Jordan Abel (Sweetmoon Photography)

Jordan Abel’s sixth book, Dad Era, reads like a long autobiographical poem addressed to his daughter, Phoenix, that seams together generations of family through written and visual narratives. Told in the style of brief musings and anecdotes interspersed with artwork by Abel’s father, the book coheres into a tender, frank, and joyful portrait of what it means to him to be a dad.

“A dad is a parent is a human. // I had this crazy idea that I could never escape / my father’s shadow,” he writes within the first few pages. In a narrative filled with the day-to-day activities of modern urban fatherhood, Abel shares his broader awareness of how colonization, being queer, depression, and his relationship with his own father, among other factors, influence how he sees fatherhood and parenting. And there comes the understanding:

I once tried to figure out what Indigenous knowledge
transmission was supposed to look like by
reshaping my dad’s art, but it turns out all
I had to do was teach you how to make
dinosaurs out of Play-Doh.

Abel states, “Did you know I wrote five books before this one and not one / of them contained a single laugh?” The poems in Dad Era, however, are full of laughter. Amid anxieties about being a dad without a good role model for fatherhood and what it means to be an urban Indigenous father in so-called Canada are anecdotes about the TV show Paw Patrol, references to the song “Baby Shark,” and to not being able to keep up with emails after having a child. This interspersed humour offers a poetic experimentation different from any in Abel’s previous works.

The refrain, “I am no expert,” repeats throughout the narrative, such as when Abel writes, “I’m no expert on Indigenous parenting but I do know that / surviving Canada up to this point is nothing / short of a miracle.” Whether a reader is a parent or not, the poems are a gentle yet firm reminder that it doesn’t matter if we feel equipped or not, we should approach our life and loved ones with joy, care, and love.

Dad Era frequently reflects directly on Abel’s life as an author and literary figure – he admits his biggest achievement was winning the Griffin Poetry Prize and not becoming a dad – expanding on the visual narrative of NISHGA (Abel’s autobiographical consideration of the impacts of Canada’s residential schools). Readers of that memoir will recognize the visuals as Abel’s father’s artwork. In Dad Era, the art is first paired with aphorisms on fatherhood, then Abel’s own reflections, and toward the last third of the book, with pictures of Abel’s daughter and wife. This gesture to lineage, in spite of fraught intergenerational relationships, expands the mosaic of family history created in NISHGA, and as the acknowledgements state, give Phoenix a starting point for learning her family history in all its messiness.

While the book is full of love, it resists any saccharine sentimentality. “I’m a world away from you in a popular Paris bakery / and I’m not afraid to admit that / I don’t miss you at all right now,” writes Abel, and at another point, “You are brilliant and shining and the most annoying kid / at the indoor playground.” The tone of the poems is one of refreshing honesty that reflects the way we adore and are sometimes annoyed by the people we love most.