Robert Bringhurst OC
Bringhurst in 2016
Born	(1946-10-16)October 16, 1946 (age 79) Los Angeles,California, US
Alma mater	Indiana University, Bloomington University of British Columbia
Occupations	Poet typographer writer
Notable work	The Elements of Typographic Style (1992)
Spouse	Jan Zwicky

Robert BringhurstOC^[1] (born 1946) is a Canadian^[2] poet,typographer and author. He has translated substantial works fromHaida andNavajo and from classicalGreek andArabic. He wroteThe Elements of Typographic Style, a reference book oftypefaces,glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in June 2013.^[1]

He lives onQuadra Island, nearCampbell River, British Columbia (approximately 170 km northwest ofVancouver) with his wife,Jan Zwicky, a poet and philosopher.

Bringhurst was born on October 16, 1946, inLos Angeles,California, and raised inUtah,Montana,Wyoming,Alberta, andBritish Columbia. He studied architecture,linguistics, andphysics at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, andcomparative literature and philosophy at theUniversity of Utah. He holds a BA fromIndiana University (1973) and anMFA increative writing from theUniversity of British Columbia (1975).^[3] In 2006, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from theUniversity of the Fraser Valley,^[4] and in 2016 was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters bySimon Fraser University.^[5]

Bringhurst taught literature,art history andhistory of typography at several universities and heldfellowships from theCanada Council for the Arts, theSocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the American Philosophical Society, and theGuggenheim Foundation.

His 1992 publication,The Elements of Typographic Style was praised as "the finest book ever written about typography" by the type designersJonathan Hoefler andTobias Frere-Jones.^[6] A collection of his poetry,The Beauty of the Weapons, was short-listed for aGovernor General's Award in 1982, andA Story as Sharp as a Knife, his work on Haida symbolism, was nominated for aGovernor General's Award in 2000. Bringhurst won theLieutenant 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.

Bringhurst has a strong interest in linguistics, translating works from classical Greek, Arabic, Navajo, and, most significantly, Haida. His interest inHaida culture stems from his friendship and close association with the influential Haida artistBill Reid, with whom he wroteThe 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".^[7] The result of this labour was a trilogy of works collectively titledMasterworks 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".^[8] The Haida translation has caused some controversy. Bringhurst was accused of academic exploitation and cultural appropriation.^[9] In 2001, theCBC Radio programIdeas 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'".^[7]

In 1999,The Globe and Mail published a report on the Haida reaction toA Story as Sharp as a Knife by Adele Weder.^[10] 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".^[11]The Globe and Mail published Bringhurst's response,^[12] which was later called "considerably more measured".^[13]

In 2001, Jeff Leer reviewedA Story as Sharp as a Knife saying Bringhurst has neither formal linguistic education^[14] nor significant experience with spoken Haida,^[15] and doubting Bringhurst's ability to translate from Haida. Leer's review compared Bringhurst's work unfavourably to Enrico'sSkidegate Haida Myths and Histories, and referred to the Weder review as an authoritative source. Leer's publisher, theInternational Journal of American Linguistics, retracted the review and apologized to Bringhurst for publishing:

some unfounded statements from another author that might be read to impugn Prof. Bringhurst's qualifications or integrity. TheJournal's sole intention in publishing the book review was to bring an important work by a well-respected scholar to the attention of its readers. [...] it was not theJournal's intent to transmit erroneous perceptions of Prof. Bringhurst's training or scholarship.^[16]

Most academic discussion and recognition of Bringhurst's work in Haida has been positive. LinguistDell Hymes wrote a review of theMasterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers trilogy (of whichA Story as Sharp as a Knife is part) inLanguage in Society,^[17] praising the trilogy. He said it "should become a classic reference point"^[18] for Haida scholars in the future. In 2004, Bringhurst won the Edward Sapir Prize forMasterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers.^[19] awarded by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, a professional organization. The committee giving the award was headed byLeanne Hinton, an expert in American Indian languages, and chair of the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.^[20]

Bringhurst has been defended byMargaret 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".^[21] 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".^[7] Bringhurst with the help of Bill Reid had spent the better part of the previous decade working with members of the Haida community.^[7] People from other indigenous Canadian communities, such as the late Cree elder Wilna Hodgson have also defended Bringhurst. In a letter to the editor ofBooks in Canada, she calledA Story as Sharp as a Knife "a gift to First Nation people across [Canada]", 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".^[22]

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.^[23] He says he always intended his translations to be "[exercises] in literary history, not in the interpretation of present-day Haida culture".^[7]

