His early collected verse was published by Carcanet in 2011; everything else is at www.thesyllabary.com. His awards include a Rockefeller Foundation residency and a Hawthornden Castle fellowship. He ran the language service of the World Health Organization for 15 years. Other work includes: Find an Angel and Pick a Fight (Geneva, 2013), on language, translation and philosophy; Petrushka (Geneva, 2017), in which real experts respond to a pandemic that turns people into plants; Hugh MacDiarmid and the Russians (Edinburgh, 1987) and a confessional vending machine (Iota Gallery, Glasgow and Fonderie Kugler Geneva http://molecularpress.com/for-hire/). McCarey is a founding member of Poésies en Mouvement (Geneva), panjandrum of Molecular Press and partner in various audio and mechanical installations. He is curating an art exhibition on transitional toys.