Canadian poet, translator, and essayist
Bruce Whiteman (born David Bruce Whiteman, June 18, 1952) is a Canadian poet, translator, editor, 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,[1] 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.[2] Currently Whiteman lives in Peterborough, Ontario,[3] and contributes book reviews and essays regularly to publications such as TriQuarterly, Rattle, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.[4][5][6]
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."[7] Known primarily as a prose poet who has been compared to fellow Canadian poets Christopher Dewdney and bpNichol,[8][9] Whiteman's opus magnum is The Invisible World is In Decline, a continuing long poem he began working on in 1981 and which was first published in 1984; the work now comprises eight books, with the ninth and final volume due for publication in 2022.[10] A 2015 publication entitled Tablature marked Whiteman's return to the sort of verse poetry that characterized much of his earlier work.[11]
