Books for Adults
Jan’s Quodlibet – A Year In Music
A diary of music and stories told with wit, wisdom and passion drawn from Ian’s life as a professional cellist, with extensive hand-picked listening recommendations.
Told in the voice of Jan (the third-person narrator of his previous book, Jan in 35 Pieces), Ian Hampton, along with co-author Barbara Nickel, delights, entertains and enlightens us with his tales of characters in music history from Beethoven to Jelly Roll Morton and Gershwin to Ravel plus insider stories of the life of a working musician.
The writing is enlivened by playful drawings by Hampton, recipes, poems/doggerel and advice for young musicians, which create a true quodlibet, the Latin term for throwing all kinds of tunes into a pot.
With an entry for every day of the year, discover new composers, artists and performances through recordings chosen especially for the reader.
An engaging and accessible musical tour through a year written by music lovers for music lovers.
Jan’s Blog: Hung, Drawn and Cultured
Purchase Options
Amazon
Chapters/Indigo
Ronsdale Press
Essential Tremor
“Like Wallace Stevens, invoked through epigraph and structural echo in Essential Tremor, Barbara Nickel grapples with the relation between spirit and the world of sensation in this compelling new book. Her brilliant sonnet sequence, “Corona,” is likely to stand among the finest (most nuanced) art to emerge from this harrowing time. Equally powerful is the consonantal riffing of her poem-set focusing on the body and its parts (sacrum/sacred). Sonically rich, formally adept, and allusively dense, Essential Tremor widens out to consider the nature of the body, of suffering, and of compassion through time. The vision is unsparing, yet leavened by grace.”
—Mary Dalton, Poet Laureate of the City of St. John’s
Video Presentation: Corona: Sonnets in Situ from Essential Tremor.
Essential Tremor reviewed in The Vancouver Sun – Read full review
Domain
Poems that explore how and where the boundary lines of our domains are drawn, how our homes are built, loved, and lost…
Richly detailed, grounded in truth, alive to the music in language, poems in Domain take us across place – from sisters juggling oranges in a Renoir painting to a wedding ring lost from the hatch of Apollo 16, from the empire of Catherine the Great to a Mennonite family on a summer evening – and through time: seasons of human loss, grief, renewal and love.
“…Domain confirms Barbara Nickel’s spot among an impressive generation of…poets who write with brassy formal assurance and waste-no-syllable control…”~ The Globe and Mail
“With this book, Barbara Nickel establishes herself in the first rank of her generation.” ~ Quill & Quire
Awards
- Quill & Quire Best Books of 2007
- ReLit Award, Longlist
House of Anansi Press (Out of Print)
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Order an E-Book
The Gladys Elegies
Poems that explore the human spirit in this lush and musical award-winning debut collection…
With her classical music training, Barbara Nickel gives rhythm and grace to sonnets, long poems and prose poems. The Gladys Elegies contains The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Contest award-winning sequence “The Rosary Sonatas”.
“Indeed, if first books can be understood as boasts, then The Gladys Elegies is one of the best boasts of the year.”~ The Gazette (Montreal)
Awards
- Pat Lowther Memorial Award Winner
Coteau Books (Out of Print)
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