David McCooey's "Blister Pack" is poetry of a beguiling lyrical clarity. It is immensely pleasurable to read. But underneath its silky rhythms there is a disconcerting and compelling unease. -- Dorothy Porter How many kinds of weather play over the soul? This is the question David McCooey's poems ask, steadied by an elegant equanimity. Coping with yet another diurnal tremor, he can wryly reflect that "This is what the suburbs/ Were created for." These poems acknowledge how everyday experience has discernible limits and, at the same time, that something dark lurks beyond those limits. Civilization is like that. -- Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Winner of Mary Gilmore Award 2006. Shortlisted for Age Book of the Year: Fiction 2005 and NSW Premier's Literary Award Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry 2006.

David McCooey is an award-winning, and widely published, poet and critic. His first collection of poetry, Blister Pack, won the Mary Gilmore Award and was short-listed for four other major Australian literary awards. He is the Deputy General Editor of the award-winning Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (published internationally as The Literature of Australia). He is associate professor at Deakin University in Victoria.

Part I Occupations Questions in Philosophy French with Tears [1] Raison d'etre [2] Je-ne-sais-quoi [3] Noblesse oblige [4] Une blessure [5] Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose [6] A propos de rien [7] Deja vu [7] Deja vu Signal-to-Noise Ratio Evening On Something Circus Oz The Developed World Seen from a Train Distance Melbourne Cup Day Late Summer : Sydney Home Beautiful Sunday Night Grief Garlands What Light Is Autobiographical Metaphor The Same River The Story's End His Hands Left Hand Right Hand After a Line Abandoned by Chris Wallace-Crabbe Boarding School Part II Domestic Elegies What to do with the Evenings (i) God What to do with the Evenings (ii) 'We are dark water' 'Thinned out by age' 'You decided that' 'Their green desires' Succedaneum (i) 'If the message on the piece of paper' (ii) Delight (iii) Argument (iv) Our Arguments (v) 'You were always' (vi) Bitch (vii) 'Once I came home' (viii) Love & Anger Last Chances (i) 'She scans her torch' (ii) Love Poem (iii) Diurnal (iv) 'We catch our flights' Part III A Few Questions Hours A Perfect Heart The Art of Happiness 1. Pointillism 2. Abstract Expressionism 3. Late Minimalism Brief Lives Singles Covers Manifest Mid Life Autobiology Rubber Bullets Ghostly One moment please Distance The Last Summer Facts of Life The Field Bird and Fox Morning Days Hours Night Fragments Part IV For Maria For Maria 'It has no edges'