this review urgh!)
August 18, 2017
(3.5) Gillian Sze is a Montreal-based poet with five previous collections to her name. Panicle contains many responses to films, photographs, and other poems, including some classical Chinese verse. Travel and relationships are recurring sources of inspiration, and scenes are often described as if they are being captured by a camera. There are a number of prose paragraphs, including the “Sound No. 1–5” series. As lovely as the writing is, I found few individual poems to latch onto. Two favorites were “Nocturne” (which opens “When I can’t sleep I think of the lupines that grow in the country, their specific palette, a mix of disregard and generosity” [the line breaks are unclear in my Kindle book]) and “Dawning.” My favorite lines were “memory is a wicker chair that creaks in the wind” (from “To the Photographer in the Countryside”) and “I age / as it is typically done: slowly / unconsciously / surprisingly” (from the title poem). Releases September 19th.
April 12, 2017
This poetry collection is wonderful and a true treat. Sometimes I encounter a book that is "delicious" - the words all have bite and taste. These poems have that bite and taste, but also sound and sharpness and softness and scent and substance and more. Sze plays with forms (for example, at times writing in the styles of other poets such as William Carlos Williams) so as the reader you are never bored and are excited to turn the page to see what is next.
I recieved an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I recieved an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Read
April 14, 2017The collection features many meaningful citations of other writers as a source of inspiration for poems that follow. The poet explores love and sound as main themes, but both are often conveyed through amazing synaesthesia. The form of the poems varies, there are sonnets, experimental poems in the forms of a play, but every poem definitely showcases Sze's strong poetry writing abilities. However, I don't feel like the illustrations are a necessary addition to the collection. Overall, the poetry is absolutely astonishing and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a short read.
June 10, 2025
I really liked the last chapter.
November 9, 2017
I recently won this book from ECW Press after entering the Giveaway on 49th Shelf! The poems are quite lyrical, but I especially like the little paragraphs titled "Seven Takes."
April 30, 2019
Review from prairiefire.ca Reviewed by Jody Baltessen
“Calligraphy”, the opening poem in Panicle, Gillian Sze’s most recent book of poetry, is a masterful distillation of the emotional work of poetry.
In this poem, the art of calligraphy is deconstructed alongside the act of writing: the grinding down of the inkstick, the work that precedes the first stroke of the brush, and the slowing down required to still the hand and heart to allow the first stroke to lift from the page. From this powerful beginning, Sze expands to reflect on life as lived, on the moments we carry along with us like failed strokes, moments that bear the weight and meaning of experience and inform us when we sit down to write.
The slowing down that Sze captures so beautifully in “Calligraphy” permeates the whole of this collection. In each of its four parts—Underway; Stagings; Guillemets; and Panicle—Sze sifts and probes connections, the personal and those we have with literature, art and place, and renders them to us in language both precise and expansive. Reflecting on a winter storm in “February”, Sze parses the hard work needed to hold onto love. She writes “Overnight winter dropped on us and bent the hedges in our backyard so they low impossibly near to the ground.” The poem concludes with the hedges slowly lifting against the weight of snow. That so much about a relationship can be conveyed in the observed effects of weather is dazzling. This incisive reading of the world around us is evident throughout the book, though perhaps most strikingly in “Proof” when she writes: “I want something in me to do something irreparable, irreversible in you.”
Regardless of the subject, Sze has a tremendous capacity to distill a moment or an observation down to its essence and have us look again, see anew. The nine pieces in “Guillemets”, her creative translation of Roland Giguere’s “Pouvoir du noir,” reflect on Giguere’s characterization of black as light. In this response, Sze begins by rejecting white. She writes: “White is nothing, no knock or trace, white leaks Lethean, ossifies and mums.” Then follows with a sustained meditation on black becoming—“the black is a waking”, “who says black is knowable”, “know everything but black”—all of which appear alongside artist and poet Jessica Hiemstra’s evocative black and white sketches. The effect of this collaboration amplifies and complicates the play of black against white, of black as light. As in all of her ekphrastic poems, Sze challenges us to see differently by revealing her own intricate and layered reading of a work of art.
Shortlisted for the 2018 Quebec Writers’ Federation A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry, Panicle is a compelling and rewarding book. Not only are the poems beautiful and insightful, they vary in style and subject matter and travel us through a world of love and loss, of art and beauty, of nature, history and desire. There is no better way to invite a reader to this work than with Sze’s own words: “ahead, where our gaze meets the sky, where the sky breathes in the blue hue of evening, a small gasp, a small ah.”
“Calligraphy”, the opening poem in Panicle, Gillian Sze’s most recent book of poetry, is a masterful distillation of the emotional work of poetry.
In this poem, the art of calligraphy is deconstructed alongside the act of writing: the grinding down of the inkstick, the work that precedes the first stroke of the brush, and the slowing down required to still the hand and heart to allow the first stroke to lift from the page. From this powerful beginning, Sze expands to reflect on life as lived, on the moments we carry along with us like failed strokes, moments that bear the weight and meaning of experience and inform us when we sit down to write.
