The Sudden Quiet: selected poems

Praise for New Skin: When I first came across Fraser Mackays wry ruminations I liked how they were rooted in place and gave off an air of hardy solitary manhood: somewhere in Central Victoria among granite and magpies theres a joint in a wide paddock; the horse has been fed by hand and a cold rain is heading in from the West; maybe tonight a loving friend will show with a good red; then again maybe she wont. Easefully a poem starts up one that knows just when to open its mouth and when to go quiet. You get a sense that the poet is on the path of learning about what Robert Adamson has called the clean dark. - Barry Hill