Part of Quill & Quire's Spring Poetry Preview
'[ T]he poems are a gentle yet firm reminder that it doesnt matter if we feel equipped or not, we should approach our life and loved ones with joy, care, and love.' Manahil Bandukwala, Quill & Quire
Abels Dad Era is the literary embodiment of a soft, safe space a collection of poetry, stories, and imagery that invites us to see fathers as complex and caring beings. This collection follows the ways Abel learns and falters and struggles, yet chooses to keep hoping, loving, and staying present. Tenille Campbell, author of nedi nezu (Good Medicine)
Jordan Abels Dad Era further advances his long-standing experiment with form and Indigenous narrative. The book teaches us how to read polyphonically, how to read multiple narrative threads at once. Dad Era is indeed about fatherhood but it also about aesthetic complexity and formal restlessness in life and art. It is moving and funny and, like all of his work, deeply considered. Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of The Idea of an Entire Life
Praise for the author:
Jordan Abels collection Injun evacuates the subtexts of possession, territory, and erasure. Lyric, yes: that part of sparkling / kn ife love that // hates the trouble of rope / and the letters / of tow ns. Testimony of another kind, too: all misdeeds at the milk house / all heap shoots by the sagebrush // all the grub is somewhere / down in the hungry bellies [ ]. The fog of tedious over-dramatization clears and the open skies of discourse can be discerned. What does it mean to arrange hate to look like verse? What becomes of the ugly and meaningless? Words are restored to their constituent elements as countermovements in Abels hands, just as they are divested of their capacity for productive violence. The golden unity of language and its silvered overcoding erode, bringing to bear the heard snatches of comment / going up from the river bank. To pixelize is to mobilize, not to disappear. Griffin Poetry Prize 2017 Judges Citation for Injun
With NISHGA, Jordan Abel has reinvented the memoir, incorporating personal anecdotes, archival footage, legal documentation, photos and concrete poetry to create an unforgettable portrait of an Indigenous artist trying to find his place in a world that insists Indigeneity can only ever be the things that he is not. Abel deftly shows us the devastating impact this gate-keeping has had on those who, through no decisions of their own, have been ripped from our communities and forced to claw their way back home, or to a semblance of home, often unassisted. This is a brave, vulnerable, brilliant work that will change the face of nonfiction, as well as the conversations around what constitutes Indigenous identity. It's a work I will return to again and again. Alicia Elliott, author of A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
In NISHGA, Jordan Abel puts to use the documentary impulse that has already established him as an artist of inimitable methodological flair. By way of a mixture of testimonial vignettes, recordings of academic talks, found text/art, and visual art/concrete poetry, Abel sculpts a narrative of dislocation and self-examination that pressurizes received notions of Canada and history and art and literature and belonging and forgiveness. Yes, it is a book of that magnitude, of that enormity and power. By its Afterword, NISHGA adds up to a work of personal and national reckoning that is by turns heartbreaking and scathing. Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of NDN Coping Mechanisms and A History of My Brief Body
This is a heartshattering read, and will also be a blanket for others looking for home. NISHGA is a work of absolute courage and vulnerability. I am in complete awe of the sorrow here and the bravery. Mahsi cho, Jordan. Richard Van Camp, author of Moccasin Square Gardens
Jordan Abel digs deeply into the questions we should all be asking. Questions that need no explanation but ones that require us to crawl back into our bones, back into the marrow of our understanding. NISHGA is a ceremony where we need to be silent. Where we need to listen. Gregory Scofield, author of Witness, I Am