• Volumes 2 and 3 of the trilogyMasterworks of the ClassicalHaida Mythtellers (volume 1,A Story as Sharp as a Knife, is a prose work about Haida literature and is not primarily a work of translation)
  • Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaanas,Nine Visits to the Mythworld (a collection of stories by the mythteller Ghandl, as collected in 1900 byJohn Reed Swanton), 2000, short-listed for the 2001 CanadianGriffin Poetry Prize; 2nd ed., 2023 (Douglas & McIntyre)
  • Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay,Being in Being: The Collected Works of a Master Haida Mythteller (a collection of stories by the mythtellerSkaay, as collected byJohn Reed Swanton), 2001; 2nd ed., 2023 (Douglas & McIntyre)
• Parmenides,The Fragments, with wood engravings by Richard Wagener, 2003 (Peter Koch)
• Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay,Siixha/Floating Overhead: The Qquna Cycle §3.3, 2007 (Russell Maret)
• Michelangelo,Hard, High-Country Poems, 2016 (Peter Koch)

• Visions: Contemporary Art in Canada, 1983 (Douglas & McIntyre)
• Jan Tschichold,The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design, 1991 (Hartley & Marks)
• Bill Reid,Solitary Raven: The Essential Writings, 2000; 2nd ed., 2009 (Douglas & McIntyre)
• Carving the Elements: A Companion to the Fragments of Parmenides, 2004 (Peter Koch)
• François Mandeville,This Is What They Say, translated from Chipewyan byRon Scollon, 2009 (Douglas & McIntyre)
• Kay Amert,The Scythe and the Rabbit: Simon de Colines and the Culture of the Book in Renaissance Paris, 2012 (Cary Graphic Arts Press / RIT)
• Dennis Lee,Heart Residence: Collected Poems 1967–2017, 2017 (Anansi)

• William Meads, “The Holes in the Stone,” 1977:Kayak 44 (Santa Cruz, Calif.): pp 60–65.
• Stephen Spender,Journals 1939–1983, ed. John Goldsmith [entry from 1982] (London: Faber & Faber, 1985): pp 442–443.
• Robin Skelton, “Recent Canadian Poetry,” 1984:Poetry (Chicago) 144.5 (1984): 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 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 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 (London), 28 Feb. 2004: Weekend Review pp 10–11. Reprinted with revisions in Atood,Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 1983–2005 (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005): pp 346–351.
• Noah Richler,This Is My Country, What’s Yours?: A Literary Atlas of Canada, 2006 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 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 (London), 21 August 2010: Saturday Review p 11.
• Kate Kellaway, “Masterpieces from Canada’s Best-Kept Secret,” 2010:The Observer (London), 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. (Actually a reprint of Atwood's foreword to the UK edition of Bringhurst'sA Story as Sharp as a Knife, (London: Folio Society, 2015).
• Listening for the Heartbeat of Being: The Arts of Robert Bringhurst, edited by Brent Wood and Mark Dickinson, 2015 (McGill-Queen's U Press).
• Robert Fulford, “Bringing a Genius Out of the Shadows.”The National Post (Toronto), 23 August 2016: pp B1, B3.
• Paul Watkins, "When Voices Intertwine," 2016:Canadian Literature 228–229 (Spring/Summer 2016): pp 264–266.
• Leonor María Martínez Serrano,Breathing Earth: The Polyphonic Lyric of Robert Bringhurst, 2021 (Peter Lang).
• Mark Dickinson,Canadian Primal, 2021 (McGill-Queen's U Press).
• Nicholas Bradley, "North of Carmel: Jeffers, Bringhurst, and the Ecological View," 2023:Canadian Review of American Studies 53(2), 141–157.

• Brent Wood, Mark Dickinson (eds.):Listening for the Heartbeat of Being: The Arts of Robert Bringhurst, Montreal; Kingston; London; Chicago: McGill-Queen's University Press 2015,ISBN 978-0-7735-4634-9

• Griffin Poetry Prize biography
• Griffin Poetry Prize reading, including video clip
• Robert Bringhurst reads from Nine Visits to the Mythworld onYouTube (video)
• Records of Robert Bringhurst are held by Simon Fraser University's Special Collections and Rare Books
• The archives of Robert Bringhurst(Robert Bringhurst fonds (R11716) are held atLibrary and Archives Canada

• 1946 births
• 20th-century Canadian male writers
• 20th-century Canadian poets
• 20th-century Canadian translators
• 21st-century Canadian male writers
• 21st-century Canadian poets
• 21st-century Canadian translators
• American emigrants to Canada
• Canadian male non-fiction writers
• Canadian male poets
• Canadian typographers and type designers
• Design writers
• Indiana University Bloomington alumni
• Living people
• Officers of the Order of Canada
• University of Utah alumni
• Poets from British Columbia
• Writers from Los Angeles

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