Mike Barnes – författare

"In a dark time," wrote Theodore Roethke, "the eye begins to see"--and with Braille Rainbow, Mike Barnes reveals both darkness and the light that shines beyond it. Beginning with a suite of poems completed before and immediately following his admission to a psychiatric unit as a young man, Barnes's quiet lyricism and formal sensitivity capture those moments of perception that remind us how to see.

Finalist for the 2024 Trillium Book Award • One of CBC Books' Canadian Nonfiction to Read in the FallA poet recounts his experience with madness and explores the relationship between apprehension and imagination.In the summer of 1977, standing on a roadside somewhere between Dachau and Munich, twenty-two-year-old Mike Barnes experienced the dawning of the psychic break he’d been anticipating almost all his life. “Times over the years when I have tried to describe what followed,” he writes of that moment, “it has always come out wrong.” In this finely wrought, deeply intelligent memoir of madness, its antecedents and its aftermath, Barnes reconstructs instead what led him to that moment and offers with his characteristic generosity and candor the captivating account of a mind restlessly aware of itself.

Following Don Van Vliet's death Mike Barnes will look to reassess his legacy through new interview material and with reference to reports and eulogies that appeared in the media. Mike Barnes gives an assured survey of all of Don Van Vliet's creative work as well as an insight into the extraordinary personality behind it and the history of a truly original rock band.

Written between one January and the next, A Thaw Foretold is a passionate exploration of themes that are as timeless and recurrent as the seasons. In language that is both precisely vivid and particular, embracing both colloquial directness and formal elegance, the poems confront the elementals of love and loss, mortality and remembrance.

An entertaining, definitive and in-depth study of prog rock, with a new cover and a foreword by Steve Hackett (Genesis). Progressive rock, a genre formed out of a creative surge in the late Sixties and throughout the Seventies. Made by young musicians for a young audience, prog music looked towards new horizons by synthesising rock, jazz, folk, classical and other styles.While prog has always divided critical opinion, in its heyday it had a large and devoted fanbase, and the era's biggest acts from Pink Floyd to Genesis went on to enjoy long-lasting international and commercial success. Although the scene fragmented in the late Seventies, new generations of young listeners continue to discover the unique sounds of prog today. Examining the myths and misconceptions surrounding the genre, music journalist Mike Barnes paints a vivid, colourful picture of the Seventies based on his own interviews with the musicians, music business insiders, journalists and DJs, and the personal testimonies of fans of that extraordinary decade.Offering something new for even the keenest of prog enthusiasts, A New Day Yesterday is an entertaining and in-depth study of both the music itself and the cultural conditions and attitudes that fed into, and were affected by, this remarkable musical phenomenon.

It is 1984. The latest recession is said to be over, and in the steel city of Hamilton, things are picking up. For Paul, however, an ex-rock guitarist and current art gallery attendant, life has slowed to the pace of a still life on a wall. He badly needs a jolt -- and he gets one. Soon after the arrival of an exhibition of Surrealist art, puzzles start to multiply around him. Before long, he is trying to find his way in a maze that includes a chess problem, violent death, Paul Klee, cocaine, bikers, a strip club and its art-patron owner, and a host of clashing egos and agendas in the gallery. And then there is Claudia, a young artist with a quick brush and a caustic tongue, who may know more than she is saying about the mysteries Paul is chasing. Catalogue Raisonne is a novel about the mystery of art and the art of mystery, and the power of both to awaken sleeping senses.

"Fiercely alive, marked by a sharp, unerring eye for detail and a wonderful way with metaphors."-Toronto Star At a psychiatric hospital in the eighties, patients formed what they called The Adjustment League to protect themselves against the depredations of a corrupt and abusive staff. Many years later, the leader of this group-a man known only as "The Super"- receives a letter leading to the discovery of a pornographic ring in need of "adjustment." Mike Barnes is the author of eight previous books. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he lives and writes in Toronto, Ontario.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE TORONTO BOOK AWARDAS SEEN ON GLOBAL NEWS TV'S THE MORNING SHOWA CBC CANADIAN BOOK TO READ FOR MENTAL HEALTH WEEKDrawing on the author’s seven years of caring for his mother through Alzheimer’s, Be With: Letters to a Caregiver is what its title promises: four dispatches to an anonymous long-term caregiver. In brief passages that cast fresh light on what it means to live with dementia, Barnes shares trials, insights, solace—and, ultimately, inspiration.Meant to be a companion in waiting rooms, on bus routes, or while a loved one naps, Be With is a dippable source of clarity for harried readers who might only have time for a few lines or paragraphs. Mike Barnes writes with sensitivity and grace about fellowship, responsibility, and joyful relatedness—what it means to simply be with the people that we love.

Progressive rock - a genre formed out of a creative surge in the late Sixties and throughout the Seventies - originated and flowered most spectacularly in the UK. Made by young musicians for a young audience, prog music looked towards new horizons by synthesising rock, jazz, folk, classical and other styles. While prog has always divided critical opinion, in its heyday it had a large and devoted fanbase, and the era's biggest acts - from Pink Floyd to Genesis - went on to enjoy long-lasting international and commercial success. Although the scene fragmented in the late Seventies, new generations of young listeners continue to discover the unique sounds of prog today.Examining the myths and misconceptions surrounding the genre, music journalist Mike Barnes (MOJO, The Wire, Prog, and author of the acclaimed biography Captain Beefheart) paints a vivid, colourful picture of the Seventies based on his own interviews with the musicians, music business insiders, journalists and DJs, and the personal testimonies of fans of that extraordinary decade. Offering something new for even the keenest of prog enthusiasts, A New Day Yesterday is an entertaining and in-depth study of both the music itself and the cultural conditions and attitudes that fed into, and were affected by, this remarkable musical phenomenon.

A memoir that chronicles unflinchingly the destructiveness of bipolar disorder - an illness that infiltrates thinking, feeling and acting in ways that change the very fabric of identity, of the life story one is telling oneself; however, The Lily Pond is equally searching in its exploration of the psyche's resources in healing and reknitting that story.