Robert Bringhurst


Robert Bringhurst is a Canadian poet, typographer and author. He has translated substantial works from Haida and Navajo and from classical Greek and Arabic. He wrote The Elements of Typographic Style, a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in June 2013.
He lives on Quadra Island, near Campbell River, British Columbia with his wife, Jan Zwicky, a poet and philosopher.

Life

Bringhurst was born on October 16, 1946, in Los Angeles, California, and raised in Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Alberta, and British Columbia. He studied architecture, linguistics, and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and comparative literature and philosophy at the University of Utah. He holds a BA from Indiana University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. In 2006, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of the Fraser Valley, and in 2016 was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by Simon Fraser University.
Bringhurst taught literature, art history and history of typography at several universities and held fellowships from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the American Philosophical Society, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Literary career

His 1992 publication, The Elements of Typographic Style was praised as "the finest book ever written about typography" by the type designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones. A collection of his poetry, The Beauty of the Weapons, was short-listed for a Governor General's Award in 1982, and A Story as Sharp as a Knife, his work on Haida symbolism, was nominated for a Governor General's Award in 2000. Bringhurst won the Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence in 2005, an award which recognizes British Columbia writers who have contributed to the development of literary excellence in the province.

Work in Haida

Bringhurst has a strong interest in linguistics, translating works from classical Greek, Arabic, Navajo, and, most significantly, Haida. His interest in Haida culture stems from his friendship and close association with the influential Haida artist Bill Reid, with whom he wrote The Raven Steals the Light in 1984, among several other significant collaborations. It was this friendship that in 1987 "started Bringhurst on the philanthropic endeavour of recording the Haida canon". The result of this labour was a trilogy of works collectively titled Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers. The essays in its first volume, A Story As Sharp As A Knife, and particularly its nineteenth chapter, "The Prosody of Meaning," constitute an important contribution to the understanding of the poetics of oral literatures.
His translations from Haida have been viewed as an attempt to preserve the Haida culture, which in 1991 was considered part of a group "likely to be lost unless strong efforts are made very quickly to perpetuate them". The Haida translation has caused some controversy. Bringhurst was accused of academic exploitation and cultural appropriation. In 2001, the CBC Radio program Ideas aired a two part series called "Land to Stand On." The series' first episode featured "a string of Haida claiming that Bringhurst's work is 'about keeping us in our place,' written 'without asking us,'" and "replete with 'serious errors twisting it into the poetry that he wants'".
In 1999, The Globe and Mail published a report on the Haida reaction to A Story as Sharp as a Knife by Adele Weder. Weder's piece was later criticized for citing only two Haida sources, claiming they could speak for the entire Haida community, and was described as an "inflammatory article ... not likely to be mistaken for exemplary journalism". The Globe and Mail published Bringhurst's response, which was later called "considerably more measured".
In 2001, Jeff Leer reviewed A Story as Sharp as a Knife saying Bringhurst has neither formal linguistic education nor significant experience with spoken Haida, and doubting Bringhurst's ability to translate from Haida. Leer's review compared Bringhurst's work unfavourably to Enrico's Skidegate Haida Myths and Histories, and referred to the Weder review as an authoritative source. Leer's publisher, the International Journal of American Linguistics, retracted the review and apologized to Bringhurst for publishing:
Most academic discussion and recognition of Bringhurst's work in Haida has been positive. Linguist Dell Hymes wrote a review of the Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers trilogy in Language in Society, praising the trilogy. He said it "should become a classic reference point" for Haida scholars in the future. In 2004, Bringhurst won the Edward Sapir Prize for Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers. awarded by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, a professional organization. The committee giving the award was headed by Leanne Hinton, an expert in American Indian languages, and chair of the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Bringhurst has been defended by Margaret Atwood, who says that "territorial squabbling cannot obscure the fact that Bringhurst's achievement is gigantic as well as heroic", and that far from appropriating native voices, Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers "restores to life two exceptional poets we ought to know". The CBC documentary was attacked in print for relying "entirely on the fallacy, convenient to the producers, that Bringhurst had not consulted with any Haida". Bringhurst with the help of Bill Reid had spent the better part of the previous decade working with members of the Haida community. People from other indigenous Canadian communities, such as the late Cree elder Wilna Hodgson have also defended Bringhurst. In a letter to the editor of Books in Canada, she called A Story as Sharp as a Knife "a gift to First Nation people across ", and a true "masterpiece in the growing genre of spoken texts". In her opinion, Bringhurst's "efforts are clearly informed with the kind of integrity that all translators might strive to emulate".
Bringhurst says that "culture is not genetic" and that he pays respect to Native American languages like Haida by allowing works from those languages to be appreciated as art by as wide an audience as possible. He says he always intended his translations to be " in literary history, not in the interpretation of present-day Haida culture".

