He was born in Lime Ridge, near Dudswell, Quebec on August 16, 1909. His mother was British, his father, Carl Otto Gustafson, was a Swedish photographer.[1] He was educated at Bishop's University, earning a B.A. (1st class honours and winner of the Governor General's medal along with many other awards) in 1929 and an M.A. in 1930, with a thesis on John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. He also completed a B.A. at Keble College, Oxford in 1933, an M.A. in 1963.
Over the years, Dr. Gustafson held a number of posts. He was music master, Bishop's College School, 1920–30; teacher of English St. Alban's School for Boys, Brockville, Ontario, 1933–34; tutor and journalist, London, England, 1935–38; British Information Services, New York, N.Y., 1942–46; Professor and Poet-In-Residence, Bishop's University, 1963–79 and music critic, C.B.C., since 1960. Dr. Gustafson wrote over twenty volumes of poetry and prose and edited several anthologies of verse. He died in 1995.
His views on poetry are documented in essays collected in Plummets and Other Partialities (1986), and in letters to W.W.E. Ross published as A Literary Friendship in 1984. He also was in contact with John Sutherland.
Gustafson's early poetry owes a significant debt to Gerard Manley Hopkins (as evidenced in The Golden Chalice (1935) and Alfred the Great (1937)), while Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and W. B. Yeats were important influences on his later work.
In 1942, Gustafson edited the Anthology of Canadian Poetry which developed into the Penguin Book of Canadian Verse in 1958, both volumes a reflection of his extensive studies on the history of Canadian poetry.
Recognition
Gustafson won the Governor General's Award 1974 for Fire on Stone.
Winter Prophecies (1998) is a documentary profile (29 min.) on Gustafson's life and art directed by Donald Winkler and produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
Works
The Golden Chalice (London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1935)
Alfred the Great (London: Michael Joseph, 1937)
Epithalamium in Time of War (New York: L. F. White, 1941)
Lyrics Unromantic (New York: Privately printed, 1942)
Flight into Darkness: Poems (New York: Pantheon, 1944)
Quebec, Late Autumn (Offprint from Queen's Quarterly, 1950)
Quebec Winter Scene (Offprint from Dalhousie Review, 1952)
Hard Litany (Offprint from the Dalhousie Review, 1953)
Rivers Among Rocks (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1960)
Rocky Mountain Poems (Vancouver: Klanak, 1960)
Sift in an Hourglass (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966)
Ixion's Wheel: Poems (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969)
Selected Poems (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972)
Theme and Variations for Sounding Brass (Sherbrooke, P.Q.: Progressive Publications, 1972)
Fire on Stone (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974)
Corners in the Glass (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977)
