The Middle of the Middle Public Lecture by Stephen Collis

"The Middle of the Middle: Purgatory, Pilgrimage, and Human and Plant Mobility in a Time of Climate Crisis"
Public Lecture by Stephen Collis
April 26, 2023
In the context of the climate crisis and what has been referred to as the “great redistribution” of life on earth, this talk considers human and more-than-human mobility from the perspective of climate solidarity. Part travelogue, part poetics statement, the talk is grounded in the author’s participation in an ongoing, yearly walk in solidarity with refugees and asylum seekers. It also takes stock of the author’s current position, in the middle of writing a long poem called "The Middle," which itself engages with pilgrimage and mobility through a re-writing of Dante’s "Purgatorio."
SPEAKER
Stephen Collis is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including "The Commons" (2008), the BC Book Prize winning On the Material (2010), "Once in Blockadia" (2016), and "Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten" (2018)-all published by Talonbooks. "A History of the Theories of Rain" (2021) was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for poetry, and in 2019, Collis was the recipient of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Latner Poetry Prize. He lives near Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish Territory, and teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University