Jordan Abel has won the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize for his latest collection of poetry, Injun (Talonbooks), on June 8, 2017. Injun was one of the three Canadian books of poetry shortlisted for the major Canadian prize.
Injun was in good company with Violet Energy Ingots by Hoa Nguyen (Wave Books) and Silvija by Sandra Ridley (BookThug) also on the Canadian shortlist.
Injun is Abel’s third collection, a long poem about racism and the representation of Indigenous peoples. Composed of text found in now public-domain western novels published between 1840 and 1950 – the heyday of pulp publishing and a period of unfettered colonialism in North America – Injun then uses erasure, pastiche, and a focused poetics to create a visually striking response to the western genre.
Above: At the Griffin Prize gala ceremony held in Toronto’s Distillery District, Talonbooks publisher Kevin Williams celebrated with Abel and his partner, Chelsea Novak.
The seven Griffin Poetry Prize finalists– four international and three Canadian – were each awarded $10,000 for their participation in the shortlist readings on June 7, and the two winners (one Canadian, one international, each to be awarded $65,000) were announced at the Griffin Poetry Prize Awards on Thursday, June 8.
Congrats, Jordan!
Jordan Abel is a Nisga’a writer currently completing his PhD at Simon Fraser University, where he focuses on digital humanities and indigenous poetics. Abel’s conceptual writing engages with the representation of indigenous peoples in anthropology and popular culture. Abel’s first book, The Place of Scraps was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Abel’s second book, Un/inhabited was published in 2014. CBC Books named Abel one of 12 Young Writers to Watch (2015). His chapbooks have been published by JackPine Press, and above/ground press, and his work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals across Canada. He is an editor for Poetry is Dead magazine and a former editor for PRISM international and Geist.