Michel Pleau has been named Canada’s new parliamentary poet laureate.

The author of 14 collections, with another due this spring, Pleau won a Governor General’s Literary Award in 2008 for La lenteur du monde (Eternity Taking Its Time). According to The Globe and Mail, there is an island in Quebec’s Caniapiscau Reservoir named after his 1994 collection, La traversée de la nuit.

The Quebec City poet receives an annual stipend of $20,000 and up to $13,000 in travel expenses. His term as laureate runs for two years.

Pleau replaces Vancouver’s Fred Wah and is the sixth poet to hold the position since the office was created in 2001.