Stanzas by Governor General Award-winning poet Stephen Scobie consists largely of poems written in the traditional rhyming stanzas of the ballad tradition. But if the form is restricted, the range is wide: from artistic tributes to historical reflections, from fictional stories to family remembrance. Or: from Seneca to Bob Dylan, from old girlfriends to the Scottish Referendum. Caustic, witty, emotional: these poems show that nothing lies beyond the reach of a rhyming stanza.

About Stephen Scobie’s book, At the Limit of Breath
Stephen Scobie’s newest collection is a chronological, poetic study of the films of French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. And like the work of the man about whom Scobie writes, the book is pleasingly esoteric and sharply focused… this book studies and examines Godard in a sharp and thrilling way, and Scobie invites his reader to further explore the world of the great filmmaker. Scobie’s knowledge of Godard is vast, to be sure, but his poetics-and his love for the films-are what truly shine here.
~ Kimmy Beach, ARC Poetry Magazine

About Stephen Scobie’s book, RLS: At the World’s End
Stephen Scobie has never been known for timid subjects. Here he lets out the stubborn Scot in him, full stop, in the voice of his ancestral literary countryman, Robert Louis Stevenson, growling and howling and whooping at the mad world, inner and outer, wrestling it into the possibilities of love, the seas calming, a woman smiling at the door. Past, present and future meld in this fierce hymn to loss of innocence, and old age, and grace under fire. A magnificent read.
~ Di Brandt

Stephen Scobie is a Canadian poet, critic, and scholar. Born in Carnoustie, Scotland, Scobie relocated to Canada in 1965. He earned a PhD from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver after which he taught at the University of Alberta and at the University of Victoria, from which he recently retired. Scobie is a founding editor of Longspoon Press, an elected member of the Royal Society of Canada, and the recipient of the 1980 Governor General’s Award for McAlmon’s Chinese Opera (1980) and the 1986 Prix Gabrielle Roy for Canadian Criticism.