Gustafson Trust

Announcing the 2026 Gustafson Distinguished Poet's Lecture:

Stephen Collis, Small Craft Warning

This year’s Gustafson Distinguished Poet Lecture will be delivered by acclaimed poet Stephen Collis. 

Stephen Collis is the author of fifteen 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; 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, is the second volume in a trilogy. The final volume of the trilogy, Sweet Vernal Grass, is forthcoming in 2027. He lives on unceded Coast Salish Territory, and teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University. 

Stephen Collis will present three unique events:

Wednesday, October 21, at 11:30 am: Student Reading and Q and A

Malaspina Theatre
VIU Nanaimo Campus, Building 310
900 Fifth St, Nanaimo, BC V9R 5S5

Wednesday, October 21, at 7 pm: Community Reading

Windowseat Books
321 Wesley St #6, Nanaimo, BC V9R 3A9

Opening Poet: VIU Student Lee Groen 

Thursday, October 22, at 7 pm: The 2026 Gustafson Distinguished Poet’s Lecture

VIU Nanaimo Campus, Building 355, Room 203
900 Fifth St, Nanaimo, BC V9R 5S5

Dr. Mike Roberson will present the Introduction
Catered Reception to Follow (in Building 355, Room 211)

Small Craft Warning

oh my little boat
heavy with grief

covered by wild grass
through the forest dragged 

—The Middle (2024)

The image of a small boat, canoe, or ship is strikingly common across my work, the result, in part, of a lifetime spent on islands and the coast. This lecture will trace and explore its recurrence as both an image in and as an image of my work in poetry. In terms of the latter, it has, perhaps, something to do with thresholds and crossing between realms of being and consciousness—something we will see as we steer a course between the finitude and transcendence embodied, languaged life presents us. 

Poetry may seem an inconsequentially small craft in the face of the larger themes I have sometimes sailed perilously close to—histories of social transformation, and the looming climate crisis, amongst them. But in the small craft of a poem one also has the advantages of embodiment: you feel the water and know it with your body in a little boat, which, if a canoe or kayak, you wear around your hips and knees so that you can lean and push against the water as one might a heavy door. Perhaps most importantly, 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. 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?