news | Friday April 22, 2011

On the Material Wins 2011 BC Book Prize for Poetry!

We are overjoyed to report that SFU Professor Stephen Collis has won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for his book On the Material!

Structured in three parts, On the Material is a meditation on language, geography, socio-economics and the body, moving from the glut of fossil-fuelled consumer excess to the materiality of a single book. The first section navigates issues of space and movement in the global age, as economies crumble, ecosystems fail and peak oil approaches. The second section depicts how the desire to express wins out over the desire to possess. The final section is in memory of Collis’s sister, Gail Tulloch. A month after Gail’s death from cancer in 2002, a fire destroyed her house, removing every material reminder of her from the earth.

Stephen Collis is the author of four books of poetry, including Anarchive, which was also nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 2005.

Visit the BC Book Prizes website to see all the 2011 winners and once again, congratulations to all the nominees for their excellent work!