Marked by reflectiveness and mature insight, O'Meara's keen sense of lyric structure and subtle cadences explore in contexts both historical and personal the tension between established knowledge and discovery - the centre and horizon of our unfixed selves. These poems - ambitious, rooted, exuberant and controlled, informed by a certain restlessness - unfold in evocative tones of voice to propel a narrative at one intelligent and charismatic, far-ranging yet focussed. A remarkable debut.

David O'Meara was born in Pembroke, Ontario. He is the author of three collections of poetry, and a play, Disaster. His most recent book is Noble Gas, Penny Black. His work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including The New Canon, and The Echoing Years, a co-Irish/Canadian anthology. He has been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the ReLit Prize, the Trillium Prize, a National Magazine Award, four Rideau Awards (theatre), and was twice winner of the Archibald Lampman Award. He is director of the renowned Plan 99 Reading Series, a founding director of VerseFest, Canada's International Poetry Festival, and will be poetry instructor at the Banff Centre in September 2012. He continues to tend bar at the Manx Pub in Ottawa.

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