Poetry

The Shipwright's Log, 1972 Cadastre, 1973 Deuteronomy, 1974 Eight Objects, 1975 Bergschrund, 1975 Tzuhalem's Mountain, 1982 The Beauty of the Weapons: Selected Poems 1972-82, 1982, nominated for a Governor General's Award; 1985 Tending the Fire, 1985 The Blue Roofs of Japan, 1986 Pieces of Map, Pieces of Music, 1986, 1987 Conversations with a Toad, with woodcuts by Lucie Lambert & Masato Arikushi, 1987 The Calling: Selected Poems 1970-1995, 1995 Elements, with drawings by Ulf Nilsen, 1995 The Book of Silences, with photographs by Carolee Campbell, 2001 Ursa Major, 2003, short-listed for the 2004 Dorothy Livesay Poetry PrizeNew World Suite Number Three: A Poem in Four Movements for Three Voices, 2006 The Old in Their Knowing, 2005 Selected Poems, 2009 Selected Poems, 2010 Selected Poems, 2012 Stopping By, with etchings by Caroline Saltzwedel, 2012 Going Down Singing, with aquatints by Joseph Goldyne, 2016 Ten Poems with One Title, with wood engravings by Richard Wagener, 2022 The Ridge, 2023 In the Beginning, with wood engravings by Richard Wagener, 2025

Prose

Ocean/Paper/Stone, 1984 The Raven Steals the Light, with Bill Reid, 1984 Shovels, Shoes and the Slow Rotation of Letters, 1986 The Black Canoe: Bill Reid and the Spirit of Haida Gwaii, with photographs by Ulli Steltzer, 1991 The Elements of Typographic Style, 1992; revised 1996; 2004, 2005, and 2008; 2012, 2015, and 2016 Boats Is Saintlier Than Captains: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Morality, Language, and Design, 1997 Native American Oral Literatures and the Unity of the Humanities, 1998A Short History of the Printed Word, 2nd ed., with Warren Chappell, 1999 A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World, 1999 ; 2nd ed., 2011 ; UK ed., with screen prints by Don Yeomans, 2015 The Solid Form of Language: An Essay on Writing and Meaning, 2004 Prosodies of Meaning: Literary Form in Native North America, 2004 Wild Language, 2006 The Tree of Meaning: Thirteen Talks, 2006 Everywhere Being Is Dancing, 2007 The Surface of Meaning: Books and Book Design in Canada, 2008 What Is Reading For?, 2011 The Typographic Legacy of Ludovico degli Arrighi, 2016 Palatino: The Natural History of a Typeface, 2016 Learning to Die, with Jan Zwicky, 2018 This Wisp of a Thing Called Civilization, 2023

Translation

  • Volumes 2 and 3 of the trilogy Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers
  • * Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaanas, Nine Visits to the Mythworld, 2000, short-listed for the 2001 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize; 2nd ed., 2023
  • * Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay, Being in Being: The Collected Works of a Master Haida Mythteller, 2001; 2nd ed., 2023
  • Parmenides, The Fragments, with wood engravings by Richard Wagener, 2003
  • Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay, Siixha/Floating Overhead: The Qquna Cycle §3.3, 2007
  • Michelangelo, Hard, High-Country Poems, 2016

Edited works

Visions: Contemporary Art in Canada, 1983
  • Jan Tschichold, The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design, 1991
  • Bill Reid, Solitary Raven: The Essential Writings, 2000; 2nd ed., 2009 Carving the Elements: A Companion to the Fragments of Parmenides, 2004
  • François Mandeville, This Is What They Say, translated from Chipewyan by Ron Scollon, 2009
  • Kay Amert, The Scythe and the Rabbit: Simon de Colines and the Culture of the Book in Renaissance Paris, 2012
  • Dennis Lee, Heart Residence: Collected Poems 1967-2017, 2017

Commentary

  • William Meads, “The Holes in the Stone,” 1977: Kayak 44 : pp 60–65.
  • Stephen Spender, Journals 1939–1983, ed. John Goldsmith : pp 442–443.
  • Robin Skelton, “Recent Canadian Poetry,” 1984: Poetry 144.5 : pp 297–307.
  • Jorie Graham, “Making Connections,” 1986: New York Times Book Review, 28 Sept. 1986: pp 32–33.
  • Calvin Luther Martin, In the Spirit of the Earth: Rethinking Time and History. 1992 : chapters 4–6.
  • Iain Higgins, "Robert Bringhurst," Encyclopedia of Litersature in Canada, edited by W. H. New, 2002: University of Toronto Press: pp 152–154.
  • Margaret Atwood, "Uncovered: An American Iliad," 2004: The Times, 28 Feb. 2004: Weekend Review pp 10–11. Reprinted with revisions in Atood, Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 1983–2005 : pp 346–351.
  • Noah Richler, This Is My Country, What’s Yours?: A Literary Atlas of Canada, 2006 : pp 48–54, 82–83, etc.
  • Nicholas Bradley, "Remembering Offence: Robert Bringhurst and the Ethical Challenge of Cultural Appropriation," 2007: University of Toronto Quarterly 76.3: pp 890–912.
  • Rebcca Raglon, “The Natural History of Language and Literature,” 2008: Canadian Literature 196: pp 127–128.
  • John Burnside, “It’s language that matters,” 2010: The Times, 21 August 2010: Saturday Review p 11.
  • Kate Kellaway, “Masterpieces from Canada’s Best-Kept Secret,” 2010: The Observer, 19 Sept. 2010: New Review p 41.
  • Margaret Atwood, "Robert Bringhurst and the Rediscovery of the Haida Mythtellers," 2015: New Statesman, 30 Sept. 2015: pp 54–57..Listening for the Heartbeat of Being: The Arts of Robert Bringhurst, edited by Brent Wood and Mark Dickinson, 2015.
  • Robert Fulford, “Bringing a Genius Out of the Shadows.” The National Post, 23 August 2016: pp B1, B3.
  • Paul Watkins, "When Voices Intertwine," 2016: Canadian Literature 228–229 : pp 264–266.
  • Leonor María Martínez Serrano, Breathing Earth: The Polyphonic Lyric of Robert Bringhurst, 2021.
  • Mark Dickinson, Canadian Primal, 2021.
  • Nicholas Bradley, "North of Carmel: Jeffers, Bringhurst, and the Ecological View," 2023: Canadian Review of American Studies 53, 141–157.

Works cited

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