The slowing down that Sze captures so beautifully in “Calligraphy” permeates the whole of this collection. In each of its four parts—Underway; Stagings; Guillemets; and Panicle—Sze sifts and probes connections, the personal and those we have with literature, art and place, and renders them to us in language both precise and expansive. Reflecting on a winter storm in “February”, Sze parses the hard work needed to hold onto love. She writes “Overnight winter dropped on us and bent the hedges in our backyard so they low impossibly near to the ground.” The poem concludes with the hedges slowly lifting against the weight of snow. That so much about a relationship can be conveyed in the observed effects of weather is dazzling. This incisive reading of the world around us is evident throughout the book, though perhaps most strikingly in “Proof” when she writes: “I want something in me to do something irreparable, irreversible in you.”
Regardless of the subject, Sze has a tremendous capacity to distill a moment or an observation down to its essence and have us look again, see anew. The nine pieces in “Guillemets”, her creative translation of Roland Giguere’s “Pouvoir du noir,” reflect on Giguere’s characterization of black as light. In this response, Sze begins by rejecting white. She writes: “White is nothing, no knock or trace, white leaks Lethean, ossifies and mums.” Then follows with a sustained meditation on black becoming—“the black is a waking”, “who says black is knowable”, “know everything but black”—all of which appear alongside artist and poet Jessica Hiemstra’s evocative black and white sketches. The effect of this collaboration amplifies and complicates the play of black against white, of black as light. As in all of her ekphrastic poems, Sze challenges us to see differently by revealing her own intricate and layered reading of a work of art.
Shortlisted for the 2018 Quebec Writers’ Federation A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry, Panicle is a compelling and rewarding book. Not only are the poems beautiful and insightful, they vary in style and subject matter and travel us through a world of love and loss, of art and beauty, of nature, history and desire. There is no better way to invite a reader to this work than with Sze’s own words: “ahead, where our gaze meets the sky, where the sky breathes in the blue hue of evening, a small gasp, a small ah.”
October 8, 2020
Panicle by Gillian Sze is the author's ninth poetry collection. Her work includes Peeling Rambutan (Gaspereau Press, 2014) and Redrafting Winter (BuschekBooks, 2015), both of which were finalists for the QWF A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. Sze's work has appeared in a number of literary journals and has received awards such as the University of Winnipeg Writers' Circle Prize and the 2011 3Macs carte blanche Prize.
A panicle is defined as any loose, diversely branching flower cluster. Oats are a common example of this type of plant. Sze refers to lupines, a panicle, in her collection. Lupines are typically violet or blue which brings in another theme in the collection. Blue is the color of the sky but in this collection, it is also the color of water. Water is presented throughout the collection as rain, ice, hail, the water cycle, a flooded ditch, stagnant water in a paper cup with a daisy, ripples in the cove, and a waterfall.
In the first section, there are five poems with the partial title Sound. "Sound No. 1", one of my favorite poems in the collection, carries the theme of blue to a different sense:
When you push through the water, past the gawping fish that realize
you don’t belong, everything resounds with your final cause. It
sounds blue and it comes from all directions.
The poems in the collection are narrative in nature and most are inspired by a quote, a poet, or piece of art. Some poems are descriptions of scenes. There are a series of tableau poems and a series called "Seven Takes." The third "take" provides a nice ananolgy, in parable form, of what we are destined to become in life. Much like a panicle plant with many flowers branching off the same stalk life has many branches that we can choose from yet all are interconnected through the main stalk.
The third section is a tribute to a Roland Giguère work with supporting artwork. The collection ends with the title poem "Panicle". Here is a convergence of the complete work. Much like the climax of a story, we reach the high point of the poet's work. The themes and ideas throughout the collection are brought together in an artful closing. Sze gives the reader a collection filled with imagery and imagination and invites the reader to look deeper. An inspired and inspiring collection.
Available September 17, 2017
March 25, 2019
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A Beautiful, Lyrical Collection
•
Sze has a way with words that has the abilty to catch your breath.
This is a wonderful collection! It had me from the first poem Calligraphy.
"This is how the beginning sounds: an inkstick grinding against stone, a dark circling like ancient gears. The water blackens from soot; we paint with the burnt ashes of pine trees."
•
Split up into sections Underway, Stagings, Guillemets, and Panicle.
Sze takes inspiration from other poems and writer quotations, nature and the elements, love, art and more Sze's has a talent for taking small everyday things and turning them into something deep and meaningful. This collection is beautiful and fresh!
•
Thank You @ecwpress for #gifting me this copy.
•
A Beautiful, Lyrical Collection
•
Sze has a way with words that has the abilty to catch your breath.
This is a wonderful collection! It had me from the first poem Calligraphy.
"This is how the beginning sounds: an inkstick grinding against stone, a dark circling like ancient gears. The water blackens from soot; we paint with the burnt ashes of pine trees."
•
Split up into sections Underway, Stagings, Guillemets, and Panicle.
Sze takes inspiration from other poems and writer quotations, nature and the elements, love, art and more Sze's has a talent for taking small everyday things and turning them into something deep and meaningful. This collection is beautiful and fresh!
•
Thank You @ecwpress for #gifting me this copy.
September 22, 2017
There was some lovely prose here, but I found that a lot of the pieces were rather too similar, and it paled in comparison to a lot of the poetry which I have read in recent years.
March 14, 2022
Like lots of collections some poems i preferred more than others but honestly the whole collection is worth it for panicle alone at the end.
Proof was also really striking
Proof was also really striking
October 19, 2023
Really nice poems with some poetic prose pieces throughout.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews