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Stephen Collis wins 2019 Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize

November 14, 2019

Congratulations to our former poetry editor Stephen Collis for winning this year’s Latner Writer’s Trust Poetry Prize!

The Prize considers all Canadian poets and awards a mid-career poet in recognition of a remarkable body of work, and in anticipation of future contributions to Canadian poetry.

The Writers’ Trust recognizes Stephen’s works Once in Blockadia (Talonbooks 2016), The Commons (Talonbooks 2014), To the Barricades (Talonbooks 2012), and On the Material (Talonbooks 2010).

Jurors Hoa Nguyen and Margo Wheaton writes:

Through six collections of poems, Stephen Collis has achieved something remarkable: an invigorating body of work that convincingly addresses both the urgency of the present moment and the long echoes of our historical and lyrical past.

In disrupted language simultaneously unsettled and musical, Collis passionately investigates subjects as diverse as the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, John Clare and the English countryside, the increasing disappearance of public space, and, in a hauntingly beautiful sequence, the death of his sister from cancer. The depth and scope of Collis’ vision is startling and impressive; so are the courage, precision, and care he brings to the poems he creates.

In Collis, we find a poet ferociously hitting his stride. We’re looking forward with eagerness to what comes next.

Likewise, Canadian Literature is excited to see what’s in store for Stephen and we wish him all the best.

 

Links to Stephen Collis’ works in Canadian Literature
New York Visitation: 29 July 2009
By Stephen Collis
Published in 21st-Century Poetics. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 210-211 (Autumn/Winter 2011): 133-134

The Kropotkin Poems
By Stephen Collis
Published in Radio, Film, and Fiction. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 225 (Summer 2015): 165-166
Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten
By Stephen Collis
Reviewed in Productive Uncertainties by Dougal McNeill
Once in Blockadia
By Stephen Collis
Reviewed in Energy Fabulations by William V. Lombardi
Published in Meanwhile, Home. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 232 (Spring 2017): 134-135
To the Barricades
By Stephen Collis
Reviewed in The Revolution(ary) Left by Gregory Betts
Published in Science & Canadian Literature. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 221 (Summer 2014): 149-50
Dispatches from the Occupation: A History of Change
By Stephen Collis
Reviewed in Occupying Change by Julie L. MacArthur
Published in Contested Migrations. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 219 (Winter 2013): 148-49
Decomp
By Jordan Scott and Stephen Collis
Reviewed in Pipelines, Decomposition and Poetic Activism by Laura Moss
Published in Of Borders and Bioregions. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 218 (Autumn 2013): 140-43
On the Material
By Stephen Collis
Reviewed in Poetic Off-roading and the Roads More Travelled by Joel Deshaye
Published in Canadian Literature 212 (Spring 2012): 142-144
Mine
By Stephen Collis
Reviewed in Mine Not Mine by Robert Stanton
Published in Writers Talking. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 183 (Winter 2004): 109-110
The Commons
By Stephen Collis
Reviewed in The Utopia of a Remembered Spring by Emily Wall
Published in Disappearance and Mobility. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 201 (Summer 2009): 176-178
Phyllis Webb and the Common Good: Poetry/Anarchy/Abstraction
By Stephen Collis
Reviewed in The Poetics of Response and Response-ability by Amanda Lim
Published in Diasporic Women’s Writing. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 196 (Spring 2008): 140-141