Award-winning Nisga’a writer Jordan Abel will be visiting Port Alberni’s North Island College campus for a reading in celebration of National Poetry Month.
Abel will be performing a piece from his award-winning book Injun, a long poem about racism and the representation of Indigenous peoples that received the Canadian 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize, Canada’s largest poetry award.
His other books include The Place of Scraps (winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize) and Un/inhabited.
He will also be discussing his current project, Empty Spaces, which is reinterpretation of The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. This work-in-progress seeks to disrupt colonial logic by displacing and reorienting the novel to expose the problematic representation of Indigenous peoples, particularly around the concept of terra nullius and empty, uninhabited land.
Abel is currently pursuing a PhD at Simon Fraser University, where his research concentrates on intergenerational trauma and Indigenous literature. He recently accepted a tenure-track position in the Faculty of Arts, English & Film Studies department at the University of Alberta.
“Jordan Abel is one of the most important young writers in Canada and we are very honoured to have him visit NIC,” said NIC Write Here Readers Series event organizer Nick Van Orden.
Each year, North Island College hosts a series of free lectures, launches and intimate literary discussions known as the Write Here Readers Series, made possible through funding from the Canada Council of the Arts. The series highlights the richness of literary arts in the region and offers students and community members the opportunity to hear from some of Canada’s top writers.
Abel will be at the Port Alberni campus on Friday, April 6 in Room S-108 at 7 p.m.. The event is free and open to everyone.