North Saanich-based poet Patrick Lane will receive an honorary doctor of letters degree at Vancouver Island University’s convocation ceremony on Thursday.
Lane, 75, will also be featured guest Wednesday at 4 p.m. during a reading of his works by faculty from VIU’s creative writing and journalism department in the Royal Arbutus Room of the Nanaimo campus.
The writer and teacher has received international acclaim for his works, which include 27 books of poetry, short story collections and novels.
Pamela Porter, the B.C. writer and Governor General’s Award recipient who co-nominated Lane for the honour, said he has developed a method for teaching poetry during a four-day retreat.
“What Patrick is doing in his teaching is nothing less than the moulding and shaping of Canadian literature,” she said, noting that many students have gone on to publish books and win awards.
The Nelson-born poet’s The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane includes 400 poems spanning more than 50 years. His most recent collection, Washita, was nominated for the 2015 Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry. Lane, who also won the award in 1978 for Poems, New and Selected, will soon release a new book of poetry.
Lane graduated from high school and worked in the logging industry in northern B.C. in his 20s, teaching himself the art of poetry at night in small towns.
“My father was semi-literate but my mother was an avid reader and belonged to three different book clubs,” he said.
“There were always books in the house. I cut my teeth on good books written by an endless list of remarkable authors.”
He moved to Vancouver in 1965, founding Very Stone House, a small press publishing house.
Lane and his wife, the poet Lorna Crozier, moved to Victoria in 1991 to write and teach at the University of Victoria, where he is now an adjunct professor.
After Lane completed rehabilitation in Nanaimo for alcohol dependency, he and Crozier co-edited and contributed to Addicted: Notes from the Belly of the Beast, a collection of essays published in 2001. In There is a Season: A Memoir in a Garden, he writes about how gardening has helped him stay sober.
“I’ve had mothers and fathers come up to me and thank me for writing my story,” Lane said. “It’s humbling to realize you’ve become an elder.”
