In 2005, two Creative Writing faculty members approached the director of VIU’s Institute for Coastal Research (ICR) with a proposal. Frank Moher and Rhonda Bailey contacted Bill Pennell asking if ICR would be interested in publishing manuscripts from the Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poets Lecture Series. As the department’s publishing instructor, Bailey had been urged to print the lectures by members of the Gustafson Trust committee, in particular poets Kate Braid and Marilyn Bowering. The ICR had SSHRC funds that could finance the publishing of selected lectures.
Bailey contacted Robert Bringhurst, noted typographer, translator, and himself a Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poet. He agreed to work with Bailey and her publishing students to design the first two lectures printed by Gaspereau Press in the spring of 2006: Wild Language by Robert Bringhurst and Poetry and the Sacred by Don Domanski (now out of print). Bringhurst returned to VIU to work with Bailey’s students to produce A Kind of Perfect Speech by Dionne Brand (2006), Songs Without Price by Tom Wayman (2007), and At the River’s Mouth: Writing Migrations by Daphne Marlatt (2008 – now out of print).
Upon Bailey’s retirement in 2011, Joy Gugeler took her place as publishing instructor and series editor. Following ICR’s decision to focus on titles germane to its own mandate and subject focus, funding was taken over by the Dean of Arts and Humanities. In 2016, Gugeler renamed the publishing imprint Arbutus Editions, commissioning a logo and typeface from Robert Bringhurst.
All 8 in-print titles are available from the series’ dedicated page at the VIU Bookstore with shipping costs customized for a single title, the whole series, or class sets of 25.