Recommended Age, Grade, and Reading Levels
- Age: 15 to 18
- Grade: 10 to 12
Description
Taking cues from the 20th century life writing of Robin Blaser, Frank O'Hara, William Everson, Sylvia Plath and Alden Nowlan, The Lost Cafeteria is a stylistically shapeshifting bildungsroman in verse set between the author's evangelical upbringing and peripatetic adulthood. Exploring the shape of the "I-within-history," Ferguson mixes confessional lyric poetry with experimental détournements of advertising and human resources ideolects to visit (and revisit) themes of labour, family (biological and chosen), class, travel, religion, and the meanings of the word 'home.'
The Lost Cafeteria traces the poet's development through "the first-world hinterlands" of Canada not in temporal but spatial terms, circling both the quotidian and singular events of a life. From the fruit orchards of interior British Columbia to social housing high-rises in downtown Winnipeg, from the expanses of the world's megacities to the parochialisms of a small-town, post-industrial childhood to the history-laden fieldscapes of Merry Olde England, Joel Robert Ferguson's debut collection of poems asks, "is it possible to separate nostalgia from regression?"
About the author
Joel Robert Ferguson grew up as the only child of working-class evangelical Christians in the Nova Scotian village of Bible Hill. After studying literature for a few semesters at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, he spent his twenties within/around the Canadian anarcho-punk/traveler milieu, traveling the country via hitchhiking, train hopping, and by greyhound, and working in Whitehorse, Guelph, Halifax, Montreal and the Southern Okanagan, before finally putting down roots in Winnipeg and getting serious about writing poetry. His work has appeared in many publications both within Canada and internationally, including Arc, The Capilano Review, The Columbia Review, CV2, filling Station, Grain, Lemon Hound, Meniscus, Orbis, Prairie Fire and Southword Journal. He holds a bachelor's degree in English Literature from the University of Winnipeg and is presently finishing his master's in Creative Writing at Concordia University. When not in school, he lives in Winnipeg with his partner Anne and their three cats. The Lost Cafeteria is his first collection of poetry.
