This lecture series honours celebrated Canadian poet Ralph Gustafson who, for six decades, practiced his craft and shared his love of language with successive generations of poets.
Ralph Gustafson was born in Lime Ridge, near Dudswell, Quebec on August 16, 1909. His mother was British, his father Swedish. He was educated at Bishop’s University, earning a BA in 1929 and an MA in 1930, with a thesis on John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. He also completed a BA at Keble College in Oxford in 1933, and an MA in 1963.
Over the years, Dr. Gustafson was music master at Bishop’s College School, a teacher of English St. Albans School for Boys, a tutor, and a journalist. He was a professor and Poet-In-Residence at Bishop’s University‚ and a music critic for CBC.
His views on poetry are documented in essays collected in Plummets and Other Partialities (1986), and in letters to WWE Ross published as A Literary Friendship in 1984. He was also in contact with John Sutherland. Gustafson’s early poetry owes a significant debt to Gerard Manley Hopkins, while Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and W. B. Yeats were important influences on his later work. In 1942, Gustafson edited the Anthology of Canadian Poetry which developed into the Penguin Book of Canadian Verse in 1958, both volumes a reflection of his extensive studies on the history of Canadian poetry.
Gustafson was a member of The Order of Canada, co-founder and life member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a life member of Keble College, Oxford.
Fire on Stone won the Governor-General’s Award for poetry and Configurations at Midnight received the QSPELL A.M. Klein Poetry Prize.
He is also the recipient of The Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal; the Commemorative Medal; the Poetry Award from The Quebec Society for the Promotion of English Language Literature; and honorary degrees from Mount Allison, York and Bishop’s universities including the University Award of Merit from the latter. He is the subject of A Poetics of Place by Dermot McCarthy, published by McGill-Queen’s Press, and a film entitled Winter Prophecies, produced by The National Film Board of Canada. His poetry readings were recorded by The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. in 1977 and 1993.
He died in May 1995. The following titles further attest to his legacy.
Notable Works:
- The Golden Chalice (1935)
- Alfred the Great (1937)
- Epithalamium in Time of War (1941)
- Lyrics Unromantic (1942)
- Flight into Darkness: Poems (1944)
- Quebec, Late Autumn (1950)
- Quebec Winter Scene (1952)
- Hard Litany (1953)
- Rivers Among Rocks (1960)
- Rocky Mountain Poems (1960)
- Sift in an Hourglass (1966)
- Ixion’s Wheel: Poems (1969)
- Selected Poems (1972)
- Theme and Variations for Sounding Brass (1972)
- Fire on Stone (1974)
- Corners in the Glass (1977)
- Soviet Poems: Sept. 13 to Oct. 5, 1976 (1978)
- Gradations of Grandeur: a Poem (1979)
- Sequences: Poems (1979)
- Landscape with Rain (1980)
- Nine Poems (1980)
- The Remarkable Heavens (1980)
- Conflicts of Spring (1981)
- Dentelle / Indented: Poems (1982)
- The Moment is All: Selected Poems, 1944-83 (1983)
- Solidarnosc: Prelude (1983)
- At the Ocean’s Verge: Selected Poems (1984)
- Directives of Autumn (1984)
- Impromptus (1984)
- Twelve Landscapes (1985)
- Manipulations on Greek Themes: Poems (1986)
- Collected Poems (1987)
- Winter Prophecies (1987)
- The Celestial Corkscrew and Other Strategies (1989)
- Shadows in the Grass: Poems (1991)
- Configurations at Midnight (1992)
- Collected Poems Vol. 3 (1994)
- Tracks in the Snow (1994)
- Visions Fugitive (1996)
Trust
The Ralph and Betty Gustafson Trust was established at Vancouver Island University in 1998 from the estate of the late Ralph Gustafson. With the support of his widow, Betty Gustafson, the Trust endows an annual Chair of Poetry devoted to advancing Canadian poetry and supporting deserving poets in mid or late career with an impressive body of work.
In the Chair’s early years, Kate Braid, Gary Geddes, Robert Kroetsch, David Manicom, Susan Musgrave, William New, Alfredo Rizzardi, Wendy Robbins, Kevin Roberts, Ron Smith, Sharon Thesen, Marilyn Bowering, and Rhonda Bailey advocated for the lecture and functioned as an advisory board.