Books for Adults
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
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)
Order a Signed Copy
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)
Order a Signed Copy