Bruce Whiteman


Bruce Whiteman is a Canadian poet, translator, and essayist whose writings focus on music, bibliography, cultural history, and literature. Born in Southern Ontario and educated at Trent University and the University of Toronto, in 1996 Whiteman was appointed director of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at the University of California, Los Angeles, a position he held until 2010. Currently Whiteman lives in Peterborough, Ontario, and contributes book reviews and essays regularly to publications such as TriQuarterly, Rattle, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Poetry

Although he has published extensively as a rare books librarian, scholar, and critic, Whiteman has called writing poetry "the part of my life I'm most passionate about." Known primarily as a prose poet who has been compared to fellow Canadian poets Christopher Dewdney and bpNichol, Whiteman's opus magnum is , a continuing long poem he began working on in 1981 and which was first published in 1984; the work now comprises six books, with a seventh in progress as of 2012. A 2015 publication entitled marked Whiteman's return to the sort of verse poetry that characterized much of his earlier work.

Selected publications

Poetry
Translation
Cultural History