This year — 2009 — the Gustafson Poetry is pleased to announce that Carol Ann Duffy, the newly appointed Poet Laureate of Britain, will be on our Nanaimo campus here at VIU during the 3rd week of October.
On October 21, in Building 355-Room 211, Ms. Duffy will attend an event that is still in the planning stages. In previous years, students have organized something like an open forum press conference at which the poet reads and answers questions from the audience about her poetry, her career decisions and her aesthetic opinions and beliefs. Although this is open to everyone — including the public — its focus is on student participation. There may be refreshments and snacks for sale, the proceeds of which will go to student ventures, such as publishing their magazine of Creative Writing. This student-centred event begins at approximately 1:30 pm.
On Thursday, October 22, Carol Ann Duffy will deliver the Annual Ralph Gustafson Poetry Address at 7:30 pm in the Main Theatre on VIU’s Nanaimo campus (Building 310). Before and after this reading, the Campus Bookstore will be selling copies of some of Ms. Duffy’s published books which the public can purchase and get autographed. She will be reading especially from Rapture (2005) and New Selected Poems 1984-2004 (2004).
There will also be a signed, limited edition broadsheet of an as-yet unpublished, new poem which Ms. Duffy has generously offered to the Gustafson Trust for sale to the public. This is a genuine collector’s item, and will be available only through VIU’s Gustafson Poetry Trust.
After the reading, and still in the Main Theatre, there will be a catered reception—wine and snacks—to allow the audience to mix and mingle, and to chat, and for Ms. Duffy to sign books and talk briefly with people.
All events are free and open to everyone—students, staff and faculty, and members of the larger public communities on Vancouver Island and even the Lower Mainland.
Funding for these events is made available through the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Trust, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities here at VIU, the Departments of English and Creative Writing, and the Vancouver Writers’ Festival.
For information, please contact Craig Tapping, Chair of the Poetry Trust:
Telephone: (250) 753-3245, local 2125
Email: Craig.Tapping@viu.ca