October 15, 2013 - 11:00pm
Literature-lovers are invited to enjoy an evening with Michael Crummey, the 2013 Gustafson Distinguished Poet Chair, who will read selections from Under the Keel , his first poetry collection in a decade. The free public lecture entitled “Burn Barrel: Surviving Poetry in the 21st Century” will take place at VIU’s Nanaimo campus on Thursday, Oct. 24 at 7:30 pm in the auditorium of Building 355.
Quill and Quire reviewed the collection: “Tender but also at times chilling, Under the Keel contains all the tension and anticipation that may be found in the moment before a first kiss or a fall off a ledge.”
Crummey said of his own work, “...in some ways I felt like I was building a physical object, a piece of furniture say. And it wasn’t enough for it to look more or less like a bookshelf or a dresser. I wanted it to be a solid thing that could bear some weight. I wanted the joints to be well put together.”
VIU publishing professor Joy Gugeler acquired and edited Flesh & Blood, Crummey’s 1998 story collection, while at Beach Holme Publishing.
“Michael Crummey is that rarest breed of writer whose poetic sensibility combines with mesmerizing characters to produce a story at once so heartbreaking, droll and true it rivals the best conversations and dreams and inspires both,” Gugeler said. “His ambidextrous talent invites us to reconsider genre and marvel at the tenor of his hybrid voice.”
Poet George Murray called Crummey “the Michael J. Fox of Canlit: you’re gregarious, talented, look perennially young, and no one has a bad word to say about you.”
Crummey is the author of three other books of poetry – Salvage (2002), Hard Light (nominated for the 1999/2000 Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award, 1998), and Arguments with Gravity (1996). His first novel, River Thieves, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, his second, The Wreckage (2005) was a national bestseller and a Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize finalist. The bestselling Galore (2009) won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was a finalist for the Governor General’s and IMPAC Dublin Literary awards.
His works have been translated into French, Italian, Polish, and Dutch and have consistently been a Globe & Mail’s Notable Book of the Year. He was awarded the 2008 Writer’s Trust Timothy Findley Award for outstanding body of work by a writer mid-career. Newfoundland: Journey into a Lost Nation, written with Greg Locke (2003), pays homage to his native province; he lives in St. John’s.
A catered reception, cash bar, and book-signing in the Royal Arbutus Room, Building 300, follows the lecture. Copies of Crummey’s books will be at the VIU Bookstore and will be sold at the event. VIU students will speak with Crummey about his poetry at a student-only event the afternoon of Oct. 23 and an interview will appear in the 2014 issue of VIU’s annual literary magazine, Portal.
The Gustafson Distinguished Poetry Chair was established in 1998 from the estate of the late, pre-eminent Canadian poet Ralph Gustafson and his wife, Betty. The Chair has been held by celebrated poets Don Domanski, Dionne Brand, Tom Wayman, Daphne Marlatt, Robert Bringhurst, Don MacKay, Jan Zwicky, and Dennis Lee among others, each of whom have had their lectures published as chapbooks. The Gustafson Distinguished Poets Series is co-sponsored by VIU’s Departments of English and Creative Writing and the Vancouver Writers' Festival.
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For more information contact:
Frances Sprout, Chair of the Gustafson Committee, at Frances.Sprout@viu.ca
For for more information about the lecturers visit
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