The West Coast Book Prize Society has named SFU English associate professor Stephen Collis the winner of its 2011 B.C. Book Prizes Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for his latest publication, On the Material (Talon Books, 2010).

Collis has also won SFU’s 2011/2012 Shadbolt fellowship, which he’ll use over the coming year to a finance new book entitled A History of Change.

The new work will be “a hybrid book, somewhere between poetry and philosophical essay, on society’s changing ideas about change,” says Collis, who has published four books of poetry.

“I’m not an historian, I’m a poet who happens to write about history,” he says. “I use my academic training to research a historical topic. Then, sometimes, instead of writing an academic essay the end result will be poetry.”

The society has also awarded SFU professor emeritus George Bowering with its 2011 Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence. The award recognizes Bowering’s remarkable literary output, including more than 80 books, his “passion for teaching and encouraging other writers” and “the crucial role he has played in the shaping of literary communities.”