Jordan Abel
Jordan Abel is smiling, posed slightly tilted towards camera left. He is wearing a flamingo pattern shirt before a pastel pink backdrop.
Biography
Jordan Abel is a queer Nisga’a writer from Vancouver. He is the author of The Place of Scraps (winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Un/inhabited, and Injun (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize). NISHGA won both the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres award, and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction, and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize. Abel’s latest work, a novel titled Empty Spaces, is forthcoming from McClelland & Stewart in Canada (fall 2023) and from Yale University Press for the world excluding Canada (spring 2024). Abel completed a Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University in 2019, and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta where he teaches Indigenous Literatures, Research-Creation, and Creative Writing.
Poetics Statement
“In Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem he writes, “I can’t write a nature poem bc English is some Stockholm shit, makes me complicit in my tribe’s erasure—why shld I give a fuck abt ‘poetry’? It’s a container.” The more I think about it, the more I agree with Pico. Poetry is at its best when it provides a space for radical work to exist. I’m not so much interested in the poem as I am interested in the expansive possibilities of what poetry can or cannot contain. I’m not so much interested in the poetic as I am interested in providing space for work that does not fit easily anywhere else. I am interested in the work that occupies the interstitial spaces between genres, between forms—writing that is explosive, resistant, and uneasily categorized. My work has always resisted categorization and likewise has moved fluidly between and across genres. My work is also deeply invested in understanding and thinking through urban Indigeneity, intergenerational trauma, and Indigenous dispossession. ”
Sample of Poet's Work
Excerpt from The Place of Scraps
Excerpt from Empty Spaces
A deep, narrow chasm. Black rocks. The river lies still on those black rocks. A mile above, there is a tumbling; there is a moment. At this very moment, there is a tumbling in the air a mile above us that runs straight through the open heavens and into some other place. A deep hollow. No shape. No consistency. No breaking some hundred feet in the air. Some places are softer than others. Some hundred feet up in the air. Some right angles enter into narrow passageways and some right angles break off a mile in the air above us. These rocks are full of cracks. Water has worked through some deep hollows. Breaking here. Wearing there. Breaking and wearing until the chasm separates into two caverns. Some hundred feet in the air there is no danger. There is scattered driftwood and the scent of roses. There are glimpses of roses and rocks and shrubs in the spring rain. There is a steep, rugged ascent. A path that winds among the black rocks and trees. Somewhere in the air there is the scent of roses. Somewhere out there is the wilderness. A reasonable distance through scenes of greenery and nature and glimpses of mountain ranges that disappear just as suddenly as they appear. Among the rocks and trees, there are mounds of earth and other rocks and other driftwood. Somewhere there is an islet and another islet and a clear sheet of water and bald rocks just beneath the surface. There are forests and straits and islets and rocks and somewhere in the air is the scent of roses. There are crevices and fissures and rocks. The rocks surround themselves with other rocks. Although there are sometimes mounds of earth in between. On the shore, there are fragments of rocks. In the deeper parts of the river, there is more tumbling. At this very moment, the river pours into a wide fissure where it just becomes more water between rocks. Between the broken rocks and the deep, roaring cavern, there is the scent of roses and driftwood and trees. There is light. There are straight, naked rocks and immovable trees. There are woods and rivers. And the bed of this particular river is ragged with rocks and intersecting ravines that cut silently across the water above. Somewhere in the air is the scent of roses. The woods are full of sounds and rocks and trees. The woods are full.
Excerpt from Dad Era
A dad is a parent is a human.
I have this crazy idea that I could never escape my father’s shadow.
A dad is garbage is gone.
First, my father disappeared and then my mother abandoned all rational thought.
It was my father who told me nothing.
To be creative. To be loving. To be generous and kind and human were all lessons that I learned alone in the snow.
You are a fireball.
You are a being of infinite love.
A friend once said to me “fuck dads.”
Did you know that being alone is sometimes terrifying?
If a dad exists or doesn’t exist can we still be whole?
If I’ve learned one lesson in all of this, it’s that you are a whole world.
I am a human being and I have made more mistakes than I can count.
Rely on yourself.
Love for yourself should be eternal and everlasting.
You are brilliant and shining and the brightest star in the sky.
Did you know that you can be a contestant on Master Chef Jr if you want?
As a person, I have not been the same since you came into my life.
I am no expert in racial passing but I do know that declining invitations to the Calgary Stampede is one the strangest things I’ve ever had to do.
