The Place of Scraps by Jordan Abel

The Place of Scraps by Jordan Abel

George Ryga Award for Social Award: Jordan Abel, The Place of Scraps (Finalist)

BC Book Prize, Poetry: Jordan Abel, The Place of Scraps (Winner)



The Place of Scraps revolves around Marius Barbeau, an early-twentieth-century ethnographer, who studied many of the First Nations cultures in the Pacific Northwest, including Jordan Abel's ancestral Nisga'a Nation. Barbeau, in keeping with the popular thinking of the time, believed First Nations cultures were about to disappear completely, and that it was up to him to preserve what was left of these dying cultures while he could. Unfortunately, his methods of preserving First Nations cultures included purchasing totem poles and potlatch items from struggling communities in order to sell them to museums. While Barbeau strove to protect First Nations cultures from vanishing, he ended up playing an active role in dismantling the very same cultures he tried to save.

Drawing inspiration from Barbeau's canonical book Totem Poles, Jordan Abel explores the complicated relationship between First Nations cultures and ethnography. His poems simultaneously illuminate Barbeau's intentions and navigate the repercussions of the anthropologist's actions.

Through the use of erasure techniques, Abel carves out new understandings of Barbeau's writing - each layer reveals a fresh perspective, each word takes on a different connotation, each letter plays a different role, and each punctuation mark rises to the surface in an unexpected way. As Abel writes his way ever deeper into Barbeau's words, he begins to understand that he is much more connected to Barbeau than he originally suspected.

Jordan Abel is a Nisga'a writer residing in Vancouver. He is currently completing his PhD at Simon Fraser University where he is focusing on digital humanities and Indigenous poetics. Abel's conceptual writing engages with the representation of Indigenous peoples in anthropology and popular culture. His chapbooks have been published by JackPine Press and Above/Ground Press, and his work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals across Canada, including Prairie Fire, Capilano Review, and Canadian Literature. He is an editor for Poetry Is Dead magazine and a former editor for PRISM international and Geist. Abel's first book, The Place of Scraps (Talonbooks, 2013), was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Un/inhabited, Abel's second book, was co-published by Project Space Press and Talonbooks in 2015.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780889227880
ISBN 10	0889227888
Title	The Place of Scraps
Author	Jordan Abel
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Talonbooks
Year published	2013-12-12
Number of pages	272
Prizes	Winner of BC Book Prize: Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize 2014 (Canada), Short-listed for Gerald Lampert Memorial Award 2014 (Canada)
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.