2026/27 Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poet Readings and Lecture Series
Renowned poet Stephen Collis is Vancouver Island University’s (VIU’s) Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poet for 2026/27. Collis’s lecture is October 22nd 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 21st from 11:30 am – 1:00 pm in Building 310, The Malaspina Theatre lobby. Second, there will be a community reading that night (October 21st) at Windowseat Books (321 Wesley St) from 7-8 pm; student poet Lee Groen will open for Collis, and there will be music. *** Collis’s lecture on October 22nd, “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 his abstract for the lecture, Collis writes the following: 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 […]
