In the Distance

#xE2;#xAC;#xDC;The ghosts of a West of Ireland family haunt these poems, but Cooke is not treading ground already made familiar by others. Growing up in England, he is a poet whose #xE2;#xAC;#xDC;making strange#xE2;#xAC;" grows naturally out of his exile between two countries. The limewashed pieties of rural Ireland are here, but in a wider context of European culture and history. After a long silence, David Cooke has burst back into life, in a welcome and gifted performance.#xE2;#xAC;"(William Bedford)#xE2;#xAC;#xDC;Along with his understanding of the poem as a made thing, Cooke exhibits a flair for investing the ordinary with new significance. Experimental in the best sense, technically impressive, rooted in the actuality of everyday experience, David Cooke's poetry is immediate, memorable and impressive.' (Ian Parks)#xE2;#xAC;#xDC;These beautifully honed and memorable poems are real finds. Wide-ranging in themes and form, they attest to a natural and extremely gifted poet.#xE2;#xAC;"(Patricia McCarthy)'David Cooke's#xC2;#xA0;'In The Distance' evokes#xC2;#xA0;diverse historical places or persons. Hauntingly and beautifully, he also reveals something#xC2;#xA0;more that can't be set in time and space.'(Paul Sutherland)#xE2;#xAC;#xDC;Like bulbs kept a long winter under the stairs, David Cooke#xE2;#xAC;"s poems are grounded in experience and grow on an integral rhythmic pulse. His poetry will amply reward the hearing it deserves.#xE2;#xAC;"(Peter Robinson)