Janey's Arcadia

(Paperback)

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Rachel Zolfs fifth book assembles a pirate score of error-ridden historical and current documents missionary narratives, immigration pamphlets, settler writings to decry the ongoing violence of Canadian colonialism. It stars Janey Settler-Invader, a foul-mouthed mutant slouching toward the Red River Colony, along with a host of cacophonous, carnivalesque appropriations.
Praise for Janey's Arcadia:
'That poetry can be forcefully consequential is not a safe assumption in our contemporary crisis of sustainable attention. To deploy an intricately political poetics as Zolfs performative texts do is a wager on expansion of the genre with no small risk of misreadings. The driving courage of Janeys Arcadia is in fact its digital-age enactment of an allegory of misreading. Subjecting Canadian settler texts (in which indigenous peoples humanity can be casually or fervently dismissed) to Optical Character Recognition software, a chilling and ludicrous display of misreadings occur, inescapably charged by the cultural politics of non-recognition. A readers encounters range from the philosophically profound Each person is an asking to the OCR mutated government questionnaire. Q: Do you expei'ience any dread of the Indigns A: I have no fear of Indigns, for I never see one.'
Joan Retallack
'Few poets embody stress like Rachel Zolf. Pain most poets cannot imagine exposing with such exacting affliction. Janeys Arcadia recommends we reconsider the weak arguments of post-identity politics because this poet sees how we will lie to hide the brutality of our collective suffering for civilizations advancement. If you read this without waking your emotional intelligence, well, Im glad Im not you with that stick so far up your ass. This is the real poetry. I know it is because it changes me.'
CAConrad, author of ECODEVIANCE
'Ive been locked up in this room so/ long, mon dieu, whatever desires arise in me are rampaging/ as fierce and monstrous as gigantic starving jungle beasts. A great hunger, ravenous as Canada, and filled with rage and hurt, animates Rachel Zolfs splendid new book. On one hand Janeys Arcadia brings us a few hundred years of western colonization, and on the other, these poems speak to everyone whos living on someone elses land or those forced to speak in someone elses tongue. Whether its Cree or English, French or Cobol, theres always a man and a machine happy to misprise you. Cest bien. By every fair means. In Manitoba....'
Kevin Killian

Author Bio

Rachel Zolf: Rachel Zolf has published four previous books of poetry, including "Neighbour Procedure" and "Human Resources," and she has won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, among other honors. She collaborated with New York artist Josiah McElheny on a film that premiered at Art Basel Miami 2012. She has taught poetry at the New School and University of Calgary but left the institution to write junk mail for a living.