Collis’ lecture is Thursday, October 22 from 7 to 8:30 pm at VIU Nanaimo’s campus.
Renowned poet Stephen Collis is Vancouver Island University’s (VIU’s) Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poet for 2026-27.
Collis’ lecture is October 22 from 7 to 8:30 pm on the Nanaimo campus in Building 355, Room 203. It is free to attend and will be followed by a catered reception, cash bar and book signing in Room 211.
Collis will also perform two poetry readings. First, there will be a reading and Q&A for students on October 21 from 11:30 am to 1 pm in the Malaspina Theatre lobby (Building 310). Second, there will be a community reading that night (October 21) at Windowseat Books (321 Wesley St.) from 7 to 8 pm. Creative Writing student poet Lee Groen will open for Collis and there will be music.
Collis’ lecture on October 22, Small Craft Warning, will trace and explore the recurrence of small boats as both images in and an image of his work in poetry.
“In a small craft one cannot buy into the lie of mastery, but must come to the elemental world asking, in respect, seeking nothing more than fluid intra-relation, slipping over the surface of powerful forces and big things beyond your Ken,” writes Collis about his lecture. “What are big themes but swelling seas? What can one’s craft do with them, other than skirt their limits, ride their swells, stay afloat and seek safe harbour?”
VIU English Professor Dr. Mike Roberson will introduce Collis at the Distinguished Poet’s Lecture.
“Stephen Collis is a punk romantic!” he said. “Imagine Johnny Rotten channelling Henry Thoreau among the climes of Wordsworth’s Lake District suddenly transported to the various brambles of southwest BC, without an amp and microphone (although perhaps a megaphone), but with a narrow pad of paper and a fierce love for the unownable – words and water alike.”
VIU Media Studies Joy Gugeler said she feels a poignant interplay of responsibility and wonder when reading Collis’s work.
“Stephen Collis keens for nature winnowed of awe and we are powerless to deny the heaving reckoning his words demand. His poems necessarily capsize, for ‘Who sank us sank a seed in sound.’”
Copies of Collis’ books and a series of limited-edition Gustafson Distinguished Poet’s Lecture chapbooks will be available at the VIU bookstore and at the reception. The Gustafson Distinguished Poetry Chair was established in 1998 from the estate of the late, preeminent Canadian poet Ralph Gustafson and his wife Betty.
For more information, please email Dr. Neil Surkan, Chair of the Gustafson Committee, which also includes Joy Gugeler, Mike Roberson, Sonnet L’Abbé.
Stephen Collis bio
Stephen Collis is the author of 15 books of poetry and prose, including A History of the Theories of Rain, which was a finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Award for poetry; The Commons; and the BC Book Prize-winning On the Material – all published by Talonbooks. In 2019, Collis was the recipient of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Latner Poetry Prize. Stephen’s newest book is 2024’s The Middle, the second volume in a trilogy. The final volume of the trilogy, Sweet Vernal Grass, comes out in 2027. He lives on unceded Coast Salish territory and teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University.
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C: 250.618.0373 l E: Rachel.Stern@viu.ca | W: news.viu.ca
The VIU community acknowledges and thanks the Snuneymuxw, Quw’utsun, Tla’amin, Snaw-naw-as and Qualicum First Nation on whose traditional lands we teach, learn, research, live and share knowledge.
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