Stephen Scobie is a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, critic

Critic

A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

, and scholar.

Born in Carnoustie

Carnoustie

Carnoustie is a town and former police burgh in the council area of Angus, Scotland. It is situated at the mouth of the Barry Burn on the North Sea coast...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, Scobie relocated to Canada in 1965. He earned a PhD

PHD

PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 from the University of British Columbia

University of British Columbia

The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...

 in Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

 after which he taught at the University of Alberta

University of Alberta

The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, its first president, it is widely recognized as one of the best universities in Canada...

 and at the University of Victoria

University of Victoria

The University of Victoria, often referred to as UVic, is the second oldest public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It is a research intensive university located in Saanich and Oak Bay, about northeast of downtown Victoria. The University's annual enrollment is about 20,000 students...

, from which he recently retired.

Scobie is a founding editor of Longspoon Press, an elected member of the Royal Society of Canada

Royal Society of Canada

The Royal Society of Canada , may also operate under the more descriptive name RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada , is the oldest association of scientists and scholars in Canada...

, and the recipient of the 1980 Governor General's Award

Governor General's Award for English language poetry or drama

This is a list of recipients of the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry or drama. The award was created in 1937, the second year of the awards, and existed until 1980, when it was split into the separate awards for poetry and drama.-1930s:...

 for McAlmon's Chinese Opera (1980) and the 1986 Prix Gabrielle Roy for Canadian Criticism.

Selected bibliography

• Babylondromat: Poems (1966)
• One Word Poems (1969)
• In the Silence of the Year (1971)
• The Birken Tree (1973)
• Stone Poems: Poems 1967-1969 (1973)
• Air Loom (1974)
• The Rooms We Are: Poems 1970-1971 (1974)
• Airwaves, Sealevel, Landlock (1978)
• Leonard Cohen (1978)
• Les toiles n'ont peur de rien (1979)
• McAlmon's Chinese Opera (1980)
• A Grand Memory for Forgetting (1981)
• Expecting Rain: New Poems (1984)
• The Ballad of Isabel Gunn (1987)
• Dunino (1989)
• Ghosts: a Glossary of the Intertext (1990)
• Remains (1990)
• Alias Bob Dylan (1991)
• Gospel: a Poem (1994)
• Taking the Gate: a Journey through Scotland (1996)
• Earthquakes and Explorations: Language and Painting from Cubism to Concrete Poetry (1997)
• And Forget my Name: a Speculative Biography of Bob Dylan (1999)
• The Spaces in Between: Selected Poems 1965-2001 (2003)