'Christmas Eve on the unit. The nurses’ station is in the middle of a long corridor, consisting of a low counter about ten feet long. A couple of psychiatric nurses are seated at laptops on wheeled stands, looking through medication orders, writing notes. A psych tech does rounds, checking each of the 22 single rooms every 15 minutes with a flashlight to the ground and signing their initials on a sheet to indicate that the patient is in their room and either awake or asleep. Many are awake.' (Introduction)

'After two decades-plus of quiet yet pointed observations in both Australia and the United States, The Blue Decodes is poetry by a woman speaking for herself and just as importantly about her generation, a generation whose ambitions and emotions have become very fractured and fragmented. Yet, as Cassie Lewis advises throughout her work, all that optimistic blue we once saw beckoning can be regained, decoded if you will, that we may become our original, authentic selves.' (Publication summary)