Person

Carman, Bliss, 1861-1929

1861-1929

William Bliss Carman was born on April 15, 1861, in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

He was a Canadian poet who spent most of his life in the United States, where he achieved international fame. He attended Fredericton Collegiate School and later graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of New Brunswick (UNB) in 1881. His first published poem appeared in the UNB Monthly in 1879. He then studied at Oxford and the University of Edinburgh from 1882 to 1883, but returned home to complete his master's degree at UNB in 1884. After the death of his parents in 1886, Carman enrolled at Harvard University for the academic year 1886–1887. Following several years of editing various magazines and periodicals, he published his first volume of poetry in 1893, titled "Low Tide on Grand Pré."

In Canada, Carman is classed as one of the Confederation Poets, a group that also includes his cousin Charles G.D. Roberts, along with Archibald Lampman and Duncan Campbell Scott. Of this group, Carman possessed the most refined lyrical ability and gained the widest international acclaim. However, unlike his peers, he did not seek to secure his income through novel writing, popular journalism, or non-literary jobs. Instead, he remained dedicated to poetry, enhancing his work with critical essays on literary concepts, philosophy, and aesthetics. By 1920, Carman was impoverished and recovering from a near-fatal bout of tuberculosis. He returned to Canada and began a series of successful and relatively lucrative reading tours. On October 28, 1921, he was honoured at a dinner hosted by the newly formed Canadian Authors' Association at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Montreal, where he was crowned Canada's Poet Laureate with a wreath made of maple leaves.

He died of a brain hemorrhage on June 8, 1929, in New Canaan, Connecticut.