news | Thursday October 14, 2021

Stephen Collis, a Governor General's Finalist

We are so proud to announce that Stephen Collis is a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award in the poetry category for his A History of the Theories of Rain.

A History of the Theories of Rain explores the strange effect our current sense of impending doom has on our relation to time, approaching the unfolding climate catastrophe through its dissolution of the categories of “man-made” and “natural.” How do we go on with our daily lives while a disastrous future impinges upon every moment?

Collis provides no easy answers and offers no simple hope. Instead, he probes our current state of anxiety with care, humour, and an unflinching gazing into the darkness we have gathered around ourselves. Asking what form a resistance to the tenor of these out-of-joint times might take, A History of the Theories of Rain explores the links between climate’s “tipping points” and the borders constraining the plants, animals, and peoples forcibly displaced by a radically altered world ecology.

The 2021 Governor General’s winners will be announced on November 17. Cross your fingers for Stephen Collis, and pick up your copy of his book here.