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William Bliss Carman was a poet and editor born on April 15, 1861 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. A descendant of United Empire Loyalists, Carman attended the Fredericton Collegiate School and the University of New Brunswick. He developed a love of classical literature while attending Fredericton Collegiate, where he was introduced to the poetry of Rossetti and Swinburne by headmaster George Robert Parkin. His own first published poem appeared in the University of New Brunswick Monthly in 1879.
Carman served as editor of the New York Independent, Current Literature, Cosmopolitan, The Chap-Book and The Atlantic Monthly. His first book of poetry, Low Tide on Grand Pre, was published in 1893, followed by Songs of Vagabondia in 1894. In total he published over 25 collections of poetry.
During the 1920s Carman was a member of The Song Fishermen, a Halifax-based literary and social set that included Charles G.D. Roberts (Carman’s cousin), Andrew Merkel, Robert Norwood, Evelyn Tufts, Stewart MacAuley, Kenneth Leslie, and Ethel Butler. He was named Canada’s Poet Laureate on October 28, 1921. He died in 1929 in New Canaan, Connecticut, where he had moved to be near Mary Perry King, one of his greatest literary influences.